6.

Epistemological Inclinations

in Participatory Art

Dillon de Give

“I am interested in science and in philosophy only because I want to learn something about the riddle of the world in which we live, and the riddle of man’s knowledge of that world. And I believe that only a revival of interest in these riddles can save the sciences and philosophy from narrow specialization and from an obscurantist faith in the expert’s special skill, and his personal knowledge and authority…”

-Karl Popper

from The Logic of Scientific Discovery

 

 This essay concerns itself with participatory art– the type of participatory art that publicly invites people into a process of creative output, and then expresses the value of their contribution in its final manifestation. I want to trace a certain attitude through the artistic process. To be specific, it is the preoccupation or fascination with the questions of how we learn things about the world, what it means to know, and how to characterize or transmit knowledge that will be seen as intimately linked to the idea of working with other people. This qualitative attribute could be termed an “epistemological imperative”, or a tendency to emphasize ways of knowing over ways of seeing.

The process of learning is a process of collapsing distance. It is an experience by which subject endeavors to meet object. Building knowledge through a process of inquiry is traditionally the job of the scientist (or certain lucky elementary school students). What happens then when artists begin to act like scientists and elementary school students by enacting a process of inquiry? In this framework many old questions are given new life. What could it mean to know the land? What about my next-door neighbor who doesn’t speak English? The path of the waste I produce, and the food I eat? Many subjects so close to home that they are haven’t been considered art at all until they are seen as a doorway to a new way of knowing. An artist examining these processes begins to shape the experience by which subject meets object as an expression, and functions under the epistemological imperative.

 This kind of art-working has a relation to the kind of everyday performance that happens in the science lab: observation, flexibility, the necessity of communication, and even extension of experimental results towards future use. It also retains some of the social ideals of “citizen” scientist of the 19^th century: the social web of knowledge production is diffuse, and it doesn’t require an expensive infrastructure. It theoretically accepts input from anyone willing to put in the time.

 To extend the comparison between the ways the scientist and the artist seek to produce knowledge, or “ways of knowing”, I want to invoke a set of ideas developed by the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, a self-described “critical rationalist”. Popper, who began publishing his work in the 1930s, observed that many of the classic problems of epistemology had to do with the growth of knowledge, and decided that the best way to study the growth of knowledge for him was to examine the history of science.

His contemporaries, the Logical Positivists had believed that science proceeded through a process of induction. Popper denied this, taking Hume’s centuries-old problem of induction at face value (this had stated that no matter how many observations one makes, it is logically impossible to create a natural law, i.e. even after a lifetime of seeing white beluga whales it is still impossible to say that the next beluga whale you see will be not be black). Instead of using induction, Popper said, the scientist begins by simply making an assertion, a claim. This space for the creative intuition in the scientific process Popper described as an “irrational element” at work in the moment in which a scientist dreams up such an assertion. This central place of the scientific assertion is what I would like to compare to the central conceit behind an artistic project.

His qualifying factor for an assertion, “falsifiability”, is what I am going to attempt to apply to the artistic project. But more on that term first– of specific concern for Popper was the ability to determine the scientific status of an assertion. While the Positivists had called for verifiability through inductive processes, Popper called only for a quality of falsifiability. He emphasized that piling up lots of evidence does not make a statement something more and more correct, instead we should look for particular instances in which the theory might fail and test it rigorously to see if it survives. In order to be considered scientific then, a theory must be at least capable of being proved wrong. The more audacious it is, the more it flirts with this kind of epistemic danger, the better it is. For Popper, Einstein’s theory of relativity was a good assertion because it seemed quite unlikely. It didn’t have a lot of empirical evidence when it was formulated, yet it could be theoretically tested (and was years later when technology caught up, passing the best tests we could perform). Passing a test does not guarantee truth for eternity. But the potential to fail– falsifiability– is prerequisite to considering an assertion scientific.  Adopting this concept of knowledge in an artistic process would mean that we are never absolutely certain about the accuracy of our beliefs. We work only with a best guess, and if possible, improve on it. It is the provisional nature of assertion here that allows for a continuous process of critical investigation. 

There is something about such a way of operating that is attractive for an artist. In order to know something about reality, all that is needed is to pose an interesting question and thoroughly examine it in a specific situation. The artist would conjecture by “projecting” an idea into an experience of inquiry. This means establishing guidelines under which to work, and under which to deduce situations to test the central assertion. In this sense, the form of the assertion is the form of the project. It is the way by which the artist proposes to know a subject through a central conceptual proposition. This way of reading and art project can be mapped onto many works that share a desire to know through experience. For example artist Paul Chan proposed to know the devastation of post Katrina New Orleans by staging the play Waiting for Godot in the decimated public space there. His project Waiting for Godot in New Orleans had other components, but these hinged around this central assertion.

By being predicated in social form, the project-as-assertion has epistemic advantages. As in a scientific community, it has a framework for immediate intersubjective verification. Results may be witnessed and discussed collectively (or even reperformed). Second, it also has an ability to accept contributions towards its method of experimentation from multiple intelligences and immediately affect small forms of change– to use its discoveries.

Inviting other people to help put the assertion “to the test” establishes a kind of truth relation to the world in which it was based. Nevertheless, there are twin dangers that seem to threaten the constructive potential of an assertion made public: either that it will be seen as rhetorical and accepted/rejected without contest, or that it will be interpreted as purely descriptive, significant only in contributing to the aesthetic structure of dialogue itself and not given proper examination. In other words, either an assertion is voiced and not tested, or the process of assertion making itself becomes a celebration.

The first case “voiced and not tested” may occur when a pre-existing view is too strongly attached to the subject, and the project is presented to those who have a well-established opinion. This is preaching to the choir. If I go to a farmer’s market and begin soliciting mail to convince industrialized farmers to change their ways, I might help gather momentum that could be used for various purposes (legislation, etc) but the action could lack the kind of artistic depth that it might have if it actually seemed to run the risk of “failing”. In other words, it would not be falsifiable as a project-assertion in this specific context.

The second problem identified using the project-as-assertion comparison– “the assertion celebration”– occurs when discussion is prized as an end in itself. Here, a central assertion hasn’t been made so much as universal value has been placed on everyone’s ability to make assertions in general. This can be seen in certain “conversation stations” and artistic debate clubs that intend to foster dialogue, but are not explicit about the ends of this desire. This isn’t necessarily a problematic sentiment, but it doesn’t make for art that is falsifiable and accountable to the conditions of the world. It is a problem of framing. If discussion is not contextualized within a concrete context, (i.e. if the project does not account for the fact that dialogue can lead to action) then it begins to feel impotent.

Projects operating under an epistemological imperative are likely to be interested in knowing their own social structure, as it will influence the way its central assertion is enacted. Close to a project’s ability to embrace form is an awareness of emerging social roles associated with it.

In his book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life sociologist Erving Goffman (published in the same year as Popper’s Logic of Scientific Discovery) provides a way to analyze social roles in a dramaturgical framework, equating social action with theatrical performance. He relates the public perception of an individual to the individual’s acceptance of the artifice of enacting identity.

“When an individual has no belief in his own act and no ultimate concern with the beliefs of his audience, we may call him cynical, reserving the term ‘sincere’ for individuals who believe in the impression fostered by their own performance.” (Goffman, 18)

Sincerity here is the result of embracing the constructed nature of a role by recognizing that it necessitates social functionality. It is also an intuitive ability to believe. There is a kind of assertion going on here as well. An individual’s self-presenting actions are guided by an assumption about what their “true nature” is (for practical purposes). I would forward that the epistemologically inclined project is not exempt from creating these roles and the hierarchy that results, but that it does endeavor to create a space for the sincere performance of those roles by giving each a definable relationship to its central assertion. If, as I said earlier, the social form is distinctly advantageous to an art concerned with ways of knowing, then the enactment of distinctly purposeful roles within it reflects a kind of belief in itself, or earnestness.

Goffman identifies social interactions in “real life” as generally taking place between two complementary “teams” of performers (a team may be as small as one person). I would view participatory art as a relation of up to four purposeful teams, and one non-present team. They are: artist/collective, collaborator, participant, audience, and non-audience.

 

It should be acknowledged that many projects make allowances for role changing. A person may move from audience member to participant in a social performance, or perhaps graduate from participant to collaborator on a long-term pedagogical project. Effort is extended (formally and informally) to govern the structure of potential interchangeability, coordination, and movement between assumed roles. This is one reason why the artist has an increasing similarity to an organizer, director or curator. Management of this sort has to do with the maintenance of an assertion. This means monitoring the “lab” environment to ensure the assertion is both “voiced and tested” the project does not become an “assertion celebration”. Even as the form changes, the meaning of the proposal must remain discernible. To make each role’s function explicit is to encourage the sincere performance of all roles and keep tabs on the meaning.

Seeing a project as a conglomeration of social roles functioning around a central assertion means recognizing it as statement-like. The contributions of each role fit together like the parts of a sentence. An artist must come to terms with the almost-separateness of their assertion from themselves. A public assertion exists in whoever’s mind encounters it. It has a relationship to the term “realistic” because it must take place in the world. In this way it derives value from its understandability, as opposed to its singularity.

According to Popper’s epistemological model we can never “prove” anything, but we are at liberty to generate strong assertions for a ways of knowing, and these assertions may function in the world until they are falsified. The artistic project as assertion is a temporary structure, an inquiry or set of tests on a central conceptual core. Its falsification relates to its durationality. Falsification may be posed simply as an end point to a way of knowing. If the project was a way of knowing a problem, then its falsification can be found in establishing a solution. Likewise, if an artist’s preconceived way of knowing a subject was inadequate in some way, falsification can be the confirmation that further examination of a wholly different character is necessary. The ability to put a period at the end of the sentence would be to either accept transcendence into non-art, or falsification of the initial assertion. Art is not government, science or philosophy. In many ways it can be created and function as pure expressive conjecture– even as it strives to make permanent contributions to the concepts of form and meaning. On these terms an artist is enabled to maintain their determination to start and finish projects that are primarily concerned with conditions of the world as we know it.

Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of the Self In Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books.

Popper, Karl Raimund. 1959. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: New York: Routledge.