Vision : a breeding place for transdisciplinary and transformative art&science

[Sacha Kagan]

The Summer School hopes to generate a high-quality learning experience for all participants, generating innovative methodologies, knowledge and agendas in art, (re)search
and action. The vision is to create a framework for a truly creative
process for the methodological empowerment of both artists and
scientists working for sustainability/social transformation. The
event will not merely be a collection of workshops and discussions,
but a “school” in the noblest sense of the word: a place for
learning, teaching, sharing and evolving together.

The Summer School addresses the HOW questions of art & science for sustainability: For example: How can academic research contribute to community artists and contemporary artists developing new social,
aesthetic and community approaches? How can the experience of
post-modern off-balance dance contribute to a rethinking of
democracy? How can scientists enhance their reflexivity and their
creativity thanks to insights from the arts? How can artists
effectively work in communities and at other levels of social
reality, for social transformation together with academics? In order
to address these questions, the Summer School will explore: How do
artists and scientists from a diversity of backgrounds, do their work
today? Which methods and approaches do they use and how can these be
transfered and transmuted to other artists and scientists around the
world? And which cross-breedings between these different approaches
should be further developed?

The Summer School will also foster thinking at a paradigmatic and normative level and link the WHY and the HOW questions, in order to avoid mere instrumentality. That ‘deeper’ level will address
issues of spirituality, epistemology, ontology, aesthetics and
introspection, and critically reflect the orientations and values we
vest in ‘social transformation’ and in ‘sustainability’. Art
and philosophy, conceived not only as vehicles, but also as
possibilities to step outside ourselves, will contribute to this
deeper, epistemological and ‘more than rational’ level of the
Summer School’s methodology.

The Summer School aims to provide an intense and insightful learning experience to all participants, which is interdisciplinary, engaged and intercultural:

a) The Summer School aims to facilitate the cross-breeding of arts and sciences in their efforts to renew their methods and their paradigms towards social transformation for sustainability. It also
aims to exchange these insights with organizations from civil
society. Concerned are the fields of art and science in a wide sense,
including on the one hand the whole spectrum of the academic world,
from natural sciences and social sciences to philosophy and
humanities, and on the other hand a wide variety of artistic
practices, from eco-art and community arts practitioners to social
sculpture, media art and others ; from the side of civil society
practitioners, concerned are NGOs working in communities and for
sustainable development. The summer school’s focus cuts across
established disciplines, pursuing inter- and transdisciplinarity, but
also affirms a proactive and normative, yet self-reflexive and
critical framework.

b) The Summer School aims to train effective agents of change, not mere observers of contemporary crises nor uninvolved prophets of doom. The Summer School aims to foster social transformations towards
a more sustainable civilization: i.e. resilient human cultures
advancing social justice, economic well-being, ecological integrity
and cultural diversity. It is intended for artists, researchers and
practitioners who acknowledge and support the values of engaged (i.e.
normative) and self-reflexive, concrete and theoretically informed,
positive and critical practices in science, art and civil society.

c) The Summer School aims to facilitate transcontinental exchanges, comparisons and critical explorations of experiences across the world, with participation of researchers and practitioners
from the continents of Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania and South-,
Central and North-America.

d) The Summer School aims to enable the conceptualization and drafting of possible future partnerships and projects among artists, scientists, and practitioners.

e) The Summer School aims to generate a transdisciplinary process allowing the pluralistic and diverse, yet united and overarching burgeoning of a transdisciplinary culture in the arts and in the
sciences:

• Inspiring scientists to reach beyond the limited types of formal rationality traditionally catered to in the Western scientific tradition. New approaches and new tools, inspired by artistic methodologies and artistic (re)search practices and theories, shall carve new avenues of explorations for the participating scientists.
  

• Inspiring artists to enrich their current practices. New methodologies for action and (re)search, e.g. interdisciplinary work with scientists and activists, shall open further perspectives for the participating artists.
  

• Enabling participants to develop varied ways to work transdisciplinarily, no longer only as determined ‘artists’, ‘activists’ or ‘scientists’, but, as artiscientists, artivists, intellectactors, i.e. shaping new identities for a new culture.