I am excited to share that Heleen de Hoon and I have been invited to this year’s ELIA Biennale in Milan, Italy, hosted by NABA, Nuovo Accademia di Belle Arti. After last year’s ELIA Academy on the topic of situatedness (where I offered a session on our socially engaged situated artistic research residencies), the title of the Biennale is “Arts Plural”, with particular attention on the topic of “artistic intelligence.” The introductory text on the ELIA website states that:
Artists and designers possess a particular form of intelligence. Although considered powerful in certain circles, artistic intelligence is frequently ill-defined or misread. However, as a system of capacities for perception, insight, sensing, creating, and decision-making, it has been driving human evolution beyond boundaries for centuries. But how do we define artistic intelligence and its possibilities in a contemporary context?
ELIA Biennial 2024 Arts Plural celebrates artistic intelligence. It questions how artistic practitioners, designers, students, and educators can be recognised as agents of change, innovation, and evolution. It asks how arts education can contribute to society in a more pluralistic way. What structures are necessary for artistic intelligence to play a role in addressing planetary problems?
The Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence in Canada frames artistic intelligence as referring to “all the ways of knowing and doing that art and artists further. Artistic intelligence is a system of capacities for perception, sensing, discernment, insight, activity, choice-making, and divergent synthesis that is developed by, and transcends beyond human intelligence.” On top of this, the ELIA call situates the topic of artistic intelligence more in the contexts of artistic research and arts education:
The ELIA Biennial Conference Call for Contributions invites all artistic practitioners, performers, philosophers, researchers, educators, students, pedagogues, leaders and makers to define, apply and celebrate artistic intelligence. Set the stage for the future of artistic research in Europe and demonstrate how arts education institutions, academics and students can drive social change today. Embrace and engage with the plurality of discourse, intergenerationality, interpretation and practice. Experiment and offer alternative or new ways of extending arts and design (all disciplines) beyond the Cultural and Creative Sector Industries (CCSI).
Out of the 213 submissions received, the Steering Group and the Jury have selected a total of 79 proposals organised in various sessions and formats; 25 different countries will be represented at this event, just by the selected presenters. See here below for our abstract:
Resisting Growth and Profit — One Exchange at a Time
Artists have always related to the social contexts happening around them, both on local and global levels. We understand artistic intelligence as a quality and power that can offer perspectives on complex social-societal matters from, in and through artistic practice. Yet, “artistically intelligent” perspectives/approaches do not strive for quick solutions, but rather aim at a creative and imaginative engagement. Through taking the artistic serious, artistic intelligence strives for not being misused or instrumentalised for social or political aims.
One example of such a complex matter is the economy. The socially engaged work we are doing in the arts, artistic research and our professorship Artistic Connective Practices stands in an ever-present tension with neoliberal, capitalist and economic-monetary ways of thinking and doing. Everything we do seems to be intertwined with the complex web of the economy and its key trait to pursue growth and profit. That goes for the social contexts we work in, just as for the work within our arts institutions and for the education happening there.
We are less interested in the theoretical definition of artistic intelligence, but rather will elaborate on the concept with a concrete project and practice in mind. In our session, we like to share insights and elaborate on an ongoing project in which our research group collaborates with Godelieve Spaas and her professorship “Economy as a Common” and dance company The100Hands; a project on new economy: “Exchange.” This project aims to take a stand against the notion of everything in our lives being economised, and attempts to change the economic narrative of growth and profit. In the form of a participatory lecture performance, the project rethinks exchange, the smallest meaningful unit of the economy, in order to change the economic system as a whole, one exchange at a time. Through practice and together with the participants, we will explore this work of artistic research as one possible form of “artistic intelligence at work.”
Heleen and I can’t wait to dive deeper into the topic of artistic intelligence and connect it to the work of the professorship! We are excited to see the ELIA community back in Milan.
Falk Hübner 