[-empyre-] Process as paradigm / systems theory

[Johannes Birringer]

dear all

after Simon's first post, the discussion already shifted a bit (quickly?) to systems theory and "systems" - which is for some of what was argued initially about the processual, a rather unspecific term, I'd suggest, but so may the terms "performativity" or "participatory" or "relational" be, as i see them used already in the first few pages of the cracked medium ("art catalogue"). Along with the now standard embrace of the lfe sciences and biology.  Okay, so we are talking about programming organisms?  processual organisms? 

can you give some examles of how participatory this is and where and when and for whom? 

  (the catalogue, interestingly, assumes as a curatorial approach for the reception of such processial work that the performative and temporal nature of such work, progressing with different speeds/durations,  rejects standard habits of perceiving art....

"Instead the works," write Susanne and Lucas , "demand persistent, durative and repeated observation".)


 And how do to work with such analogies (same level/category?) as the one between "agents" and "actors" in "self organizing" systems?  who are the "agents"  (robots?  evolutionary organisms, cell  specimen?) and who are the human actors and - where do you mean these as refering to a computational system (or simulation), and where to a live art or live process context  or social context that ( as the cracked medium claims) makes "art and life indistinguishable"?

That last one (as a claim) tends to remind us of the 60s and the Living Theatre and  various other counter cultural trips and probably the later approximations (Fluxus) of that rather unpromising proposal. 
Tehching Hsieh's long durational performances/processes are not consided indistinguishable from life even as he lived them.  I'd think of them as quite precisely distinguished/distinct, framed, recorded and patterned to be received as an art form. and a generative one at that. 

what are or were the limits of Tehching Hsieh's processes within a system, say, such a New York City,  the country he had immigrated into, the art world that he invited?  the other artist he tied himself to for a year? the photography he deployed ?  the time frame (one year duration) of the "Art / Life: One Year Performance 1983-1984 (Rope Piece)" performance? or the time of the time frame (the 1980s)?  

Yann wrote:
>>
Agents, or actors, can be seen as system components if they are
within the limits of the considered system. The nature of a component,
or element, e.g. artificial, biological, mineral, binary, encoded, ...
is a property of the element, sometimes allowing or not some kinds of
interactions with other elements.

 From this point of view, processes can not be separated from a system,
they necessarily refer to one. A project is also a system, with inputs
and outputs. If an art object can be an output of an art practice seen
as a system, the system itself can be the object for the art practice.

So, thinking about art in terms of processes *and* thinking about art in
terms of objects are both sides of thinking about art in terms of systems.
>>.

Susanne mentioned on 05/12

>>media art, high tech art, bio art, processual art
.... - basically the art which is happening outside the art
market to a great deal - >>

outside of the system? 


I had meant to ask Simon after his first post  ---  how expansive do you make your net, and how you want me to take your proposal, i.e. could you please give an example we might want to grapple with (and I'll try and look at the exhibition too, of course,  at text, photos, video, and if i could travel there, i'd visit the show). 

>>To take all that in a relaxed manner, where we do not require narrow definitions of what constitutes correct practice, and to situate it in a contemporary post-structuralist context that is very much concerned with notions of expanded agency, complexity and emergent phenomena across all sorts of living and non-living systems -  might be the more productive route to developing other ways of understanding and imagining the world.>>


Where does this occur in an exhibition or a performance or an other situation? 
(expanded agency, complexity and emergent phenomena across all sorts of living and non-living systems)   

are you thinking in terms of political and social situations, say, the recent uprising in Athens?  the eruptions, disruptions and emanations of Eyafjallajokull?


with regards
Johannes Birringer

(PS i attached a system theory picture




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