(See below for meeting schedule 'sign-up')

A good, alternative starting point to the questions below may be a comment I've just come across on Systems Ecology - we could even use its instructions for defining a system as our own starting point for looking at Critical Practice and system, or 'ecology'...

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Here are the questions without any of my commentary. If you wish to see this go to questions with a few comments

It seems to me that there are two broad issues for us (CP) in addressing the role of system in collaboration… and art.

(1) The role of ‘system’ in how individuals collaborate / work with one another (2) The role of ‘system’ in art’s collaboration with non-art arenas.

NB The questions that follow do not represent a ‘systematic’ over-view of the territory as the premises of some invalidate the premises of others. Another way of putting this is to say, that as yet, I’m not coming at the territory with any one method – or system - in mind, despite an interest in Niklas Luhmann’s work.

To start with:

• How do we want to define ‘system’? Do we want to identify our definition with any one disciplinary emphasis e.g. cybernetics, social science, engineering?

Is a ‘system’ defined by structure (integrated elements forming a coherent whole), or its purposiveness (designed to accomplish task x), or both, or something different? Cybernetics might have a different understanding of ‘system’ to ‘social science’…

Questions for (1) that it would be useful for CP to address include:

• Does collaborative practice necessitate a greater systematization of working processes than individual practice? Or is it just the case that collaborative practice benefits from more transparency of systematic processes?

• How might we relate a structural analysis of ‘system’ (thinking of ‘system’ as a series of integrated operations) to the role of individuals in Critical Practice? (For instance, one way of addressing this would be to associate individuals with distinct operations, tedious though this might be)

• How has Critical Practice attempted to engage the idea of ‘system’ in its working practices? Do we think that say, in ‘Open Organisations’, we’ve got a good model? Are there areas of process / practice this model doesn’t cover? Here, a related question is:

• Is ‘system’ a metaphor for collaboration?

• How might the greater role of ‘system’ in CP’s work prove counter-productive?

• As much as we attempt to actively engage systems in our working processes, are there systems that engage us without us recognising it?

NB: this is a key point that Felix Guattari makes in 'The Three Ecologies' in which he suggests that 'Integrated World Capitalism' (IWC) is in danger of colonising mental space as much as it is taking over the natural world, and that we might need to invent the idea of a 'mental ecology' to resist that colonization...

Questions for (2) that it would be useful for CP to address include:

• How do we think about ‘art’s’ relationship to non-art in terms of ‘system’?

• How useful is Luhmann’s model of art (as an autonomous sub-system) for artists who want to collaborate with non-artists?

• What concept of ‘system’ is useful – if Luhmann's is problematic - for thinking about art’s interaction with non-art areas?

• How can we avoid thinking about cross-disciplinary collaboration as a ‘clash’ of different systems?

And as a PS

• Has Luhmann’s account of art’s ‘autopoiesis’ been rendered problematic by recent and contemporary developments in art – or should that be ‘art’?...?

The discussion is also evolving as a response to minutes for 13th October 2007 and questions with a few comments

Meeting Schedule Sign-up

Please put your name by the days you'd prefer - as mailed, we need I think to have two meetings

Mary Anne can do all slots at present...

1st - to respond to questions / shape the debate

Thursday 11th October - 6.30 - 8.30

Friday 12th October - 6.30 - 8.30 --- Tom Trevatt

Saturday 13th October - 2 - 4 pm --- Tom Trevatt, Robert Dingle, wayne clements, alexander

2nd - to evolve strategy for presentational form

Friday 19th - 6.30 - 8.30 --- Tom Trevatt, alexander

Saturday 20th - 2 -4 pm
Tom Trevatt, wayne clements.

Last modified: 18.10.07 by MaryAnne

Comments

Poster	Thread
MaryAnne	Posted: 2007/10/5 19:59  Updated: 2007/10/5 19:59
Joined: 2006/6/2 From: Posts: 36	Re: questions for the debate Here are some comments from the WG - written before this page was up and running (I've put these up as I think they offer potential starting points (different to the ones I've proposed)... Robin wrote 'what interests me most, is the re-distribution of power- structures in changing systems, be it art or else. Even if we work interdisciplinary, we are subjected to the powers within each field and while we may widen participation by increasing the number of entry-nodes, the collaboration is still hierarchical, as long as the control-nodes are limited to one or few...' Yes, I take your point, Robin. I wonder if ‘collaboration’ in the interdisciplinary sense is necessarly hierarchical (yes, probably it tends to be). Is this a consequence of a cultural disposition towards hierachising i.e. fine art / decorative arts; science / art; law / business studies and so on? Al wrote ‘[…] I think that much first generation conceptual work now looks pedantic and overly legalistic, but I think it is an interesting question to raise in relation to your concerns re. CP turning into another form of ‘bureaucratic rationality’.’ Neal wrote: 'Have you read Mark Taylors The moment of complexity : emerging network culture book? In this he charts a pattern through modernism to post modernism in as a transition from grid, to system, to network. A bit flaky in places, but has some resonance. Might be worth considering. There is also Stuart Kaufmann's work with which I am less familiar, and the whole school of post-humanism and complexity theory aka Katherine N Hayles...'

Poster	Thread
alexander	Posted: 2007/10/12 15:24  Updated: 2007/10/12 15:24
Joined: 2006/9/12 From: Posts: 1	Re: questions for the debate The question that most interests me is the one relating to the ability to be able to view collaboration as anything other that a clash between opposing systems. This is linked to a counter history of collaboration, one that pre-dates the 1980’s market strategy of collaboration as a method for corporations to promote teamwork as a method of creating greater capital. The counter history of collaboration would seem to stretch back to a militaristic meaning of the word; more specifically collaboration with an occupying or aggressive force, one thinks of Vichy France and French North Africa (Pontecorvo's The battle for Algiers is as good an illustration as I can think of on this). Could some form of debate regarding to collaboration and systems centre around the relationship between the two readings of the word that is concentrating on collaboration in relation to systems of power, rather than the other way around. On an interesting but possibly unrelated note there seems to be a move by corporations to use or co-opt collaborative working process as a method of side stepping conventional systems of research and development, often the companies use the knowledge of the users of a product in an effort to improve just that product, thus creating a system of collaboration between user and creator. A good example of this is the submitting of fault reports to Microsoft via. Personal computers; an ongoing collaboration between the millions of computer users encountering tiny ongoing faults, and the central programmers of the computers attempting to improve their product. This would seem to have relation to CP in that is an example of the ways in which a seemingly counter bureaucratic process that is open source is twisted to a bureaucratic and corporate purpose.

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