doors open 14.00 hrs debate 14.30 hrs. – 16.30 hrs drinks afterwards

Limited amount of seats, please make reservations at thesmoothandthestriated@gmail.com

http://thesmoothandthestriated.wordpress.com/

On Sunday July 11, the University of Amsterdam and the University of Utrecht present a debate about the relationship between art, science and philosophy in collaboration with Nieuw Dakota. In the context of the exhibition The Smooth and The Striated (2 July– 1 August) in Huize Frankendael and Nieuw Dakota, philosophers and artists will reflect upon difference and similitude in the ways in which various disciplines of practice and thought attempt to describe or interpret our world. The Smooth and The Striated (2 July – 1 August) is an event within the framework of the Third International Deleuze Studies Conference, hosted by the University of Amsterdam and the University of Utrecht, which invites scholars to reflect on the ideas of the renowned twentieth century philosopher Gilles Deleuze.

What is the history and philosophy of art’s relation to research? In their celebrated essay ‘The Smooth and The Striated’, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari write about our apparent human desire to make various processes and environments comprehensible by means of delineating, quantifying and measuring; at the same time, they emphasize the ways in which our world resists these attempts at over-coding and hierarchization. In art academies worldwide, the work of Gilles Deleuze has functioned as fertile ground for architects, musicians, Dj’s, Vj’s, filmmakers, sculptors and painters in their explorations and critical thinking, in the context of larger structural changes to education and pedagogy. The merging and exchanges of art, science, and philosophy in Deleuze’s work has become an inspiration to many and resulted in new practices, research, and experiments. It is in this context that a new Bachelor-Master (BAMA) structure has been introduced in the Netherlands over the last couple of years, in line with international trends, creating ways for artists to pursue Ph.D. programs. The Universities of Leiden, Utrecht, and Amsterdam, for example, are creating—in some cases in collaboration with art schools and art funding organizations— specific trajectories for artistic PhD’s. Within the curriculum of these new artistic research programs, the boundaries between different disciplines vary: their emphasis might be tailored to the work of art as final piece (practice based research); in other cases it is the research that is central (artistic research). The debate will discuss the question and problem of defining ‘research’ and reflection, and will take place at Nieuw Dakota.

For this event, a variety of artists and theorists are invited to come together to discuss the convergence of different disciplines, both within their daily practices, and in relation to recent transformations in he educational system over the last couple of years. The discussion will be loosely grouped around the following statements that are composed to serve as a provocative frame and launch for the debate.

• Art, science, and philosophy need each other.

• Institutions should not try to guard disciplinary specificity, but should instead refuse to distinguish between the realms of philosophy, art, and science. In this way, truly interdisciplinary work can develop.

• Artistic research is a new branch of research in between universities and art academies that should be embedded into the domain of scientific research.

The debate will provide a platform to question and revisit the identification and separation of disciplines, and to elaborate upon the different languages, conceptual borrowings, similarities and differences of practice between art, science and philosophy.