Dr Daniel Rubinstein d.rubinstein@csm.arts.ac.ukContact me with any questions about the seminar.
Seminars are online via Zoom, please contact me with any questions about the seminars:
Dr Daniel Rubinstein d.rubinstein@csm.arts.ac.uk. The Zoom link is: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88674626066
Dates:
Wednesday 14 October 16.30-19.00Wednesday 28 October 16.30-19.00Wednesday 11 November 16.30-19.00Wednesday 25 November 16.30-19.00Wednesday 9 December 16.30-19.00
Wednesday 20 January 16.30-19.00Wednesday 3 February 16.30-19.00Wednesday 17 February 16.30-19.00Wednesday 3 March 16.30-19.00Wednesday 17 March 16.30-19.00
Wednesday 21 April 16.30-19.00Wednesday 5 May 16.30-19.00Wednesday 19 May 16.30-19.00Wednesday 2 June 16.30-19.00Wednesday 16 June 16.30-19.00
The Art of Questioning research seminar at Central Saint Martins (CSM), London, UK is dedicated to a rigorous and playful engagement with the multidimensional fabrics of our post-contemporary world. For the artists, philosophers, designers, scientists and explorers that comprise the seminar, The Art of Questioning explores the question/s of method, and in particular the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ (not to mention the ‘who’, ‘where’ and ‘when’) of art based research, and more specifically, how art-led approach to research can try to ‘make sense’ of the augmented reality we inhabiting; multiple dimensions of distributed and artificial intelligence, curved time, pandemic lockdowns, populist politics, climate emergencies and Instagram accidents.
In this series of seminars for doctoral students, we will attend to the question of method. What does it mean to have a method? How can the methodology of your project be developed and brought to light? We will approach this question by looking at a number of radical, critical and provocative writers who have different and often contradictory approaches to method. From the highly methodological to knowingly avoiding the entrapments of a system. In each case we will be asking how the limits of one’s own language contort and determine the tasks of thinking. This condition of questioning the basic assumptions of one’s discipline or technique can be called ‘art’. This also forms the research questions of one’s thesis.
Big thanks to Central Saint Martins for supporting this seminar.
For all of you who are new to doing ‘proper’ philosophy or theory: no previous knowledge of philosophy is required. This is a seminar that will help you learn how to think (as distinct from ‘what’ to think). Eventually it will make some kind of sense in relation to the project you are working on (whatever it is).
Basic principles of thinkingNo reading. Refreshments will be provided.
Plato – ‘The parable of the cave’ & Lucy Irigary’s critique of Plato phallocentrismThe Republic, Book VII 514-518 NB the numbers in Plato refer to section numbers not to pages.NB: Budding philosophers may want to read the whole of The Republic
Marx, Karl
The German Ideology. The premises of the materialist method
Theses on Feuerbach
Freud, Sigmund
Nietzsche, Fredrich
Gay Science 110, 112, 276, 341, 354, 355, 374NB. The numbers in Gay Science refer to sections, not to pages.These sections can be found in Hollingdale’s excellent Nietzsche Reader, or in Gay ScienceNietzsche, F.W., Nauckhoff, J., Del Caro, A., 2001. The gay science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K. ; New York.Dostoyevsky Fyodor, Notes from the underground, Part 1.
In: Journal of lesbian and Gay studies 21.2-3 (2015)
NB both readings available on dropbox
Deleuze, G., Patton, P., 2004. Difference and repetition. Continuum, London.
NB specifically the essay ‘Scratching the Surface: Some notes on barriers to women and loving’ on p.106
Heidegger, Martin – the question concerning technology
Yuk, Hui – technology in China
Deleuze and Guattari: Bodies without organs
Foucault, Michel, Courage of Truth
Lyotard, jean François, Just Gaming
Husserl, Edmund
END OF YEAR