six - The regulatory aesthetics of co-production

Summary

Introduction

In co-production, the arts have been situated as mediating praxes that translate and transmit knowledge between ‘researchers’ and ‘communities’. The sciences engage art in order to engage communities claiming that ‘art releases the visionary impulse, bringing an innovative dimension to problem-solving’ (Wyman, 2004: 6, quoted in Cox et al, 2009: 1472). At the same time, art engages with communities in a belief that art ‘rehumanises society rendered numb and fragmented by the repressive instrumentality of capitalist production’ (Bishop, 2012: 11). Artists and arts researchers thus align themselves with the ‘pedagogic state’ (Newman, 2010; O’Neill and Wilson, 2010), in which the citizen is somehow empowered to take responsibility for all forms of production and transformation. Despite all this interdisciplinary engagement, art remains at the margins of power. As Cox et al remark (2009: 119), there is ‘no consensus on how to balance scientific research requirements (e.g. for rigour) with the aesthetic dimensions of arts-based inquiry’. Science is research, rigour and rationalism while art is inquiry, aesthetics and emotion. Yet, we know that ‘we have never been modern’ (Latour, 1993), that science is entangled with aesthetics, emotion and hunches while art involves empiricism, rigour and research.

In this chapter, we will discuss three projects on which we have worked closely together over the past decade in order to question some of the assumptions made about art's relationships with knowledge production and the ways in which the aesthetics of co-production can regulate the possibilities of artistic practices. The ‘we’ here are Penny Evans from Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC) and Angela Piccini from University of Bristol. KWMC is a purpose-built media arts organisation based in a community in Bristol, UK, and is housed in the largest straw bale building in the South West. KWMC and the University of Bristol have been collaborating across a number of research projects over the past decade. KWMC works with media artists to engage citizens often excluded from decision making and research through exploring local, national and international issues in order to co-produce and co-design the testing of ideas, products and technologies. Examples of these activities include creating data visualisations; documentation and engagement strategies; a comprehensive young people's programme teaching skills in media; coding; and ‘making’.