Susannah Gent research seminar

film maker

fine art taxidermist

teach film & media production (SHU)

studying the uncanny
interested in the representation of subjectivity

Chapter 3. Henk Slager, Art and Method (49-56)

A chapter questions whether art practise can be

effectively and legitimately viewed as research

"(A)rt is directed towards unique, qualitative, particular,

and local knowledge." (Slager 52)
"(T)he domain of art seems...to express a form of
experience based knowledge....artistic research focuses
on involvement, on social and non-academic goals."
(Slager 52)

Essentially a book on methodology, Massey uses

neuroscientific and aesthetic approaches to
investigate art concluding that science can inform
us of the how but not why of art.
He concludes that once the reality of imagination
is accepted neuroscience can be seen as the
collaborative, not the inquisitor of the arts.

(T)he practise of art shows that art and method can connect in a novel
and constructive way. In such a connection, the emphasis will shift from an
art practise focused on final products to a practise directed towards an
experimental, laboratory-style environment, exploring novel forms of
knowledge and experience. In other words, artistic practise has become a
dynamic point of departure for interdisciplinary experiments governed by a
reflexive point of view. Critical reflection deals with questions such as what
makes art art, what art should be, and what context of art is. Such a
conception of artistic activity challenges many present-day artists to view
their artistic projects as forms of research." (Slager 2009 pg 49/50)

a group research project investigating

walking or taking inspiration from

5 walks
supported by ADRC 2014

"The artist compels us to see the world in a different way,

according to different norms and habits. Images do not

replace reality, but reveal novel visibilities, and art proposes

polymorphic kinds of observation."

( Slager 54)

Ramachandran defines a metaphor as a mental tunnel between two concepts that appear grossly
dissimilar on the surface, but instead share a deeper connection. Similar to the effects of perceptual
problem solving, grasping an analogy is rewarding. It enables the viewer to highlight crucial aspects that
the two objects share. Although it is uncertain whether the reason for this mechanism is for effective
communication or purely cognitive, the discovery of similarities between superficially dissimilar events
leads to activation of the limbic system to create a rewarding process.[4]

"...the artist is in a sense, a neuroscientist, exploring the potentials and capacities of the brain, though
with different tools. Semir Zeki

"(T)hrough merely visual means, the artist succeeds in

making visible what ordinary vision fails to see."

(Slager 54)

...if the purpose of the postcollective arts is to encourage me to say what I, and only I, can contribute
to human experience, then a private language says it best, even if, paradoxically, no one will be able to
tell what it means. That is the language of dreams. (83)

Irving Massey suggests dreams are historically prelinguistic (60)

...during sleep, language areas in the brain are partially disassociated from the areas that process images
and action. (59)

...dreamlike language represents an undertow in all our expression. The relation of symbol to referent
and/or concept to image is inherently unstable and dream language exists in or exploits, that ambiguous
space. (59)

The difficulty is that there is always more in the mind than there is in words. (79)

Before thought becomes sentences it must become things. (79)

"Metaphors are incubators of ideas" (93)

"If we can, by mechanical means, cut out the metaphoric function, we have cut out thought: perhaps not
qualifying thought but certainly the creative thought, whether artistic or scientific that keeps us all alive."
(Massey 93/4)

Surrealism, as a revolutionary art movement, was and still is concerned with creating
a specific emotional response, one that challenges the viewer to embrace the
world of the marvellous, the dream, the abject and the irrational.
(Charney & Schwartz 1998: 124 8 referenced in (Creed pg 115)

The Surrealists, particularly George Bataille, were drawn to the uncanny, and the
return of the repressed, the basis of the uncanny, which is central to Surrealist
notions of the marvellous, convulsive beauty and objective chance.
(116)(Hal Foster (1993 xvi)qtd by Creed in Harper & Stone)

"(A)rtistic research continually produces novel connections in the form of multiplicities characterised by
temporary, flexible constructions. These constructions run up against problems, but rather than
creating solutions, they keep on deploying novel methodological programs while producing continuous
modifications."
( Slager 55)

Slager quotes Deleuze and Guittari

"(A)rtistic research " always has detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable and multiple
entryways".
( Slager 55 quoting from A Thousand Plateaus. London 1988 pg 21)

"But even if much of what happens in our minds can be

correlated with physical processes, it must also be
remembered that most of what is in our minds is not simply
in our minds, but exists between us and among us."
(Massey 99)

Neidich proposes that we are in an era of Cognitive Capitalism, a Marxist perspective

which suggests that the mind and the brain are the new factory. Through
neuroplasticity, Neidich proposes that advances in neuroscience are being applied to
produce a homogeneous mind which is modelled to capitalist advantage.
Neidich believes that art has the power to physiologically alter the brain and thus can
assist in resisting Neuropower.

It is my contention that artistic practice, through its direct and

indirect effect upon the cultural field deforms or elaborates upon its displaying of cultural
memory in an existential and meta-existential way. Neidich 2013
To understand the true emancipating power of art in
our moment of cognitive capitalism, we must understand
it in its neuromodulating capacity. Neidich 2013

A strong research question poses not the trajectory to a definitive answer, but a principle by
which the researcher may begin to generate knowledge.

Taking a practice-based PhD means investing time and knowledge with other
practitioners, often other artists who, having undertaken their research years before, now
enact their modes of exchange as tutors, professors and PhD supervisors.

Research degrees are not always the best way to fortify the foundations of an artists
practice. Indeed, many would argue that the very principle of artistic practice within the
academy is to rock those foundations, even raze certain principles of practice to the
ground.

To construe ones practice as academic as well as artistic is to recognise that exchange

is more than a two-way process.