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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.
Of course, these modes of attention may well inter-penetrate each other.
That is to say: if we formulate the issue of art, system and collaboration in this way, then, we may have to think about the question of ‘hierarchising’ the 2 areas. For example: if we take (2) – art’s collaboration with non-art arenas - then it may be the case that this unsettles the ‘system’ of collaboration devised say, by artists working collaboratively.
(Except in CP’s case, one of the ways in which we’ve approached the question of system is to refer to ‘open organizations’ which is to borrow from non art-specific territory.)
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 (a structure designed to accomplish task x), or both, or something different? Cybernetics might have a different understanding of ‘system’ to ‘social science’…
Is the concept of ‘repeatability’ useful here –if a ‘system’ for doing something allows an activity to become more than just a singular event. And if we turn ‘repeatability’ into the Derridean concept of ‘iterability’, can there be any such thing as ‘system’? (This deconstructive turn might be fruitful in thinking about the role of the individual in relation to a system.) Then again, what is the relationship of ‘system’ to ‘method’?
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? All – or most - practice benefits from system… Indeed it seems that the concept of ‘system’ is so necessary to effective functioning (and in some respects, so banal?) that doubtless few organisations / would deny its value.
• 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 identify 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?
• Is ‘system’ a metaphor for collaboration?
• How might the greater role of ‘system’ in CP’s work prove counter-productive?
There’s also the Romantic / Surrealist tradition of art-practice that refuses the type of rationality that a sympathy for system implies.
• As much as we attempt to actively engage systems in our working processes, are there systems that engage us without us recognising it? (Here, useful references might include anything on ‘naturalised’ social behaviour e.g. Bourdieu, Althusser, though I’m a little wary of slipping too easily from ‘system’ to what they’d probably both rather call ‘practice’.
However, what’s important about the idea of being ‘governed by systems’ (as opposed to just having systems of governance), is that it perhaps counters the more utopian trill of ‘participatory aesthetics’ which often seems to credit subjects with greater originary agency. Here you could argue that the ‘emancipatory’ discourse of participation is rendered rather empty if you’re not convinced that subjects are capable of acting in their own best interests, but are, rather just vehicles for others’ political interests.)
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’?
(I’m hoping this question will raise is the key question of the ‘place’ of art in relation to other (social) formations, the question being, how is art organised in relation to those? Luhmann, for example, argues that art is (just) one autonomous ‘sub-system’ amongst many others that constitute the system that is ‘society’. He contends that this model is in contradistinction to Adorno’s, in which art is ‘counterposed’ to society.)
• How useful is Luhmann’s model of art as an autonomous sub-system for artists who want to collaborate with non-artists?
Here, I’d like to consider the point he makes at the bottom of p. 1078 (in the Harrison & Wood excerpt from ‘Art in Theory’): where he seems to suggest that the only way to contest the ‘presupposition’ concerning the autopoiesis of art’ ‘would be: [to] abandon the system entirely’. That is to say: there is no half-measure. And indeed, this is precisely what he says in ‘Art as a Social System’ p. 157: ‘Autonomy allows for no half-measures or graduation; there are no relative states, no more or less autonomous systems’.
• What concept of ‘system’ is useful / needed for thinking about art’s work with non-art areas?
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’?...?
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Last modified: 05.10.07 by MaryAnne
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