[-empyre-] Cambridge and Paris

[Lorna Collins]

The event in Paris is going to be held at 3 locations -- we are at the
Centre Pompidou on the first day, where there will be a performance by
artist Yves-Marie L'Hour in the evening. The second day we are at the
Institut Télécom where we also have 3 exhibitions being shown (the
French society Mémoire de l'Avenir, the American group of artists
Prometheus and the engineer/artist Claudiane Ouellet-Plamondon. Then
in the evening our grand finale is at New York University, Paris,
where we have another perfomance, by Kelina Gotman. During the
colloquium we have a variety of presentations from an eclectic range
of participants who all bring a different way of making sense... I
think we can all think of ourselves as artists, and the colloquium is
like a collaborative installation or performance. We will all be
performing and creating work together, particularly during the 2
workshops that take place on the second day.

We are currently publishing the first Making Sense book, which
contains papers inspired by the first colloquium at Cambridge. We hope
to bring together a second book in response to the Paris colloquium.
We also have a new website,
http://www.makingsensesociety.org./

Through our artist-in-residence Fred McVittie we will be publishing
footage from the colloquium onto youtube. He is a subscriber to Empyre
-- it would be good to hear his view about what he's going to be doing
in Paris, and how we might interact with a cyber-community. Our other
artist-in-residence is Janice Perry. We hope that our
artist-in-residences will create site-responsive work at each of the
locations that offers a way of making sense of Making Sense.

Lorna


2010/10/10 Renate Ferro <rtf9 at cornell.edu>:
> Lorna Collins wrote:
>
> .......We want to analyse and discuss the aesthetic encounter and an art
> practice as a medium that can help us make sense of the world. We
> bring together artists and philosophers, scholars and students,
> thinkers and writers, from all around the world, to build an interface
> between artistic creation, theoretical debate and academic
> scholarship. At the colloquium we want to formulate new ways to frame
> and develop discourse, and found a new way of making sense, which can
> challenge and invigorate the protocol, regulation and system of
> academia. This is a different kind of conference – there is no
> hierarchical division between the plenary speakers and the audience,
> we have an economy of mutual exchange and intimate debate. This
> Colloquium.......
>
>  Good Morning Lorna,  Thanks for giving us a general overview of your own
> philosophy and the history of the Making Sense Colloquium.  I'm wondering if
> you could talk about the event being held at the Pompidou in Paris? Do you
> have a mission for this event that might be slightly different that the
> Cambridge event in 2009?  Was there a publication that cam out of the
> Cambridge event or what kind of information was gathered that perhaps has
> informed the event in Paris? The statement above is so broad so I'm
> wondering if you have defined the Paris event differently based on what
> happened in Cambridge?
>
> Lorna will be introducing two of the Visiting Artist's who will be featured
> in Paris later today but I'm hoping that she will give us more of a sense of
> the event's history so that perhaps that would give our empyre subscribers a
> idea of the underpinnings of potential discussion points.
>
> Thanks Lorna.  Renate
>
>
> On 10/10/10 12:34 AM, "Lorna Collins" <lpc29 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> Dear Renate,
>>
>> Thanks for the intro! I’d like to say a bit about Making Sense… This
>> is the second interdisciplinary colloquium of Making Sense.  The first
>> was held at the University of Cambridge in 2009. At these events we
>> want to analyse and discuss the aesthetic encounter and an art
>> practice as a medium that can help us make sense of the world. We
>> bring together artists and philosophers, scholars and students,
>> thinkers and writers, from all around the world, to build an interface
>> between artistic creation, theoretical debate and academic
>> scholarship. At the colloquium we want to formulate new ways to frame
>> and develop discourse, and found a new way of making sense, which can
>> challenge and invigorate the protocol, regulation and system of
>> academia. This is a different kind of conference – there is no
>> hierarchical division between the plenary speakers and the audience,
>> we have an economy of mutual exchange and intimate debate. This
>> colloquium can be seen as an artistic creation or installation in
>> itself. I think we can all be artists. Participants are encouraged to
>> react and articulate their opinion.
>>
>> How does this fit into my own work? I am neither specifically a
>> writer, nor artist, nor philosopher, but use these genres
>> simultaneously to make sense of the world, to discover my place within
>> it, and to think about what might threaten our most basic need to
>> inhabit it. I use art to write philosophy, and I use philosophy to
>> inspire the plastic forms of art I make; in between my visual,
>> intellectual and phenomenological experiments I hope to invent a
>> practical, accessible method for ‘making sense’.
>>
>> I take academic theory to the creative resources of practising art, in
>> the efforts to challenge and invigorate the political scholarship of
>> academic discourse through the basic, replenishing and regenerative
>> facets of creativity. In this sense I am perhaps a diplomat and
>> curator who seeks to arrange and mobilise the emancipatory interface
>> that art can offer everyone, whilst trying to confirm and cement this
>> chance in the more formal terms of academia.
>>
>> This is the kind of ethos that lies behind Making Sense the
>> collective, which is the emerging group of artists and philosophers
>> who came to the first and are coming to the second colloquium. Making
>> Sense is bigger than singular events. We are trying to start a
>> movement. The Making Sense project, beyond the colloquia, is
>> ultimately about founding a communitarian practice, through art, that
>> provides a restorative social act. It would be very interesting to
>> discuss what that means and how it might be possible…
>>
>> I look forward to hearing your thoughts...
>>
>> Lorna
>>
>>
>> 2010/10/10 Renate Ferro <rtf9 at cornell.edu>:
>>> Welcome to our October discussion, ³Contextualizing Making Sense. The
>>> alignment of criticality and configurations of embodiment and space permit
>>> creative flows of networks, resources, research and discussions whose
>>> configurations prove limitless.
>>>
>>> Lorna Collins and her team of collaborators have invited Tim and I to
>>> represent ­empyre this month at the ³Making Sense Colloquium² at the
>>> IRI-Centre Pompidou, Institut Télécom the 19th and 20th of October.
>>> http://www.makingsensesociety.org/ <http://www.makingsensesociety.org/>
>>> Lorna is a theorist and a PhD student at the University of Cambridge where
>>> she is a Foundation Scholar at Jesus College.  Her academic research pushes
>>> to forge the development of Making Sense via her research and writing but
>>> also through various events such as the ³Making Sense² colloquium. The
>>> colloquium brings together a wide variety of international theorists and
>>> artists some of whom will be our guests this month on ­empyre.
>>>
>>> Both independently and collaboratively, Tim and I have worked between the
>>> spaces of theory and practice for many years.  Through Tim¹s international
>>> curating as well as his work in founding and directing the Rose Goldsen
>>> Archive for New Media Art and in my case the founding and directing of The
>>> Tinker Factory, an interdisciplinary lab for research and practice we have
>>> independently found venues for forging theory and practice.  Together our
>>> collaboration with ­empyre has given us an opportunity to investigate the
>>> negotiations between theory and practice historically in May 2009 our
>>> discussion Critical Motion Practice merged intersections that entailed both
>>> self-reflective and interactive movement at the intersections of art,
>>> choreography, architecture, activism and theory.  Again in September, 2007
>>> our discussion on Critical Spatial Practice highlighted themes of social
>>> responsibility at cross-disciplinary intersections.  The questions we asked
>>> revolved between the technological and critical approaches between practice
>>> and theory and how those questions empowered creativity, enhanced artistic
>>> activism and encouraged artistic/performance practice and collaboration.
>>>
>>> We are looking forward to joining the Making Sense participants and
>>> anticipate the international online discussion that will evolve with our
>>> 1400 subscribers. Each week we will highlight a handful of Making Sense
>>> guests in hopes that their own project descriptions will entice our members
>>> to add their own ideas and comments.
>>>
>>> Together collaboratively we are hoping to open up the discussion of Making
>>> Sense. As an artist my practice involves instincts, whim, research, reading,
>>> discussion, investigation and critical analysis. When a research thread
>>> ³makes sense² I assume that my inquiry is finished and the project is
>>> finished a cue to proceed to the next.  The act of ³Making Sense² implies a
>>> search for resolution.  Though in the process of making it is the
>>> uneasiness, the questioning, the restlessness, the point that is not making
>>> sense that excites me to continue.  Welcome to ³Contextualizing Making
>>> Sense² or not?
>>>
>>> We would like to welcome Lorna Collins as our first guest. We will begin
>>> this month on ­empyre by asking Lorna to answer a few questions for our
>>> -empyre members.  Can you fill us in a bit more about your own work as it
>>> relates to the Making Sense Colloquium?   Additionally what can we expect
>>> from the forum itself coming up in a few weeks?
>>>
>>> Renate and Tim
>>>
>>> Renate Ferro
>>> URL:  http://www.renateferro.net
>>> Email:   <rtf9 at cornell.edu>
>>> ,
>>> Visiting Assistant Professor of Art
>>> Cornell University
>>> Department of Art, Tjaden Hall
>>> Ithaca, NY  14853
>>>
>>> Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre
>>>
>>> Art Editor, diacritics
>>> http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre



-- 
Lorna Collins
PhD Candidate: "Making Sense; art practice as a social act"
Jesus College
Cambridge
CB5 8BL
http://web.me.com/lornacollins/