Art, Knowledge and Production

What do we recognise and how, when we see or make art? Is a work of art a form of knowledge? And if so, how is it possible to separate art from philosophy, logic, and the natural sciences as a non-conceptual sphere of "cognition"?

Art, Knowledge and Production
Introduction to a new project
Wednesday, September 5th
2 PM
KUNSTARKEN

What does it mean to produce knowledge? What is the relationship between art and scientific research, material and immaterial labor? How do the concepts of today's creative industries and industrial production correspond and complement each others?

In early 2012 a group of KIT students have visited, in Kolkata, India a series of small and medium scale workshops as well as large iron, steel and jute factories. In a follow-up workshop in May 2012 we analysed the still images and the video footage that was gathered during the research trip. An archive is now being prepared as the first step towards creating work from this material.

During the fall semester of 2012 the project will continue with a series of meetings, workshops, as well as interviews, film and foto shootings in the laboratories, science and engineering facilities and research centers of the NTNU in Trondheim. By investigating the technological developments currently carried out at the NTNU we are trying to understand the university as a factory: a site for producing knowledge.

By juxtaposing to the two sites and their subjects - labor in Kolkata and technical research at NTNU we are also attempting to explore subjects such as material and productivity, albeit from very diverse social and technological platforms. What kind of different notions of continuity, linear or networked, are deployed in these configurations?

The project will take place in autumn 2012 and spring 2013. It is open to all students, no matter whether they joined the first research trip to India.

The project is supposed to lead to an exhibition format that displays the archive material from Kolkata and Trondheim as well as individual projects that will be developed and realised on that basis.