Future Reflections Lexicon
Critical Collaboration: Researchtraining informed by critical theory makes researchers sensitive to bias -both the biases of others and their own. Critical collaboration can put thissensitivity into practice by creating a dynamic context for openlyengaging with these biases as a group. For Heiddegger, paying attention to the uncriticalaspects that condition our being-in-the-world involves addressing ourpre-understanding not as something temporal - before understanding - butas ontologically structural to existence: that is, pre-reflective. Whencollaborative dialogue is understood as a ‘safe’ context whereinterlocutors can critically interrogate both their own assumptions and thoseof their peers, it also promotes the iteration of shared knowledge that isattentive to both the individuals’ and group’s pre-understandings. (MB)
Dispersed knowledge: At stake inFuture Reflection’s ongoing investigation is an understanding of what might betermed “dispersed knowledge.” This is knowledge that, rather than settling intoa clear and unequivocal knowledge claim, is distributed through the investigation—inthe practice, in the thesis, in the discussion around/through/as the research.To locate and incubate this knowledge, the researcher benefits from variouskinds of recognition--from different ways of perceiving. These includeforesight, insight and retrospection as points of view enabling alternativeunderstandings. Common to all these perspectives, however, is perception as aprompt for reflection, and reflection as a catalyst for interpretation. (NB:This idea is connected to Tim O'Riley'sidea of a "distributedartwork".) (MB)
Integrated texts refer to the textsdisseminated as part of Future Reflections' performative presentations. Forexample, Future Reflections produced a flyer for FR5: Future (Re)iteration,which surveyed the group's six projects to date. Brief summaries of theseprojects were brought together with sponsorship information and a working diagram of the group's participatory dynamic. Produced specifically for the Artof Research: Research Narratives Symposium (October 2008), this flyer formedpart of Future (Re)iteration as a mini retrospective. As such, it well exemplifies FR's notion of an integrated text as operating both internally andexternally. On the one hand, producing an integrated text involves a rereadingof the group's practice--an opportunity for the FR to refresh its theshared/individual self-understandings at play in our research. On the otherhand, these texts function like newsletters for an external audience about the group's recent projects. Hence they are integrated (into the project) and alsointegrating (as they overview FR's work).
Thomas Hirschhorn is another artist who uses integrated texts in his work. In a presentation on his recent exhibitionThe Eye (Wiener Secession, Summer 2008) at the Royal Academy (London onNovember 5, 2008), he discussed language as a material for his installations.It operates like other "stuff" comprising the exhibition, such as tape, cardboard, plastic and so on. Language--organized into a printed text--isdistinguished, however, by its portability. An exhibition"take-away," this ephemera affords an alternative point of accessinto the exhibition at a different time and place. It creates another openingthrough which viewers can engage with his work in a different time and space. ?Hirschhorn talked about the joy resulting from the dissemination of his texts. It seemsthis sharing makes him happy. He showed before and after images of take-awaysstacked in the Wiener Secession. By the end of the exhibition, a significantnumber were gone. He said this removal pleased him. Go to http://artnews.org/artist.php?i=110 toread Marcus Steinweg's reflections on the text he produced for Hirschhorn'sinstallation Double Garage. (MB)
Self-defeating definitions: Aself-defeating definition refers to a definition that, by it’s very attempt to pin down specific meaning, self-consciously fails. In so doing, itacknowledges what it cannot accommodate. This is in contrast to a more normativeunderstanding of “self-defeating” as a negative descriptor. FutureReflections recuperates this term by using it to gloss definitions that aremore like placeholders than definitive descriptions: they attempt to circumscribe a referent without making any conclusive claims about itssignificance. (MB)