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© Image left: Ashley Holwell, Image right: Shared Inc.

Dirty Hands | Care for the Syndrome

Double lecture by Ash Holwell & Bernd Kräftner

DIRTY HANDS – Forgetting the trickle and getting messy
Lecture (via Skype) by Ash Holwell

For five years I saw Whangārei as an art project. It was hard. It was joyous. I played many roles, lived in strange places, started things, and asked ridiculous questions like: When Art relies on the trickle down and the trickle down is a fantasy, what do I do? How do I listen in order to know what to do with my life? How might I dismantle my privilege and be vulnerable to those around me? In this lecture/discussion I'm still trying to understand what happened.

CARE FOR THE SYNDROME – A recipe for art-science incubations
Lecture by Bernd Kräftner

For approximately 10 years the artistic research group *Shared Inc.* conducted a case study during which a procedure emerged that we call 'incubation'. By this term we refer to a method of investigation where researchers interact, collaborate, and become associated, with various actors in the field, thereby initiating a socio-technical inquiry concerning a specific object of research. The case refers to a syndrome called 'unresponsive wakefulness syndrome' that was (or still is?) 'incubated' like in a long-term cultivation process thus allowing the maturing of situations, roles and positions that under traditional research conditions would not have become real and thus visible.


Biographies:

Ash Holwell was born in Whangārei, Aotearoa New Zealand. Ash is an artist whose works include community spaces, theatre, institutional interventions, political campaigns, public events and a bicycle. After studying Industrial Design and working in the design world in Rotterdam, he graduated from Die Angewandte’s Art & Science master’s programme in 2012 before returning home. His work has had a focus on the agency of objects, evolving to an interest in the decision-making processes of humans, and community facilitation. He works on various projects, and is currently based in Wellington, Aotearoa’s capital.

Bernd Kräftner is an artist and researcher. He has realised numerous transdisciplinary research projects that explore the interfaces of science, society and art. He is a founding member of the research group ‘Shared Inc.’ (Research Centre for Shared Incompetence) and teaches at the University of Applied Arts Vienna at the departments of Art & Science and Digital Art.
www.sharedinc.net


About the session:

What does it mean to do politics? What roles can different practises take in this endeavour? We seem to be stuck in expressing our concern, to discuss social injustice and ecological rupture, whilst staying in our safe zone (e.g. amongst colleagues, the discipline, the paralysis of not having an alternative proposition). In these two lectures we are interested in possible strategies of getting involved in composing, campaigning and stewing, considering that solutions are not ready to be discovered, but need to be negotiated as we tentatively proceed.

Dirty Hands | Care for the Syndrome
March 12, 2018, 09:30h