Embracing the Whole

av Anna Brag

Design Spaces. Rumstudion, Interactive Institute

Malmö December 2003

Part 1.

One day I started wondering if I could be an artist somewhere else. If it would be possible to trade the art scene as platform for another scene, and still be an artist.

What is an artist, and what does an artist do? What does artistic methods mean, and what signifies an object of art? Could artistic methods be used for the purpose of achieving a result that is not art? If so, what is then the purpose in using artistic methods? The encounter between art and science evokes many questions concerning the relations between idea, process and object. There are several important points of common interest, but also some differences. I will start from my own experiences, partly from my work as an artist within an interdisciplinary research group, partly from my work before and after my participation in this group.

The concept of ‘art’ can be defined either as an object with certain features, or as a language, an attitude and a way of thinking; a specific perspective applied on the existence. Every artist has their own ideas of what she/he does and why, what the work process looks like, the qualities of the art work, and what is important. Many years ago I read a quote from Ingmar Bergman, which got stuck in my mind: “You must do what is necessary. When nothing is necessary, nothing can be done.” Being an artist means to me that I constantly learn new things, explore my environment, myself and the world, trying to find what is meaningful. To me, the concepts of art and artistic enterprise are linked to action, perspective and language, rather than object. It concerns the transformation of ideas into practice. The endorsement of a project can be a goal in itself. The piece of work can be the result of an action and the consequence of an idea. By knowing why you are doing something, you often enough realize how it should be done.

Questions concerning identity and perception of reality have been my theme and field of interest for the last ten years. This has resulted in some twenty projects, which all have taken different expressions. I have worked with installations, drawings, photography, video art, contexts and situations, events and shifts of perspective. The purpose with my work have not been to answer any specific questions, but rather to see more, get a different view and gain new experiences. Rather than giving answers I want to formulate new questions. Gradually, the problems posed have change over the years and during the working process. This has more to do with the fact that I have worked through a complex of problems than that I have actually found an answer. The driving force behind this work has most of all been a feeling of necessity; to see and understand by acting and transforming ideas into practice. I transcend from my own whishes and needs, and prerequisite that whatever is important to me also means something to someone else. I have frequently used myself as ‘guinea pig’, in the conviction that the most private is also the most commonly valid. If I have learned anything through my work, this is it. By trying to be common you mostly get shallow.

Example of an art project, where the different phases of the project – idea, implementation, result - merge.

“A Moving Memorial” took place in central Berlin, May 1999.

The project was a memorial and tribute to movement, change and time.
The horse and rider in the circular area in front of the Kûnstlerhaus Bethanien
referred to the bronze horse statue in the middle of public squares. But here, instead of representing a certain historic moment, this moving memorial is about the contemporary, about every step that simultaneously creates future and history. The horse´s movements made black traces through the white surface, and step by ste,p a drawing appeared.
The drawing took about half an hour to produce. The process was video filmed from the roof of the Bethanien.
The sound from the horse was recorded. The drawing disappeared over time.

The role of the artist is under constant change, and it is the nature of the art to react on and reflect its contemporary times. Lately, artists have been searching for new ways to challenge and broadening the concept of art, looking for new materials, contexts and fields for artistic work. Contemporary art may include other disciplines, i.e. architecture, sociology and biology. Art might be looked upon as a language or an attitude. The art scene also function as a platform, where different disciplines can meet and be joined together, maybe even within the same piece of art. The contemporary artists usually turn to specialists to implement their projects. It can be everything from car mechanics to physiotherapists, engineers or astronomers. The artistic work is process focused, exploring and even ‘scientific’. There is a will to let art and science meet, and the door to the interdisciplinary cooperation is already wide open. A number of factors coincide:
The artists widened working field and newly awakened interest in social contexts,
the changing demands and expectations on the academic artistic educations from the universities,
and the need for innovation and creativity in business life.

The question is what this encounter should look like and where it should take place. Can the artist’s examining endeavors be regarded as research, or should the artist and the scientist meet half way?

New roles are offered for the artist, either as a researcher or as the researcher’s co-worker. Here, it is important to distinguish between art as research and art and research. When we talk about art as research, we are concerned about how we regard artistic development work. To acknowledge artistic work as research is an important step towards a change in our view upon knowledge – what it is, how we deal with it and how it is conveyed or transmitted. It is also a question of a changed view on scientific methods. An enlarged concept of art and an enlarged concept of science are a necessary prerequisites of the possibilities to find meeting points between two different ways to investigate and understand one’s surroundings.

In art, as well as in science, questions are asked. For the artist, these questions are often embedded in the artistic act. The ‘answers’ might be nothing more than attendant questions. The piece of art is both the result and the purpose of the artistic act, which means that the result cannot be released from the process, or the process from the idea.
Another possibility is for the artist to meet the scientist. Are we then dealing with two monstrous giants on a collision course, or is it a matter of two roles in dissolution on their way to merge? Is it a possible encounter in no man’s land?

Working as an artist in an interdisciplinary research environment gave me a whole new perspective on my own professional identity, and simultaneously it made me reevaluate a lot of things. I have never believed in the myth about the artist as the genius who, alone in the studio and inspired from above, creates the great masterpieces. I have believed in the artist as a person who is integrated in society, a participant and co-creator of everyday reality. This I still believe. But after my time at the Interactive Institute, I have become more of a romantic. Low intense encounters, sitting still in front of the computer, fixed working hours, all this have had a counter productive effect, at least as far as I am concerned. You can see yourself more clearly in relation to others, and the fact that you for a long time have worked in your own way, in your own rhythm, makes its marks. Artistic work (and society!) needs willfulness and inadaptability; it needs people who break the patterns in a constructive way. This is an asset and a necessity.

Being an artist in the academic world might feel like being a whale in an aquarium. You think you are going swimming, but pretty soon you are stopped by the invisible glass walls that keep the water in place. The scientist, who earnestly has tried to enter the art world, probably has experienced a similar feeling. Every arena is governed by its own rules and traditions. It takes time to identify and decode a language and a concept sphere. And the world of science, no matter how open it tries to be, is in large still ruled by its internal codes and jargon. Just like the art world.

The lack of specific subject knowledge of the artistic field in the academic environment creates problems for the artist in the interdisciplinary work. Art, like every individual discipline, becomes more available the more subject knowledge you possess. When it comes to art, it is a question of its history as well as the ability to read and understand its contemporary expressions. A work of art always stands in relation to its history and its contemporary context. It makes references to other art works, just as in science, where the reference to and quotations from other works are a given part of the written research report. It takes specific subject knowledge to read a scientific text, just like reading a work of art.

How does the artist present her/his professional knowledge in the interdisciplinary cooperation? And how does the artist make justice to her/his special knowledge? Since very few have a serious and insightful perspective on the subject of art and the artist’s craft, there is a risk that the artist is forced back to ‘beginner’s level’ to make her-/himself understood among the co-workers. Often, the artist is looked upon from a magnitude of prejudices; you are supposed to sparkle with creativity and have loads of ideas standing by in every situation. The ideas of what the artist can contribute with vary from everything from coloring, decoration and design posters to the ability to turn the concepts upside down. The question is then how to use this upside down apparatus of concepts.

Artists are a professionals with an experience of not only contributing to, but also of producing, a project through all stages from idea, budgeting and implementation to documentation and presentation. As I have already mentioned, many artists have experiences from cooperation on many different levels. It is a pity that this knowledge isn’t more trusted and taken advantage of.
Maybe it takes courage to trust an artist to be valuable in other contexts than those aimed at making art. What is the will behind the interdisciplinary cooperation? What is expected?

Involving artists in different contexts is only positive, but it demands an open discussion on why this is done. Is it to locate ways of different thinking? Then it will do just as well with an astronaut, a dentist or a professional military. Is it to communicate research results spatially? Then it might do with an architect, a craftsman or a PR consultant. Or is it really a whish to try and place the methods and results in the kind of ‘necessity thinking’ that characterizes the artistic work to such a large extent? There might be many different things one whishes to achieve by letting the artist become part of a research team. But the foundation must be to seriously involve the artist in the project, from the beginning to the end, and not just applying something supposed to be ‘an artistic method’.

The artist’s strength is to embody ideas and to interpret. What does a thought look like; how shall we communicate an idea? What does this idea look like? Since I have been working as an artist my whole life I might have a problem to see what it is in my work that differs from ‘non-artistic’ work. But I do “know” some things. It takes time. It is ‘goal-directed’, but at the same time ‘process directed’. It is playful, risky and necessary.

Every action, object or statement is dependent on its context. There is a big difference between swimming in your own bathtub at home and doing it in an art gallery or a science studio. The work of art is characterized by the expressions standing in a relation to, or being a direct consequence of, the intellectual content. Something is to be communicated. The artistic activity is extrovert; the work of art should be able to meet an audience. On one hand, this demands accuracy in expression, as well as in content, reference, and material, context and expansion in time and space. What is the work about? Could it be different? On the other hand, there is openness; a room for the spectator to encounter the work from her/his experiences and references. There are always possible interpretations which are not controlled by the artist.

But what about the availability of research?

As opposed to art, which is supposed to be available to ‘everyone’, it is commonly accepted that research to a higher degree is directed to a limited audience, familiar with the theme as well as with the vocabulary. And if the artist most of the time is very aware of how exclusive and hard to understand a work of art can be, as well as of the difficulties that might be involved in the communicating with an audience, the scientist often lacks this insight, since her/his results are not supposed to be available to the public. Artists are sometimes criticized and accused of being only directed ‘inwards’ toward the colleagues. Is there a similar critique of the scientists?

When does a researching activity become “art”? Can a spatially created research report be regarded as art? It is delicate to define art, good art and bad art. However, art does not come into being by coincidence, but is the result of a conscious act, i.e. to make art.

Of all the points of common interest and differences between art and science that I have touched upon, intention is the decisive feature. Do you intend to make art or pursue research? Or is the intention to do both, or something in between, for example by strengthening the exploring parts of the artistic work, or by finding new ways to pursue and present research?

Today, art and science are most of the time performed in different arenas, and it is still an open question where the “encounter” will take place in the future. Will it take place in the research studio, in the artist’s atelier, or will new spaces be established where the encounter can take place on equal terms, places where I can continue to be and act as an artist, even though I traded the art scene as platform?

Part 2.

Once upon a time in the 1960’s, the American president John F Kennedy pronounced a vision: “We are going to send a man to the moon, and bring him safely back again”.
And then they did it.

In 1998 I had a vision. It was also a journey, or rather two. Maybe my visions did not have much in common with those of JFK. The journey to the moon was a part of the rearmament duel of the cold war and backed up by the entire American war industry. Mine was a pretty innocent travel around the world. But in spite of the difference in the large perspective, there are similarities. Both projects seemed at the beginning impossible to fulfill. And none of the projects could be fulfilled half way through. Both projects could also potentially inspire the question about whether there is one common reality for everyone. In my project however, this was one of the crucial questions.

Together with the photographer Michel Thomas, I surfed around the world for a month on the Internet. The idea was that later we were going to make the same journey in the real world. The intention with the project was to explore different levels of reality, and discover what happens to the concept of reality when there is a virtual alternative to the old physically tangible concept. The questions, which drove us around the world, were big and universal; how do we perceive of time and space, of ourselves and the present in different places around the world? How do we transport presence? The goal for the project Worldx2 was to carry it out and then make an exhibition. You could say that the process, the method, was identical with the work, the result.

Worldx2 started as an art project, but during the working process we linked the project partly to the art academy Valand’s pilot course “Konst&Forskning” [Art&Research], partly to the Interactive Institute’s Smart studio. It became an “art as science” project. We carried out the first part of the project, faithfully placed in front of our computers for one month, visiting continent after continent via the Internet. We visited cities, sights and sceneries, museums etc., and tried to get in touch with people through homepages and e-mail addresses. We ended every day by writing a travel log, which we mailed to the around one hundred following our virtual journey on their computers. We also had a web page, which we updated every day with our own texts and pictures downloaded from the Internet.

To fulfill the second part of the project we applied for, and got, money from the foundation “Framtidens Kultur” [Culture of the Future] and we traveled around the world for five months. We visited six continents, trying to find the places and the people we met on the Internet. We also made some sixty video portraits of people we met, where they told us about themselves and their everyday life right there and then. We sent reports every week and regularly updated our website with texts and pictures.

A couple of months before we took off, I was offered a job at the research studio. I then brought a part of the project Worldx2 into the studio and additionally elaborated it into the co-operation project Homex2. Homex2 was about keeping my workplace in the studio activated during my absence. On my desk were a computer and a printer. My desk lamp, which was adjusted in advance, was lit during my working hours – 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. – local time at the place where I was at the time. We sent picture and sound files back home, which were printed and played automatically on arrival. We also sent texts, and the idea was that a two-way communication would take place. Basically, the idea was very simple, but for several reasons it never really worked as scheduled. This was partly due to practical reasons, for example did the studio move into temporary localities during the project, my work place was dissolved and never really reinstalled. Partly there was a lack of co-operation. The project was not ‘necessary’ enough for the people involved. It was something they all could do without. It might have been a successful experiment in how to replace physical absence with digital presence. Instead it became a study in how much commitment it really takes to make a project work.

The experiences from Homex2 are presented in a written ‘report’.Worldx2, on the other hand, is well documented but not summarized. Why? When you bring an art project into a research situation, certain things become clear. Worldx2 has been shown in various exhibitions in Sweden and abroad. The project has a website and it is presented in the media. But the project as a whole does not allow for a summary. I have tried to distil something which could represent “this is what we achieved”, but without any success. And I think I know why. The project never searched for an answer. It did not aim towards an unambiguous continuation. What we show in the exhibition is a much more nuanced picture, saying more than one thing. It contains interpretation possibilities and several layers of information, as art normally does. It creates a place for the spectator to encounter the work. There is no solution or answer. The work of art is no conclusion, but an object that opens itself up anew in the encounter with its audience.

Moving Stories was another research project I, as an artist, participated in during the fall 2000. The project group consisted of engineers, artists and interaction designers. Moving Stories resulted in a mobile video installation about five households on the move, during the move from one lodging to another. We followed five households in Malmö through the whole moving process, from the packing and transportation to the unpacking and furnishing of the new home. The goal was to learn more about living and the accompanying existential questions, which might arise in the situation where one’s past and dreams about the future coincide in the present.

Moving Stories two main tracks were given in the title of the research project: “designlab:FutureLiving”; “design lab”, where we tried to find a work method, a common platform for our interdisciplinary work. It was an attempt to weave together the ethnographically inspired methods established in the studio, and a form for ‘artistic methods’. “FutureLiving” suggests something about dwelling in the future and how it could take shape in the digital era. Instead of carrying out the research with a problem focus, we tried to find a work method where we, as open-minded as possible, made observations, which would function as a foundation in our discussions within our interdisciplinary work.
The double ambition of the project created some problems, since too much emphasis was put on finding working methods at the cost of the work itself. Our mutual formulation of the project’s aims and necessity was somewhat vague.

When looking back on the work with “Moving Stories”, I find it hard to make sense of. One way to evaluate hindsight, if a project was successful or not, can be to compare the result with the intention you had to carry the project out. In the “Moving Stories” case, the group members’ intentions were scattered. We neither had expressed a common goal, nor what our investigations, more concretely, should lead to. Yet, the work went on, step by step, in a predictable direction. Although we would “keep open-minded” nothing unpredicted or surprising occurred. “Moving Stories” became, more than anything else, the result of an interdisciplinary working process.

Regarding artistic activity as research is not the same as the artist contributing to an interdisciplinary research process. How to achieve a researching community, a co-operation on equal terms, with shared ambitions and intentions? How to create a common image of the goal, which is placed outside the co-operation itself? This is nothing that happens over-night, it is a time consuming work, where language, positions, worlds of ideas and professional identities are bound to be rubbed and adjusted against one another. From this perspective, maybe “Moving Stories” was not a total failure after all, but, on the contrary, a first step in the right direction towards a well functioning interdisciplinary co-operation.

Except for the as and the and of art and research, there are two decisive differences between Worldx2 and Moving Stories. “Worldx2” had a beginning and an end, and had not been able to finish half-way through. We have been asked to bring it further, but “Worldx2” is finished. Maybe it can serve as a foundation for or generate new projects. Maybe we will gather our material and publish it as a book. But the project “Worldx2” is over and done with.

“Moving Stories”, on the other hand, had a beginning but no end. We did not know where we were going, and therefore we could not see if we were only half way through or on the far side of our goal. But the projects also have one thing in common. They give no clear answers. The video installation “Moving Stories” gives the same kind of ambiguous ‘answer’ or ’statement’, as the exhibition “Worldx2”: A number of stories, thoughts and experiences, which the spectator can enter and understand from her/his own experiences, presumptions and interest.

Anna Brag
9-12-2003

Text in swedish
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