Notes on Method

Here the three organisers of the project Within and Beyond offer some reflections on the methods practised during the various workshops and in the project as a whole.

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On Collaboration, Time, and Slowness

The project Within and Beyond - Embodied Planetary Cycles employed a method rooted in slowness, shared inquiry, and embodied engagement with planetary rhythms. By bringing together artists, curators, and scientists on the island of Ven, the project fostered an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the interconnected cycles of circadian, celestial, and seasonal time. During the second workshop weekend in September 2024, for example, this method unfolded through a series of small tasks, collaborative discussions, and practical experiments designed to deepen the participants’ connection to both the natural environment and each other’s perspectives. This approach emphasized the importance of taking time to observe, respond, and co-create, highlighting the value of relational and site-responsive practices in fostering a deeper understanding of the cyclical nature of both human and planetary systems.

Central to the workshops was the prioritization of time, collaboration, and slowness, which fostered a reflective and experimental approach to understanding cyclical rhythms. The participants - artists, curators, and scientists - engaged in small tasks, talks, and hands-on experiments, designed not only to explore the natural cycles of circadian rhythms and seasonal changes but also to deepen the collective process of learning and creation.

The method allowed time for participants to engage with and reflect upon these natural cycles. The atmosphere of collaboration allowed each participant to bring their own methods and perspectives to the group. Small, focused tasks, like Nanna Debois Buhl’s registration exercise, prompted participants to reflect on how different rhythms, both personal and collective, influence creative practices.

This approach to time allowed for a rich exchange of ideas and methods, fostering meaningful collaboration. The residency’s method emphasized not rushing toward outcomes but allowing space for slow, methodical processes that could unlock new insights and foster a deeper engagement with the rhythms of the natural world. The project emphasized the value of slowness in understanding the cycles that shape our world, demonstrating how collaboration and thoughtful, reflective processes can lead to new insights into both human creativity and planetary rhythms - nurtured in part by shared activities like cooking, walking, cycling, resting, and swimming in the sea together.

On Bringing Artists and Scientists Together

Why bring artists and scientists together? And why bring them together for a more extended period of time? Aren’t their approaches incompatible? A scientist must apply a scientific method, try to determine cause and effect, establish a high degree of likelihood through amassing a sufficiently large and representative set of data, ensure that the method can be repeated by others as a control of the results. What use to a scientist is the artist’s license to associate freely, work with metaphors, cause ideas borrowed from different fields, disciplines and discourses to collide, or produce in the viewer/reader/listener an affective experience? Probably not very much at all.

The way in which an artist’s method might be useful to a scientist is of another order. The discussion is a larger one which involves reflection on the disparity of values accorded to different disciplines in contemporary society. Science is highly valued, not least politically, for its ability to provide actionable solutions to problems. This is understandable: to take an obvious and perhaps silly example, it isn’t likely that art will provide solutions to climate change. What is less far less silly but perhaps not asked often enough, is what kind of ‘solutions’ are we able to find? Not able technically, but on the level of what the human mind can conceive.

Art reflects critically on itself and the world through matter and materials, offering scope for how other disciplines can reflect on themselves and their methods. When art is best, it short circuits concepts by allowing aesthetic experience to stand on its own, in a sense challenging the mind to create new concepts — art is the possibility of engendering previously unthought-of processes of thought.

Or to put it another way, a representative set of data is only representative with regard to a certain view of the world: all representation is based on one or more assumptions from which it then proceeds. (The partiality and embodied nature of all knowledge has been theorised repeatedly, and it doesn’t seem necessary to rehearse it here). Which is to say that the larger discussion is a paradigmatic one: the unrepeatable event can, after all, offer the scientist inspiration when imagining and designing repeatable experiments.

This is the true value of art for scientists, and one good reason for bringing artists and scientists together in forums where they can spend time together discussing their respective interests and approaches, their respective methods: to share their mutual inquisitiveness about the world and, as it often turns out, their shared concern for it, across and in spite of methodological differences.

On 'Failure' and Inviting in the Senses

Artists and scientists may have different methodologies. Foremost, they conduct their research for different reasons and do not (in most cases) search for the same results. But generally, both artists and scientists are driven by curiosity and are experts at observing. Their specific gazes can complement each other's work. What for a scientist could appear as a failure, within repeating measurements to determine a result, can be valuable for an artist and lead to new artistic developments.

In the early modern period, the division between arts and sciences was not as great as it appears today. At that time, many natural philosophers relied on artists and artisans to mediate their ideas to a wider audience through image-making, engravings and graphic art.

There is a difference between attending a structured symposium and spending two open-ended days together - having joint morning coffee, taking collective walks, going on excursions, informally speaking about each other's practices and interests, and cooking. More time together allows for conversing informally, and new perspectives can arise beyond one's usual prepared arguments. The surrounding landscape has an impact and comes into play. When we first swim together, feel the body moving in the water, and later discuss glacier melt and climate change, we invite our senses to the discussion. When we take a walk to look at the historical landscape and flora, and later learn about these plants' medicinal properties and the creation of colour pigments from them to paint with, we gain an interdisciplinary perspective that weaves practice and theoretical perspectives.

- The Curators