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The Epistemology of a Residency Centre

Presented at the 8th General Meeting of Res Artis (the Association of International Residency Centres), Helsinki, 2002.

The motivation for thinking about the issue of knowledge and residency centres is autobiographical. I have become increasingly aware that my mind is filled with knowledge about creative practice accumulated through working with artists, and that this knowledge is one of the key assets of the organisation. One of the key strengths of the organisation is the social and professional interaction and networking. This is fostered and invigorated by sharing an understanding of the range of creative practice. This paper is therefore concerned with the key issue of knowledge.

This paper is not about knowledge in the sense used by academic institutions that evaluate students in relation to their 'original contribution to knowledge'. I believe that we need to think about knowledge in a much broader context, because I believe that we are all involved in making original contributions to knowledge by working with artists and supporting their creative practice. I am convinced that if we spent more time thinking about knowledge we would be better able to support creative practice.

Epistemology

Epistemology is a term that is primarily used in philosophical and critical discourse and refers to the 'methods' and 'grounds' of knowledge. It is therefore not concerned primarily with the content of the knowledge. Whilst I will refer to aspects of the programme of the organisation - the artists and their work - in this paper, I will focus on the (potential) structures of the knowledge and the implications of those structures.

Experience or Innate Ideas

There are two fundamental debates within the European tradition of epistemology. One debate is between an empiricist position that understands knowledge to be derived from experience; and the other position that articulates knowledge as derived from innate ideas. This debate has been continuous since Plato, and before. It is a debate that has implications for many aspects of human life, not least ethics. It is a debate reinvigorated each generation by our investigation of our condition. Currently it is particularly stimulated by genetic research. You will see as the argument develops, that for the purposes of this paper I take a very pragmatic approach to the issue and concern myself with the forms of knowledge that are derived from lived experience. It may be in accepting certain fundamentals such as the idea of the artist, creativity and the idea of the residency centre.

Knowledge and Belief

The second fundamental debate is about the means of distinguishing knowledge from belief. The argument goes "just because you are paranoid does not mean that people are not out to get you." This debate was for a considerable period located within theological discourse and driven by religion. The debate was then appropriated by the enlightenment, and has become an underpinning of the modern condition. The scientific age, and its manifestation in technological / globalised / colonial culture, is underpinned by the assumption that there is knowledge which is valuable, and that there is belief which is a distraction. Moreover this underpinning assumption prioritises the European model of knowledge over any and all others because of its functionality. Some have argued that a strong analogy can be made with natural selection, and one can see that the rationalist, scientifically based, differentiation-prioritisation of knowledge over belief, has survived because it has delivered quality of life benefits for the majority of those within its hegemony and it has justified the oppression of those from other cultures.

Of course recently this fundamental assumption of the priority, value, and functionality of knowledge (as opposed to belief) has begun to be undermined by a range of primarily European critical theorists. Now it's corollary, globalisation, is also being challenged.

We now speak of epistemes - culturally specific knowledge structures. We inhabit the dominant episteme that is invested in the European science-driven articulation of the difference between knowledge and belief. The crux of the argument around globalisation is precisely concerned with the dominance of this episteme and the economic and cultural impact of this dominance.

The re-valuing of what is loosely termed 'traditional knowledge', but broadly encompasses all knowledge and forms of knowledge outside the cultural hegemony of Europe, has driven a new understanding of what knowledge is. Anthropology as a discipline was originally directed at the study of other human cultures, but it is increasingly reflecting on our cultural condition. Perhaps more importantly, it was the investigation of cultural otherness that sowed the seeds of the critique of the European episteme. It has also created the counter argument to globalisation that is sometimes characterised as 'distinctiveness'. Increasingly ranges of forms of knowledge, very often culturally specific, are being valued.

Example: Scotland and the Dogrib

A good example of a practice that articulates an understanding of the role of multiple epistemes and the potential for valuing different epistemes, is that of Gavin Renwick. Gavin is a researcher at the Centre for Visual Research at the University of Dundee. Gavin is employed by the Dogrib Treaty Organisation to work on their traditional knowledge project. The Dogrib are one of the Inuit tribes in the North West of Canada, and are currently negotiating terms with the Canadian Government for the return of their traditional lands. As you can imagine that land, under the Canadian Government, is understood within a Western agrarian cultural framework. In other words there is a building in Ottawa which is the 'Land Registry' (as there is in every European country and every country colonised by the Europeans). This building contains an infrastructure (architecture) that contains a very specifically formulated structure of knowledge-based control over land. Literally it identifies every square metre of land and describes who owns it. This structure of knowledge is now directly informed by a panoptical device - the satellite based Global Positioning System. Gavin's work with the Dogrib is aimed at articulating an alternative understading of 'land'. The Dogrib are a nomadic people and, in taking back the land, they do not want to take on the European structure of land ownership, because that is fundamentally alien to their culture.

We are working with Gavin to think about the future of land use in Scotland, where changes in agriculture are forcing a re-examination of value attached to the landscape. For us this is a thoroughly post colonial project. Gavin was employed to help a different culture think about the articulation of their traditional knowledge. Now, in parallel, that understanding of a different traditional knowledge will be used to help us develop new approaches to land use in Scotland (one of the homes of the Enlightenment).

Types of Knowledge

In articulating an epistemology of a residency centre I need to describe the forms of knowledge that I am referring to. I have described the debate in epistemology between knowledge and belief, and I have suggested how that relates to debate about globalisation.

My fundamental case is that in this technological / globalised and perhaps post-colonial world we cannot distinguish in terms of the old rationalist categories between knowledge and belief.

The knowledge that I am interested in is a broad kind of thing. Currently there is a lot of talk in curatorial circles in the UK which comes down to "art is about ideas". I want to challenge this: I think that art is about communication - and by this I do not mean marketing. To be more precise I think that art is about dialogue. The concept of dialogue assumes equality, or perhaps more specifically 'parity of esteem', (although not sameness) between parties. Dialogue is participatory, although that does not assume presence or proximity or contemporanity. Dialogue assumes that both parties make themselves 'available' to participate. In fact both parties to the dialogue must invest in the process sufficiently, although again not necessarily equally. Dialogue is not exclusively linguistic, and in the case we are talking about it is not primarily linguistic.

So art/knowledge is about a dialogue of yes, ideas, but also of experience (of stuff-place-person-event- process which adds up to the world), of emotion (of joy and horror and every inbetween). The dialogue is of the non-verbal, articulated within sensory experience - seeing, smelling, touching, tasting, hearing, and equilibrium. Knowledge is embedded within the physicality of the person, not just as an aspect of brain chemistry. Knowledge is not a lump of stuff which is fixed and constant - although that is the nature of an encyclopaedia. Rather it is a fog through which we travel meeting and assembling ideas, experiences, emotions and sensations into instruments of understanding that temporarily clear away the fog. Knowledge happens not just through conscious thought, but also through external stimuli - the impact-experience of people, places and events.

Creativity is about knowledge defined broadly, and not circumscribed by the western rationalist episteme.

The Residency Centre

I believe that the residency centre is, at least potentially, the location for the creation of knowledge. In this understanding the residency centre is intended to be the temporary-intense ideal location for artists' practice. The residency centre is a much more significant location for the creation of knowledge than the gallery or the art school, although within contemporary practice we know that any location can be a relevant location. What I understand to make the residency centre effective is the its purposefulness - it is intended to be a place of creative activity (not of teaching or viewing). It is also a crossroads with a social, critical and networking role. In this it has the advantage over the artists' studio. Hence I describe it as temporary-intense.

The conclusions which I am articulating here about the character of the residency centre are based on comparative research we have undertaken over the past year which has been focused on informing our organisational development. I am here not least to test my assumptions.

We have formulated our understanding of our future role as "devoted to critical debate, research, experimentation and practice". We believe that these are the key components of a creative practice.

Place

We are all of course aware of the importance of 'place' within contemporary visual artists' practice. In fact I would argue that the issue of 'place' in contemporary visual art practice has perhaps become a mantra that needs to be challenged. Not because it is unimportant, but rather because it has become politicised, and has not been subject to critical reflection. Still, 'place' is important and we have concluded that it is particularly important for a residency centre. The concept of place in this context is a shorthand for talking about culture and localness - what I refered to earlier as distinctiveness. In fact recently I was told by an artist that we should "know our place, and sell it (to artists)". This attention to 'place' immediately results in a multi- or inter-disciplinary approach. One must attend to hydrology, geology, history, archaeology, weather, and a myriad of other contributors to place. Perhaps more importantly than any particular aspect of the knowledge is the value and the explicitness of the valuing that is manifest. A colleague commented that this was in her perception one of the defining qualities of two of the most important contemporary thinkers on cultural issues - Lucy Lippard and Mary Jane Jacobs.

The position that I am proposing is one of explicit valuing of the culture that I inhabit. It is a position that focuses on distinctiveness as the counter to globalisation.

New Regionalism

When Michael Hall spoke at the International Sculpture Center Conference in Houston in 2000 he advocated a 'new regionalism'. He argued that the counter to globalisation was a valuing of and direct investment in your region. His attack was directed at New York in particular because he felt that it was the locus of not only money and power within the arts, but also of a certain international style which was spread by artists who really only went to other parts of the world to do more of what they already did/saw in New York. He therefore directly opposed the mobility of artists, dismissing it as irrelevant.

For me this speaks of a real danger. The danger is that the residency centre is simply tourism for artists. The residency centre needs to do more than support the existing practice of artists. If the residency centre is not a location for challenging and redeveloping practice, for extending and renewing practice, then it is simply tourism. Worse, if the centre consciously or unconsciously seeks only to attract artists whose work sits comfortably within a generic international style of contemporary visual art, then the centre actively contributes to globalisation.

I am not advocating that all artists applying to any residency centre within the Res Artis network are required to engage with 'place'. I am advocating that if we take the issue of globalisation seriously, and want to ensure that we do not contribute to the continuing hegemony of the rationalist European episteme, then we need to offer up our places as rich and complex cultural and local specificities. Distinctiveness is the key. My particular example is that we are located just beyond the very furthest edge of the Greco-Roman world. Somewhere near us in 84C.E. at the battle of Mons Graupius the Roman army defeated the Caledonian confederacy, but in reality their military infrastrure of roads and forts only ever extended as far as the river Tay. We therefore exist outwith the furthest geographical reach of that fundamental underpinning of western culture - that shared reference point of Greco-Roman Europe.

So what is the Epistemology?

Returning to my starting point, I have taken you on a brief tour around the traditional debates in epistemology, and the recent disruption that has reset those debates within a relativistic world of competing epistemes. I have talked about the forms of knowledge created by artists. I have also briefly alluded to some of the key characteristics of the residency centre, as I have come to understand it recently. I have highlighted the importance of valuing culture and distinctiveness.

My problem is therefore contained within these elements. I need to formulate a method of working with artists in which I value the place I operate within, and I offer that value and knowledge to artists who participate in our programme. They in turn contribute their creativity and their knowledge.

I am particularly interested in the exchange which takes place. The exchange is overtly between the organisation and the artist, but in fact encompasses those two only as one of a multiplicity of contact points. The exchange is discretely between the artist and the place-culture-distinctiveness. The exchange is between the organisation and the knowledge that the artists brings with them and creates whilst they are present and after they have left.

My problem remains that almost all of the knowledge that makes up this exchange is in my head - both in terms of what we offer, and in terms of what we receive. There are of course books in our library (of both local history and art), and we document the work that goes on, and publish some of that.

My problem is that I come back to the energy-fertilisation that occurs through the complexity of knowledge about different sorts of things. I have begun to imagine a matrix in which this knowledge is, not contained, not framed, but indicated. I would like to create a means of juxtaposing different aspects of the knowledge of artists, practice, place, culture, and just about anything else, manifest in its own format. I can imagine this with both an index and a complexity of links, so that it can be explored intuitively and helped by serendipity. It is a sort of cabinet of curiousities seeking a post-colonial solution to taxonomy where non-like things can become related. We go back to the dialogue which is embedded in art, and embedded in the creation of knowledge. This dialogue is the exchange and it is characterised by 'parity of esteem' (and not sameness); participation (though not always presence, proximity or contemporanity); availability and sufficient investment.

© Chris Fremantle 2002

Further Reading

'Xeno-Epistemics: Makeshift kit for Sounding Visual Art as Knowledge Production and the Retinal Regimes', Sarat Mahara, Platform5_Documenta11 Exhibition Catalogue, Hatje Cantz, 2002,

'Localisation and Globalisation of art - the Status of the National Ego in Maintaining the Identity', Pavel Liška, unpublished paper, New Potatoes Seminar, 2. - 3.2.2001, London Institute

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