[spectre] art and science......

[Annick Bureaud]

Oh Thank you Simon ! You put it in the way I would have loved to do, but 
sometimes, I am stuck by the foreign language issue.

I would add : do not put on the scientists shoulders what is said/used 
by others, and also do not kill the messanger because of the message 
he/she carries.

Annick



Simon Biggs wrote:
> I think we are getting processes and roles mixed up here. Art and science
> both exist as social functions and their value is accrued due to this. Art
> and science also exist as processes. It is theoretically possible, although
> in practice probably impossible, to separate these two aspects of each
> discipline. The artist can go off and be a hermit and not engage with any of
> the social aspects of what they are doing, refining their "vision" within
> their ivory tower. The scientist can similarly go off and become a "mad
> individualist" in their laboratory deep in a cave or on top of a mountain
> somewhere (visions of Dr's Moreau or Frankenstein).
> 
> However, I am unaware of any artist or scientist that does manage to work
> without a social context and thus I cannot see how either of these practices
> can be pursued without engaging with the ethical conundrums that inevitably
> emerge when more than one person is involved in doing something.
> 
> The problem for science is that as a process it is so obviously tangled up
> with the instrumentality of power that underpins our (often morally
> ambiguous) societies. When a scientist chooses to work at MIT they must take
> on board the fact that many of the resources they will be accessing to do
> their work, whether financial, human, technical or informational, are
> associated with noxious origins (the NSF, Pentagon, CIA, etc). This is also
> true if they choose to work in the rather less "military-industrial" climes
> of Europe.
> 
> However, artists should be extremely careful when they accuse scientists of
> being necessarily evil by association. Looking around I see little that is
> different for artists. They take money and opportunities as they arise. Few
> have the luxury of refusing the minimal patronage they receive, whether in
> the form of an invitation to participate in an exhibition, receipt of an
> arts council grant or the offer of employment in an art school. These forms
> of patronage can be traced back to not dissimilar origins as those that
> underpin the economy of science.
> 
> Some artists, of course, will argue that they lift themselves above this
> morass of ethical muck by not selling out. I would ask these artists whether
> they can really make that case. How do they eat? How do they resource their
> practice? Is the money they use somehow washed clean by being assigned to
> cultural use? Is it possible to argue that by appropriating such resources
> they are able to make their whites whiter?
> 
> Let's not get into an argument about the differences between art and science
> predicated on good or bad. That is such a naïve and simplistic argument. One
> role of the artist is to reveal the dark and ambivalent nature of things. If
> they are to do this effectively they have to recognise this in themselves
> first. I seem to remember a story about casting stones...
> 
> Best
> 
> Simon
> 
>

-- 
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Annick Bureaud (annick at nunc.com)
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