Lectoraat What Art Knows
Herdenkingsplein 12
↳ Lectoraatskamer 0.11
Maastricht

E whatartknows@zuyd.nl
T +31 (0)43 346 6365

Symposium – exhibition & Call for Instruments: Drawing Instruments Or: how to calibrate an artist?

symposium – exhibition

Maastricht,  Herdenkingsplein 12, March 16 & 17, 2017

An open working session organized by the Research Centre for Arts, Autonomy and Public Sphere/Lectoraat Autonomie en Openbaarheid in de Kunsten, in collaboration with Dear Hunter’s Institute of Calibration

Closing lecture by Lorraine Daston.

In this first yearly symposium of the Lectoraat AOK, we will approach the artist as a research instrument. Sidestepping the fundamental debate about whether art can be research, we focus on artistic research practice. What do artistic researchers actually do? And how can we talk about their work in a productive way? To gain a perspective on this practice, we use the metaphor of the research instrument. We approach artistic research practice as a space in which the artist develops a methodology of her own: the artist as research instrument. This focus helps us to ask specific questions: How is an artist-as-instrument made sensitive? What kinds of embodied, aesthetic, intimate, sensory ways of knowing are developed? How does the artist-as-instrument become attuned or calibrated? What does it probe and find out? How can we know whether it is working well? What kind of standards emerge along the way?

This year, the symposium marks the closing of the Lectoraat AOK’s interdisciplinary research studio Institute of Calibration made and led by Dear Hunter, a duo of architects working in the Euregion as spatial anthropologists. This research studio focused particularly on drawing: The artist-as-instrument that draws, but also the drawing of the artist-as-instrument as a way of reflecting on and honing artistic research practices.

The symposium will take place in an exhibition space that reconstructs the research studio Institute of Calibration. It will be a hands-on working session in which thinking-through-making is central.

 

Call for Instrument: deadline for submission: January 27, 2017

 Rather than presenting finished work, the symposium will be a working session in which instruments are produced and compared in situ by participants. Of course, research instruments only function in particular contexts to address specific problems. Therefore, we are looking for contributions that originate in a developed artistic research practice and/or from a researcher’s need to reflect on and articulate their methods.

We invite contributions by artists and/or academics presenting and reflecting on the artist-as-instrument. The form in which you send in your proposal is quite open. We suggest you could submit a drawing or abstract of your presentation (you will be given a maximum of 30 minutes at the symposium for presentation) before January 27th 2017 via email to milou.willems@zuyd.nl. Proposals should include the author’s name and contact details, a title and a summary of around 500 words and/or drawings outlining the instrument, the problems it deals with and the argument the presenter would like to make about it. The proposals will be evaluated by the organizing committee of Drawing Instruments. Selected participants will be invited to present their instrument at the symposium Drawing Instruments.

Organizing committee

Ruth Benschop: reader Lectoraat AOK / Research Centre for Arts, Autonomy and Public Sphere, Faculty of the Arts, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences.

Remy Kroese: member of Dear Hunter, a research practice for spatial anthropology and organizers of the Institute of Calibration.

Veerle Spronck: researcher in the Research Centre for Arts, Autonomy and Public Sphere and at Maastricht University.

Marlies Vermeulen: member of Dear Hunter, a research practice for spatial anthropology and organizers of the Institute of Calibration.

We are very happy to announce that our session formally closes on Friday-morning with a lecture by Lorraine Daston, who will speak about practices of drawing and scientific illustration, and the ways in which different standards of objectivity are achieved. This lecture is co-hosted by the Master of Scientific Illustration, Zuyd / AEIMS conference.

Finally, we would like to draw your attention to three parallel events that might be of interest to attendees of Drawing Instruments:

  • Drawing Instruments is connected to the European conference for scientific illustration organized this year by The Master of Scientific Illustration in Maastricht, 17 & 18 March 2017.
  • Drawing Instruments is connected to the MACCH conference on Participatory practices in Arts and Heritage, 17 & 18 March 2017.
  • Drawing Instruments is connected to The Loop Maastricht (16 & 17 March 2017), which this year focuses on sensory knowledge. Attendees of The Loop are welcome to attend Drawing Instruments and vice versa.

 

Note that the exhibition space in which this symposium takes place can also be visited separately in the days surrounding the symposium.

 

More info: www.instituteofcalibration.eu

 

Drawing: Dear Hunter – S.M.m.m.R.I.

Sea Monster map making Research Instrument