Thinking with art: from situated knowledge to experiential knowing

Abstract

New movements in the creative disciplines have disrupted traditional understandings of knowledge and knowledge production. Knowledge in creative practice is increasingly seen through the process of creating, mediating and encountering art rather than in any perceived final form. Examining recent work in the fine arts, this article studies composers and contemporary artists to extract the embedded conception of knowledge and its production.

Focusing on the practice of composer Gayle Young and visual artist Tino Sehgal, the setting up of conditions for interactive experience illuminates the ways in which experiential knowledge takes place in a distributed manner. As Csikszentmihalyi (1996: 23) concluded, ‘creativity does not happen inside people's heads, but in the interaction between a person's thoughts and a sociocultural context’. Like creativity, experiential knowledge is inseparable from the context of its production and reception, a fact clarified by recent work in actor network theory. These artists highlight this phenomenon by challenging audiences to question existing systems of meaning, and draw upon tacit and embodied tools of interpretation in the encounter with contemporary artistic forms. Ultimately, we claim that understanding knowledge as action best frames the future of public engagement with creative practice, social structures and cultural forms.¹

Keywords:

• contemporary art
• embodied cognition
• habitus
• music
• social interaction
• tacit knowledge