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ROUNDTABLE

Field Research

This roundtable was like an exuberant meal. Martina started with her central theme: food. She showed examples of decontextualised food and food surroundings. Starting with Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arimboldo, onto ‘Foodscapes’ by Carl Warner and then to the more design-oriented banana/spaghetti iPod. The idea of food as a performative execution led us into her current project. With the “Popeye study“ Martina shared her plans of setting up a study about the influence of “green drinks“ (green leaf smoothies with fruits etc) on the human body. These supposedly promise deep cellular saturation, detoxication, alkalisation and energy in the most direct way. 

Anna Sophie then gave us an inspiring theoretical overview into ‘land art’, ‘eco-art’, ‘sustainable art’ and ‘environmental art’. She showed various artworks, from the broad field of architectural and geographical space interventions, to the art piece as an intervention of sustainability. Some examples: “Activated lands“ by environmentalist Andy Goldsworthy, “Spiral jetty“ - an earthwork sculpture by Robert Smithson, and “Gostnets” by ecological artist Aviv Rahmani. She also presented a model of evaluating artworks by Maja and Reuben Fowkes, based on "The Three Ecologies" of Felix Guattari. This is built of 3 components: social environment, natural environment and the level of mental ecology.
Ending her presentation with a thought on artworks of empowerment rather than the objectifying of impact, provoked a discussion on “the power of change” which might lie in all of us and on the predictability of change on daily life. Margit closed the round with an open call: We need visions!
Contemplating about motion versus holding on, Matèusz went deep into theory and presented us excerpts of his research on the cognitive vision of mind and the construction of the self. With a mental essay he gave us a glimpse into a paper of the National Science Foundation, reflecting on the improvement of human performance through the integration of technologies. Opposing Thomas Metzingers position of “You are your synapses, you are no one, nobody never was.“ with Cathrin Malabou`s quotation of Kant`s first critique “autoaffection is a split, a change, a rapture”. He went from movement (which cannot be undone) to autoaffection. To rather illustrate his reflections he showed us a non-Newtonian fluid, brought to autoaffection through soundwaves and physla physalis, a very poisonous siphonophore which gets only moved by the environment.

In addition to Kulas presentation another highly theoretical input came by Slawomir who went back to the basic positioning of “art”, “science” and  “and”. He reflected on the subjectlessness within science, which through datamass tries to create a “real”. Psychoanalysis seems to be the element which he decided to put between the art and science. Through ideograms he mentally moved along the re-conceptualisation of the subject and the self in relation to/with a potential “real” on the outside.

The Roundtable was concluded by Max, who started to deconstruct the lie as a psychological tactic of surviving by looking at the technology of lying. He found 40 categories, with quite interesting names, like “the butler lie“ or “the Chinese water army“. He systematised them into 3 categories: white, grey and black lies based on their heaviness and maliciousness.
He is in contact with lying specialist Peter Stieglitz, who will hopefully unveil the truth of lying. 

ROUNDTABLE
January 23, 2014, 09:30h