[-empyre-] March on ~empyre~ - in/compatible methods @transmediale

[Gabriel Menotti]

February 2012 on -empyre- soft-skinned space

"in/compatible research (remake)"

http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Moderated by Gabriel Menotti (BR) and Magnus Lawrie (UK) with featured guests:

César Baio (BR), Baruch Gottlieb (CA), Robert Jackson (UK), Ioana
Jucan (RO), Tero Karppi (FI), Andrew Prior (UK), Lasse Scherffig (DE),
Marie Thompson (UK), Magda Tyzlik-Carver (PI)

This month, ~empyre~ will be dedicated to some contextualized
discussion, freely inspired by the previous seasons on ISEA2011 (Sep
’11) and the GLI.TC/H festival(s) (Dec ’11). Our point of departure
and/or scenario is the Transmediale Festival, which is happening from
31/01 to 05/02 in Berlin. More precisely, it is its “reSource for
Transmedial Culture” strand, which is supposed to result in a
long-term series of activities beyond the Festival. One of these was a
postgraduate workshop about “in/compatible research” organized last
November in the UdK Berlin, in partnership with the Vilém Flusser
Archive and the Digital Aesthetics Research Centre / Centre for
Digital Urban Living (Aarhus University).

The UdK workshop unfolded into a newspaper publication and a public
conference that is happening *today* at Transmediale. The perceived
difficulties in translating the first activity into the later two
formats is what ultimately inspired this month’s debate. Even when
there is a clear intention in creating frameworks more welcoming to a
wider definition of research, we seem nevertheless obliged to
negotiate with lots of institutional inertia ¬– materialized in
deadlines, the criteria of funding bodies, the standards of
application forms, etc. Would these protocols be likewise
constraining, were the workshop transformed in a month-long email
discussion?

Thus, the list will be hosting a third (or fourth?) incarnation of the
“in/compatible research” debate: (roughly) the same topic, with
(roughly) the same group of guests, in a (completely) different
environment and timeframe. How similar can the ultimate results be?

On a general level, we will be focusing on the challenges of
interdisciplinarity and ways of moving unscathed across institutions
as antagonistic to one another as academia and the artworld.
Particularly, the participants will be bringing contributions from
their own practice, outlining the theoretical insights this practice
gives to them, and the difficulties in bringing such inspirations
within the protocols of research.

In order to better take the context into account, until the end of
this week there will be no official guest, leaving the list open for a
free-flowing discussion about what is going on during Transmediale –
where some of us are, at the present moment. It is an opportunity to
set up common topics and see which other threads might germinate from
the Festival, if any. If you are around, feel free to post your
impressions of the event or come give an IRL shout at room K1, House
of World Cultures, Berlin, where the soon-to-be-over in/compatible
research methods conference is about to start.