Artistic Transfer: Efficiency Through Unruly Thinking 9783839446683

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Ursula Bertram ARTISTIC TRANSFER

Image | Volume 150

The Centre for Artistic Transfer/[ID]factory was awarded the 2012 Selected Landmark prize by the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Innovation, Science and Research.

Ursula Bertram, born in 1952, is an artist and professor at the Technical University Dortmund, Germany. Her research focuses on the transfer of artistic thinking into other fields, such as business and the sciences. She is co-founder of the flagship project Centre for Artistic Transfer, with the [ID]factory providing an interdisciplinary space for teaching and the development of non-linear, artistic thinking. Her artistic works have been exhibited in Germany, the United States, Russia, and Venezuela.

Ursula Bertram

ARTISTIC TRANSFER Efficiency Through Unruly Thinking

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OLIVER SCHEYTT

GRUSSWORT

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with thought-sketches by Werner Preißing

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

10 PREFACE

PART 1 THOUGHT OUT 26 THE MISSING LINK 32 ARTISTIC WORK 1 34 DEVELOPING NON-LINEAR THOUGHT AND ACTION 40 ARTISTIC WORK 2 50 ARTISTIC WORK 3 52 SCIENTIFIC THINKING AND WORKING – ARTISTIC THINKING AND WORKING 62 ARTISTIC WORK 4 68 INTELLIGENT UNKNOWING 72 ARTISTIC WORK 5 78 POROUS CONDITIONS 84 ARTISTIC WORK 6 88 WHAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF FROG? 94 ARTISTIC WORK 7

TABLE OF CONTENTS

98 THE ARTISTIC PROCESS 100 ARTISTIC WORK 8 104 ARTISTIC THOUGHT AND ACTION 126 ARTISTIC WORK 9 132 THE ARTISTIC ATTITUDE 150 ARTISTIC WORK 10 156 NAVIGATING IN OPEN SYSTEMS 162 ARTISTIC WORK 11 166 A MODEL FOR THE FUTURE 180 ARTISTIC WORK 12 186 THINKING DIFFERENTLY – WHERE DOES IT LEAD? 198 ARTISTIC WORK 13

PART 2 DEMANDED 204 RESOLUTION 206 SYMPOSIUM 2010 – ART SPONSORS BUSINESS

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART 2

CONTINUED

SAMPLED 216 [ID]FACTORY: THE THOUGHT FACTORY 218 YOUNG LAB – RESEARCH QUESTIONS FROM BUSINESS 222 ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNER: THE OFFICE FOR RESEARCH INNOVATION 224 ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNER: GREENPEACE ENERGY 226 ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNER: IBK KOHNEN 230 ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNER: PERSONALANALYSTEN PERS.X 232 ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNER: BILFINGER SE/SACHSENFONDS 236 ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNER: ISAS LEIBNIZ-INSTITUT FÜR ANALYTISCHE WISSENSCHAFTEN 238 ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNER: KPE/CREDIT SUISSSE 242 ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNER: WIGASTONE/STEINTRADING 244 ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNER: YOU! 246 PROFESSIONAL LAB: INTERVENTIONS FOR BUSINESS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DISCUSSED 254 JANUAR FORUM FACTORY 258 CLEUYOU CULTURE FACTORY 260 INNOVATION: HOW DOES IT WORK? 262 SYMPOSIUM 2012 – ART SPONSORS SCIENCE

TRANSFERRED 272 MODELS, STRATEGIES, PRINCIPLES 274 THE PRINCIPLE OF ARTISTIC TRANSFER 276 THE HOURGLASS PRINCIPLE 278 THE CLOVERLEAF MODEL 280 THE BOLERO PRINCIPLE

296 PUBLICATIONS 298 BIBLIOGRAPHY 301 IMAGE CREDITS 304 IMPRINT

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PREFACE

PREFACE What is Artistic Transfer? Why Detours?

PREFACE

Tumult on the streets of Lima, a city of 9 million inhabitants in Peru, and a desperate situation in the city’s slums. In the year 2000, this was the outcome of Alberto Fujimori’s inhumane dictatorship. He was eventually forced to step down by the mass unrest and fled the country. In 2002, likewise in Lima, the artist Francis Alÿs armed 500 volunteers with shovels in order to shift a 200-metre-high and 500-metre-wide sand dune 10 centimeters. The mountain towered over them, 100 times larger than their own physical dimensions. They appear miniscule in the face of a seemingly endless expanse of sand, Zen Buddhist saying which they work at with their shovels. In an arced line, the Peruvian workers toss forwards scoops of sand, bit by bit, hour by hour, until the mountain has been moved. Alÿs’ work When Faith Moves Mountains received global attention. His images reflect the will power of the people, and became lodged in the collective consciousness. “Maximum effort, minimal result”, comments the artist, “most efficient”, we might add.

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“If you are in a hurry, take a detour”

In 2012, the Bielefeld-based pesticide producer Dr Hans-Dietrich Reckhaus asked the Swiss conceptual artists Frank and Patrick Riklin from the Atelier für Sonderaufgaben (Workshop for Special Tasks) for a new marketing concept for his newly patented fly traps. After careful consideration, the artists instead suggested creating a regeneration zone for the insects, and set him the task of saving one fly for every fly killed by his products. The campaign was launched in the village of Deppendorf, where in a moving event, 900 houseflies were rescued with the help of the residents of the village. More events followed. Since then, Reckhaus has founded the company Insect Respect, which invests 10c from every packet sold in the creation of ecological insect regeneration zones. Reckhaus became the ambassador for the creative economy. He won the 2014 Lateral Thinker Award, was nominated for the German Entrepreneur Prize, won the Kyocera Environmental Prize, the Swiss Award for Excellence and the 2015 Swiss Ethics Prize. There were reports in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, in the science magazine Nano/3Sat, WDR and in the business magazine Brand Eins. The first fly, by the name of Erika, was declared a work of art. Unruly thought, or thought that doesn’t fit inside the box, is the basis of creative innovation, which without a doubt also occasion adverse side effects, having been described as ‘creative destruction’ by the economist

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Joseph Schumpeter as far back as 1942. Ultimately, creative destruction expels and destroys old structures. This is an indispensable component of facilitating the creation of new regimes, and is as such no mere system error. The cognitive scientist Edward De Bono outlined the system of ‘lateral thinking’,1 which opens up new perspectives through unpredictable, contradictory thought processes. The musician Christopher Dell recommends improvisation2 as an art form and technique for dealing with uncertainty. Improvising, mentally suppressing and abandoning assumed notions is indispensable for the development of futurity. On this, there is agreement. But it is rarely taken beyond the theoretical realm. The practice is disproportionately difficult to achieve and usually unpopular, because it means abandoning structures, commonly agreed-upon ideas or perspectives that are vehemently defended, and not just for the sake of the argument. So it’s consoling to know that unruly thinking is easier in the dark. That is the outcome of an experiment conducted at the Technical University, Dortmund (TU), in which study subjects were asked to suggest all the possible uses for a specific product. One group gave their answers to the question by the light of day, the other in a dark room. In the results, the subjects in the dark room produced significantly more and better ideas. According to Professor Holzmüller, a researcher in the field of economics, the reason for this is that in the dark, it is easier to overcome social barriers and the fear of embarrassment. Which is hardly surprising. The more norm-based a system is, the more reluctantly it reacts to creative innovations. Sometimes artists have an easier time of it, because their discipline knows no set forms. As such, they are not subject to the agreements and normative knowledge of their field, which would force them to attempt to break out of these confines. On the contrary, their profession is characterised more by a subsystem of free availability in uncertainty. They are required to view, inspect, consider, observe and draw connections between things without bias, in order to then transmit them into a form or process. This valuable skill is viewed as a significant resource for non-artistic fields in contemporary discourse, and is highly efficient for systems which find themselves at an impasse. But from my experience with some 4000 instances of working and interacting with young, committed and sensitive individuals in creating artworks, acquiring this skill of letting go of traditional models of perception and thought is one of 1 | Edward de Bono: Lateral Thinking for Management: A Handbook. Penguin Books, London, 1990. 2 | Christopher Dell, Die improvisierende Organisation. transcript, Bielefeld 2012.

PREFACE

the greatest hurdles that have to be surmounted in order to begin to work artistically. I refer to this as artistic thought and action, which includes the capacity to deal with non-linear processes. It means that I have to be able to switch over into open systems and create my own subsystems, the rules of which I bring into the world at the same time as the product itself. There is no doubt that this skill is acquired in the “primordial soup of art” and possibly in other fields which draw on the indeterminable, and which have developed a suitable system for doing so. In his talk at Documenta 13, the philosopher Alexander Düttmann explained that “that which is unthought is the motor of thought”, and therefore, the indeterminable is the engine of the determinable. He went on to say that this procedure proves to be very strenuous: “Strenuous means moving around in the stress of indeterminacy, because I am not sure”. The chapters ‘Thought Out’, ‘Demanded’, ‘Sampled’, ‘Discussed’ and ‘Transferred’ look into how we arrive at this strenuous indeterminacy, the forms of exploratory drilling of artistic transfer which have been carried out in our think tank [ID]factory, and which patterns can be ascertained from them. The focus is on a capability which is both difficult to achieve and difficult to recognise. The texts, interviews and papers gathered together for the first time in this book are primarily concerned with this capability, its development, the obstacles to attaining it, its patterns, effects and fields of application. Art promotes the development of aesthetic experience, perception and personality. It is an autonomous form of actively appropriating and understanding the world. At the same time, it can perform a transfer into fields beyond art, into social, economic and academic contexts. On the one hand, we speak of artistic transfer when the potentialities and strategies of artistic thought and action are deployed in order to deliberately enrich other disciplines and fields of knowledge. On the other hand, methods or experiences from outside the field of art can be incorporated into the development of artistic processes, such that works emerge which would not be possible without transdisciplinary interaction. Klaus Heid and Rüdiger Johns describe the latter as transfer art, which is the foundation of artistic research.3 The specific, nuanced, critical worldview or unconventional approach which is inherent to the sub3 | Heid K. and Ruediger J., ‘Was ist Transferkunst? Ein Terminus für transdisziplinäres, künstlerisches Arbeiten’ in JUNI kunst zeit schrift, 2003.

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system of art can provide processes in science, economics and society more generally with impulses which promote new perspectives, as with the company Reckhaus. Likewise, the development of artworks can profit synergistically from processes and strategies from outside the field of art, which can be integrated into the development of the work. Take, for example, the legendary art rabbit, Alba, which was made to glow in the dark through the biotechnological implantation of a luminescent gene; or indeed the use of labour processes to move a mountain in Lima. In 2016, the TU Dortmund became one of the first tertiary education institutions to give scientific and artistic research equal recognition, which they embedded in their constitution, thus initiating a paradigm shift in the concept of research which had endured for over 300 years, ever since Descartes’s methodological division of object and subject, which defined research as purely scientific. In the present publication the focus is always on a new kind of efficiency, which is reached through detours and unruly thinking. The texts, works and images originate from the perspective of artistic work: how set connotations can be jettisoned like ballast without losing orientation. How to write a letter at sea. How to think beyond assumed notions, without giving up the building blocks of your understanding of the world, but rather in reassembling them. The role played by a yellow chair on the beach. How non-conformity can produce innovation. In short, how a form of artistic thinking can be tried out which effortlessly delivers the solutions to its problems. There is a model for this, which I present in the chapter ‘Transferred’. It is very powerful, looks utterly simple and is called ‘the clover leaf’. In applying the clover leaf I have developed hundreds of cues that promote non-linear thinking. A number of them are mentioned in the texts gathered in the chapter ‘Thought Out’. I used the clover leaf technique when determining the structure of the book in order to facilitate multiple modes of approach, and to experiment with these myself. At the [ID]factory think tank, which I founded in 2007 together with Werner Preißing from the Büro für Innovationsforschung (Office for Innovation Research, BfI) at the TU in the tradition of the Denkwerkstatt LeDreff from 2003, we had the opportunity to utilise a fantastic space for thinking differently, for experimental action and interdisciplinary discourse. With the spirit and relentlessness of our budding artists, with the objections of our university environment, with the curiosity of like-minded people and the many inspiring minds from all fields, such as the artist Timm Ulrich, art theorist Bazon Brock, philosopher Julian Nida-Rümme-

PREFACE

lin, neuroscientist Gerald Hüther, physician Metin Tolan, musician Christopher Dell, sociologist Fritz Böhle, choreographer Reinhild Hofmann, the organisation Greenpeace Energy and the company Bilfinger SE (to name just a few), these former chemistry halls experienced a hype which unleashed and harnessed energies in equal measure, an impression of which you’ll find in the chapter ‘Discussed’. We posed ourselves the question of how we could create a posture from which artistic thinking would transgress its boundaries, allowing it to effortlessly become visible and productive in other disciplines, without losing its authenticity. We drafted a proposal for policy-makers (contained in the chapter ‘Demanded’) which outlines the resolution developed over the course of the symposium ‘Art Sponsors Business’. The aim was to set energy free using the means of art for the purpose of extra-artistic concerns. The bolero principle can be directly applied here, the clover leaf model is the foundation for tailored strategy developments and the hourglass principle shows how artistic investigations can be transformed into general investigations and needs. Of course, in 2084 all this will be taken for granted. By then, great importance will have been ascribed to unruly thinking in schools. Interdisciplinary invention workshops will provide students with non-linear input and a high level of non-material inventiveness. A generation of alert young people is emerging that can think laterally and flexibly. At universities, artistic professorships will have been increased to at least 15% of all positions, meaning that the transfer into extra-artistic disciplines has already become an almost universally accepted way of thinking. The development of a synergistic academy will have taken place a long time ago, with the disciplines having long since cast aside their fear of contact. Artists will be working with innovative leadership staff and researchers. Businesses will have accepted their social responsibility, come to value authenticity, collective social action, diversity, ecological value creation and will no longer view efficiency in a one-dimensional manner. Work will be viewed by employees as the development of a livable world which is carried out together with democratically organised management staff. The rest is done by autonomous machines. With images, texts and our own artistic works, this book dares to propose models toward a methodology which loses its identity the more you attempt to force it into a logically comprehensible form. This prospect has helped my students to blossom, and in response to the sheer impossi-

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bility of the challenges they were set, they have given birth to alternate visions. One example is a prescription medication for those suffering from a BEHOLDBETA deficiency,4 in order to better understand art. If, despite my visual and textual exploratory drilling, I haven’t managed to provide you with an understanding of a different way of approaching efficiency, I promise you a recipe for success in the form of a solution that can be administered as droplets. Thanks I would like to thank everybody, across all levels, who was involved in the evolution of this book, in particular the students of the TU Dortmund for their curious and rebellious approach to the focus points of the research, and the team at the [ID]factory, who continually challenged me to think differently. I owe a big thank you to our Vice-Chancellor Eberhard Becker for his faith in the audacious [ID]factory experiment in 2007. Thanks to the Vice-Chancellor Ursula Gather for the opportunity for continue to develop the project, and to the senate for their forward-thinking decision in 2016 to give equal recognition to artistic and scientific research. Without the committed work of Brigitte Hitschler right from the beginning, so much of this would not have been possible. I would like to thank those people who raised me and have accompanied me in my life, and who have provided me with such affection and freedom: my parents and my sister Marion. My heartfelt thanks goes to Werner Preißing, whose positive, analytic and visual thinking allowed a game of ping pong to develop, which led to hundreds of discursive visions, to discoveries, models, methods and lateral workshops in the cultural workshop by the sea and in the Center for Artistic Transfer.

4 | Johanna Bielawski, Skulptan Plus, a medicine in tablet form with INSTRUCTIONS inside and contraindications. To be used in the case of not understanding a sculpture.

PREFACE

Art in mind

met

hod

thinking outside the box

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artistic thought and action

the clover model

the elements of a business

sponso

rships

short-cir

rt sho

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cuit

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cuit 3

money

an event: art at work

the image in the boss’s office

short-c

ircuits r sho

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Figure 1: Werner Preißing: Art in mind

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business

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Part 1

THOUGHT OUT

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THOUGHT OUT

THE MISSING LINK The Significance of the Arts for Business, Science, and Society*

* First published in: Bertram, Ursula, ed. Kunst fördert Wirtschaft. Zur Innovationskraft des künstlerischen Denkens. transcript, Bielefeld, 2012.

THE MISSING LINK

What do a physicist, a neurologist, and an artist have in common? Will we be able to find a common language? Can we understand each other? Has the time come to render disciplinary, cultural, and political boundaries permeable? The generation of those who still remember separate schoolyards for Protestant and Catholic schoolchildren has only just turned 60. Neatly arranged into distinct domains, the children were wary of each other and would pick fights after school. Universities are ultimately responsible for subject-boundaries as well, dividing knowledge transfer into separate disciplines. The drawing of boundaries between fields of study by no means leads to fistfights at universities, yet, astonishingly enough, one notices that students who graduated from high school together become wary of one another within just a few semesters of studying at different faculties. These rifts will sometimes intensify and extend into professional life and, as a result, meetings of interdisciplinary teams face significant integration problems. A lack of skill in thinking across disciplinary boundaries creates uncertainty. It seems that transformative processes are changing direction today. Figuratively speaking, they involve a shift from the traditional orientation towards an idea of vertical progress to networks that cut across vertical lines of progression and from there into a vibrant system of interdisciplinary, intercultural, and international possibilities that are potentially at each other’s disposal. Disciplinary monocultures are out of fashion; cross-disciplinary counter-movements are the order of the day. This includes the meeting of children from ten different countries, along with experts on intercultural education, at the most recent symposium organised by Stiftung Mercator in Essen in July 2010. It also includes the questions raised during the symposium ‘Artistic Research’, the fellowship concept practiced at Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, and the conception of the Ruhr.2010 campaign, itself reflected in the open and flexible spatial planning concept for the Dortmunder U. Exhibitions give rise to new positions, as for example have those of the renowned Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dortmund, whose media concept – much like that of the ISEA – blurs boundaries. And then there are education projects like ‘Rhythm Is It’ – a professional dance project involving school children and the Berlin Symphony Orchestra that revolved not so much around dance as around allowing young people to develop their skills and potentials by means of non-linear methods. The passionate commitment that the choreographer was able to kindle and the experiments that they undertook with their own sense of belonging

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imparted new values to the participants – namely, to children from socalled educationally deprived strata of society who attend some of Berlin’s more socially difficult schools. The transdisciplinary movements include new courses of study with networked structures. We find chemists, mathematicians, artists, spatial planners, journalists, and specialists in Middle Eastern and Asian studies already working together during their training, including in small, innovative frameworks such as the Bronnbacher Scholarship, which promotes the development of creative skills at the Universities of Bochum and Mannheim, or the research on musical patterns in business organisation conducted by the MICC project at the University of Duisburg-Essen, or the interdisciplinary innovation workshops for artistic thinking organised by [ID]factory at the TU Dortmund. Interdisciplinary work means acquiring, at an early stage, the skills necessary to be able to integrate every conceivable kind of difference, among them, of course, the differences that arise through migration. The distinct worlds of thought and experience that distinguish science, art, and business offer great potential for a new form of exchange. Terms such as interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity only inadequately capture the processes that are able to take place. We are in motion. Yet, as we know, categories and rigid strata no longer move towards or away from each other. Instead, for a long time now, new, temporary constellations of performance and research have been coalescing, over and over again, like swathes cutting through vibrating systems that can be better compared with Google’s system than with orderly analysis and delimitations by means of definitions. Most researchers and entrepreneurs are convinced that we have overcome the age of narrow categories and boundaries and that an age is dawning in which networks and alliances will enable us to manage the future. The question is: has our thinking kept up with these developments? And are we capable of living what we think, of transferring it into the everyday and shaping it into an attitude? Which skills are required in a society disposed towards flexibility, one that leaves boundaries behind, seeks to balance and hybridise energy streams, and acts in a non-linear manner while clearly positioning itself as integrative, transdisciplinary, transnational, and hence without categorical certainties. How can we think beyond borders without simply becoming arbitrary? And where can we look for examples or role models who have already internalised the new

THE MISSING LINK

mindset, who are already disseminating it? Are there disciplines or fields that are more versed in the new skills than others? Are there people in our midst who have anticipated these sorts of “testing movements” (Karl R. Popper) and who are already living non-linearity? And if so, how might this be transmitted from one field to another, in a sustained manner at that, and not just by short-circuiting physics to neurology and management, or art to science and economics? In order to approach this question, I would like to introduce you to a number of people who already live like this. Also, I would like to encourage you to discover cross-disciplinary interconnections on your own. I am convinced that from here a pull or a momentum will develop, allowing for what could – buoyed by a tailwind from likeminded groups present here or represented at the energy hub of Ruhr.2010 – become a veritable movement. The mere fact that we have succeeded in bringing such a large number of thinkers to a symposium with the provocative title ‘Art Sponsors Business’ and that we have arranged for them to address such an exotic topic – even if some speakers focus neither on art nor on business in their work – indicates that “art” is already considered a specific mode of thinking that can be mapped onto other disciplines. What we can expect then are attitudes rather than recipes for creative work. They are attitudes related to curiosity, open-mindedness and authentic self-positioning, to the joys of the imagination and of exploration, to values and unusual approaches, to lateral thinking and letting things happen, to doubting and going back to the drawing board. The strategies we encounter are characterised by a spirit of discovery, by non-linear experimentation, a radical willingness to take chances, and an extraordinary degree of perseverance. Such elements and potentials are exactly what artistic processes of thought and action require. As we shall see: artistic thinking goes by many names, and can be found as much in the processes of scientific research as in the conceptual networks devised by the innovation department of a firm, as long as its potentials are recognised, nurtured, and appreciated. How this works, and what results such cross-border and transdisciplinary thought and action yield, can best be gleaned from the following textual and visual contributions made by those who have opted to live a dual life both of scientific precision and artistic capacity for innovation. In their large-scale approach to the ‘Great British Art Debate’ in Autumn 2011, the Tate posed the question: “Should art be good for you?” In so doing, it touched on the question of the transfer of art and culture.

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Clearly the focus on the “product” in both business and the arts has repeatedly deflected attention away from the “process”, ultimately referring the observer back to their respective domains. The transfer between the disciplines and the augmentation of scientific thinking by artistic thinking, also by lateral or inventive thinking or “culturally-based creative thinking”, offer a new perspective on how to cultivate and train skills that can figure as an eccentric sheave of scientific research and therefore drive an increase in innovation capacity. The marriage of these opposites, if accomplished passionately, will be of key importance for our future economic system. As far back as 2009, a European study conducted by KEA concluded as follows: “Art and culture can make a vital contribution to the achievement of objectives that reconcile wealth creation with sustainability and respect for common humanist values because one of the features of art and culture is that they help us to transcend purely economic or utilitarian constraints. We all have a role to play, both as citizens and consumers in drawing on the power of culture and creativity to help deliver new, more sustainable ways of living and working. […] Europe should become a central place in the meeting of influences and ideas, in order to increase both creativity and innovative business activity. In this way, the power of creativity, art and culture could be harnessed to play an increasingly important role in driving economic and social progress in Europe.”1 By bringing together artists, scientists, and business experts at the ‘Art Sponsors Business’ symposium, we aim to identify the non-linear and artistic thought processes and methods that cognitive processes rely on, to initiate their sustained incorporation into teaching and practice, and to optimise future cooperation between experts from various disciplines. It goes without saying that the investigation of a promising non-linear field cannot be pursued in a linear manner. This is not about recipes and the tailor-made integration of artistic thinking into successful economic or other extra-artistic applications. The discourse we aim at involves a highly indirect operation which has first to make room for interdisciplinary encounters and movements. The genuine adventure unfolds inside the mind of audience-members and readers who can become, as we say at the [ID]factory, explorers of their own desire. This might well be the

1 | KEA European Affairs, ‘The Impact of Culture and Creativity: A Study prepared for the European Commission (Directorate-General for Education and Culture)’. KEA European Affairs, Brussels, 2009.

THE MISSING LINK

missing link that allows us to set our knowledge in motion, so as to chart the potentials in ourselves that open up new and hitherto unimaginable possibilities for acting together.

Generating innovation Ideal Horizontal, interdisciplinary research and exchange

Networking

System

Essentialknowledge

Vertical research

Expertknowledge

Methods

Teaching and research

Figure 1: Werner Preißing: The knowledge cube

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ARTISTIC WORK 1

Ursula Bertram

TOR DER WISSENSCHAFTEN (GATEWAY TO SCIENCE)

University of Kaiserslautern Centre for Artificial Intelligence, 1987 Granite and steel



GATEWAY TO SCIENCE

The Renaissance marks a watershed in a new form of scientific inquiry that abandons the primacy of faith. In the field of medicine, where analytical and anatomical research was hitherto considered an act of meddling in God’s creation, a new era of inquiry was heralded. The GATEWAY TO SCIENCE associatively reflects upon this shift. The supporting pillar of this new conception of science leads into the research institute for artificial intelligence at the University of Kaiserslautern, and from there into the unknown. Today, the Gateway to Science serves as a meeting point for young PhD candidates, and as the logo of the University of Kaiserslautern.

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DEVELOPING NON-LINEAR THOUGHT AND ACTION Improvisation Skills, Inventiveness, and Testing Movements*

* First published in: preaview – Zeitschrift für innovative Arbeitsgestaltung und Prävention, 2014 (5): 8–9.

DEVELOPING NON-LINEAR THOUGHT AND ACTION

Let’s be clear: creative, artistic thinking is neither a creative technique nor about painting pictures or making sculptures. This is a preconception we must rid ourselves of. Creativity is not a prisoner of art. Rather, artistic thinking, like scientific thinking, is located on a higher level. Artistic thinking can take place anywhere, in any mind, any discipline, and any area of life. It is the kind of thinking that remains when, finally, I subtract the “images”. It is an attitude that, by turning towards the open, indicates a fluid matrix of possibilities unfolding between enthusiasm, curiosity, mindfulness, and the joy of the encounter, including with oneself. It is the kind of non-linear, creative thinking and acting that is skilled in navigating open systems with numerous unknowns. It is the kind of thinking we should develop if we want to remain balanced in a world of work that has realised that insecurity and ceaseless reorientation are features inherent in the system. It is not a question of how we designate the valuable product of an artistic process. What matters is that we have it at our disposal: daily, reliably, and into the future. Innovation skills, inventiveness, lateral thinking (de Bono 1996), inventive organisation (Mauzy/Harimann 2003), the art of improvisation (Dell 2002), testing movements (Popper 2002), or simply artistic thought and action (Bertram 2011) – these are some of the keywords that have transformed the somewhat outdated pool of ideas around creativity as a leisure activity into a highly desirable fuel for complex development processes in business, science, and scholarship. A range of disciplines have been seized by the question of the composition of this fuel and what it means for future development. The value of creativity is undoubtedly recognised today. Hundreds of research projects are in search of a blueprint or a signature pattern of the capacity for innovation, seeking for the origins, conditions and requirements of this capacity, and the methods by which to evaluate it. If it were possible to demonstrate an effective way to ensure the development of inventiveness, the rather breathless world of commerce would probably embrace this discovery like a gospel. In the past, industrial sociologists, education researchers, innovation managers, economic experts and biochemists have all considered how innovation might be generated and whether its processes are transferable. Yet, they rarely did this in cooperation with one another. Every single aspect was separately scrutinised: the arts, music, neurology, nanotechnology, biogenetics, and other research fields.

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This was how, for instance, the semipermeable skin of the frog was discovered as a model for new surfaces in the materials industry. New nanoscale microscopes allow for precise visualisation. The innovation consisted in an imitation of nature. The frog is the true innovator. It has generated its skin in the course of a genetic process that took several million years. So how do I become a frog without spending several million years in an innovation department? Can creative techniques help shorten this process to several hours? And do artists – whose work consists, as we know, of up to 100% innovation – have a formula for creative power? There is no doubt that, over the centuries, the insularity of art gave rise to a robust innovation-potential whose secret has meanwhile become interesting to economists as well. Here, there are no rules, no formal objectives, and no conventions of the kind that characterise other organisational structures. Is it possible, just as in the case of the frog, to imitate something crucial here? And how does that look under the microscope? Is there a discernible pattern? Popper talks about testing movements, which are experimental movements. Displacing something experimentally, but also being displaced, coupled with an extreme alertness to the environment and a willingness to lose oneself but equally to assert oneself – these are the things that everyone should be allowed to learn. This is, however, something that needs space and time, plenty of time. If, in the future, we do not adequately support this competence at school-age, potentials for new development will elude us. It is indispensable that school and university education take the changing social conditions into account and that they augment traditional linear, results-oriented learning with the teaching of transdisciplinary, non-linear competences. In order to pursue these aims, teachers and students need to stand on an equal footing. This is about interdisciplinarity, flexible perspectives, alternative approaches, networked thought processes, personal growth, and visionary development potentials – all understood in terms of future requirements. We currently navigate open systems instead of closed ones, and we will do so increasingly in the future. While closed systems provide the certainty, order and orientation we need, lest we have to invent every day anew, open systems are characterised by a lack of such features.

DEVELOPING NON-LINEAR THOUGHT AND ACTION

Figure 1: Werner Preißing: Closed and open systems

“Our system thrives on searching movements in the open, as part of a lively democracy. […] In research and scholarship, doubt is not a system failure but rather its foundation […]. We know that the traditional research process and its later applications have long ceased to be exclusive affairs,” said German President Joachim Gauck in his address at the TU Dortmund on July 4, 2012, on the occasion of the DFG event ‘From the Idea to the Insight’. He added a recommendation for achieving a balance in science and scholarship between acceleration, rest, and leisure. It seems that, judging by the key words (searching movements, navigating open systems, doubt, deconventionalising research, deceleration), even the head of state was eager to specifically encourage the university to venture to think differently. Thinking differently is an object of ambivalence: it is inconvenient, unpopular, and indispensable. In his lecture ‘What is Thinking?’ (Düttmann 2012) at dOCUMENTA 13, Alexander Düttmann, Professor of Philosophy and Visual Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London, known for his book Derrida und ich, explained that “that which is unthought is the motor of thought” and therefore, the indeterminable is the motor of the determinable. He added that this procedure proves to be very strenuous: “strenuous means moving around in the stress of indeterminacy, because I am not sure.” To remain in uncertainty initially makes us afraid and takes incomparably more effort than to orient ourselves in familiar surroundings. It takes a lot for the mind to leave its comfort zone, for the body to mobilise sufficient energies, and for reason to signal that detours are worthwhile, even if they are not known to yield results. Such a signal will only be sent if the

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mind senses something very attractive. It has to be attracted by, say, an island in the middle of a blue Pacific Ocean, with palm trees and coconuts and the aura of something that, if one were to miss out on it, would be irretrievably lost. To depart from firm ground is by no means convenient, neither for the person who ventures to leave nor for the person who opens the door and dismantles barriers.

The Expulsion from Paradise

Paradise

The Tree of Knowledge

Adam and Eve

Apple

Figure 2: Werner Preißing: The expulsion from Paradise

It is a big mistake to believe that transitioning to open systems, or keeping them open, is easy. Letting go of accustomed patterns of perception and thinking is one of the most significant obstacles when studying art. Art education is mainly about “breaking down”, not “building up”. The biggest challenge is not producing but letting go. In this context, the economist Schumpeter speaks of “creative destruction”. In its insularity, art is now being considered as not only socially acceptable, but maybe even serviceable. An untapped resource for a different form of action, whose unconventional approaches engender a kind of pattern for uncontrollable processes. This is at least the promise. But the pattern is hard to discern, since it has emerged from something that is the antithesis of linear calculability and logic, and because it is experience-based and constantly changing. And to make things worse, art’s pattern, which has given us imagery, movement, dance, sounds and colours, and which sparks our imagination, is not a dress – it is a skin. You cannot just take

DEVELOPING NON-LINEAR THOUGHT AND ACTION

it off and hand it over. The pattern has to grow together with the person, very slowly, layer by layer. It is not a product to be purchased, not even if it is packaged as a creative technique. It requires a process that leads to an attitude. The “waste products” of this attitude are, then, what generates the products. If your efforts merely focus on the products, the pattern will vanish. Everyone gazes with eager curiosity at an invisible pattern, which seems extraordinarily valuable to fields outside art and which promises to change the future (Bertram 2012). Non-linear procedures not only enjoy popularity in the hypertext world of the web, they have long since found their way into the fields of engineering and logistics, too, where the new factory model is compared to a jazz band: “There is a broad outline that all machines have to conform to, but there is room for improvisation as well,” explains Wolfgang Wahlster of the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence. The Centre for Artistic Transfer/[ID]factory investigates how, in the case of the open systems we have been considering, innovation works in our minds, how the skills needed for improvisation can be acquired, and how artistic thinking can be transferred into extra-artistic fields and take effect in the education system of the future.

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ARTISTIC WORK 2

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SENECA

Trier Imperial Thermal Baths, 1996 Scenic installations in the underground supply tunnels of an ancient Roman bath

The seven sections of the installation SENECA reference the concept of the subterranean imperial baths, the vision of which can be seen in the baths in Trier. Inside the dim maze of wall remnants, the shrill whistle produced by kettles marks the route. In the distance, objects run by blower motors or pneumatic engines gleam. A giant bag made of red parachute silk seems to breath like a lung crammed into an overly narrow corridor. 24 loudspeakers whisper an impassive description of acts of dissection, cutting and scalding into your ear. A simple cooking recipe develops an ambivalent life of its own. Video works showing odd nudity, noise and projections of fire on water reveal the fragile states of survival underneath the visible (bathing) pleasure.

URSULA BERTRAM

SENECA

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SENECA

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WAS IST KÜNSTLERISCHES DENKEN?

“I swear it – silence is not as necessary to a scholarly retreat as you might think. Here is a cacophony sounding all about me – for I am living right upstairs from the bathhouse. Call to mind every sort of awful noise that grates on the ears. When the stronger men do their exercises, swinging their hand weights about and straining with the effort (or pretending to), I hear the grunts each time they exhale, their rasping and gasping for breath. When I get some idle fellow who’s happy with an ordinary man’s massage, I hear the hands slapping his shoulders and the change of sound when they strike with the cupped hand or with the palm. Then if a ballplayer shows up and starts counting how many he catches, I’m done for!” Seneca, Sen.epist.56

transl. Margaret Graver and A. A. Long, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p.160.

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TEXTPERFORMANCE KUNST ≠ WISSENSCHAFT TEXTUAL PERFORMANCE ART ≠ SCIENCE

Scientific Thought and Work – Artistic Thought and Work

Premiere in 2007 on the occasion of the Science Day at Technical University of Dortmund A male speaker and a female speaker, both turned towards the audience, stand on a 30cm-high platform, 4m apart. Sentence by sentence, the speakers take turns reading out the text, while looking neutrally at the audience. There is no eye contact between the performers.

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Rainer Holl and Tobias Rauh

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SCIENTIFIC THINKING AND WORKING

1. Science is distinct from art. 2. Traditional scientific research has no room for artistic methods.

3. Individual approaches can only be accepted if they either conform to an existing method or at least yield valid results.

4. The validity of the results of scientific work requires verification.

TEXTUAL PERFORMANCE, ART ≠ SCIENCE

ARTISTIC THINKING AND WORKING

1. Art is distinct from science. 2. Traditional scientific methods and traditional scientific thinking are counterproductive when producing art. 3. Individual approaches are necessary and can be developed into idiosyncratic methods.

4. There is no such thing as a valid or invalid result.

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SCIENTIFIC THINKING AND WORKING

5. If insights are produced through individual methods and lead to individual results, they require evidence and have to be recognised by qualified scientists. The evidence must be provided in an objective manner, so that individual results can be objectified.

6. Scientific thought and action are subject to universally binding rules. 7. The rules are formally defined.

8. In order to communicate results, a specific language has to be used.

TEXTUAL PERFORMANCE, ART ≠ SCIENCE

ARTISTIC THINKING AND WORKING

5. Insights are always subjective and personal.

6. Artistic thought and action unfold in their own subsystems. 7. The coherence of a particular subsystem can be experienced through its form. The more coherent a subsystem is, the more likely it is to be designated as a particular position. What matters are individual methods with individual results. At the heart of the individual method lies a differentiated subjectivity. The procedure can be freely selected. 8. In order to communicate results, a specific language has to be found.

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SCIENTIFIC THINKING AND WORKING

9. The language must draw on generally accepted terminology. If a new concept is created, it must be defined. The definition must establish clear boundaries between the defined concept and other, similar concepts.

10. Concepts must not be indeterminate. They must be clarified and secured in every respect. There should be examples of their potential uses.

11. Methods must not be arbitrary. 12. The results of scientific research are usually made published in (print) publications.

TEXTUAL PERFORMANCE, ART ≠ SCIENCE

ARTISTIC THINKING AND WORKING

9. The language of art consists of artistic means, whose repertoire is constantly expanding.

10. Media can be indeterminate.

11. Methods can be arbitrary. 12. The results of artistic research are usually made public through exhibitions.

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SCIENTIFIC THINKING AND WORKING

13. Scientific work calls requires? for a cumulative gradual? build-up of knowledge repertoires that results leads? in particular fields of knowledge.

14. When knowledge is linked to knowledge, ambiguous constellations must not be the result. 15. Outside the realm of knowledge, there are insights. 16. Insights must be objectifiable.

17. Inexplicable insights will either be made explicable by scientific discourse or excluded.

TEXTUAL PERFORMANCE, ART ≠ SCIENCE

ARTISTIC THINKING AND WORKING

13. Artistic work calls for a kind of innovation that depends on capacities for constant receptivity. These must be gradual built up and should lead in particular fields of experience. 14. The linking of knowledge should lead to unknown and innovative constellations. 15. Art is insight.

16. Insight is inextricably linked with the individual person. 17. Inexplicable insights are the driving forces of artistic work.

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SCIENTIFIC THINKING AND WORKING

18. Individual insights that only hold true for a single scientist are not considered scientific. 19. The sharing of scientifically produced insights is called knowledge transfer and not knowledge production. 20. All the elements of a scientific work must be explicable. 21. Mysterious matters must not be venerated, but analysed and laid bare.

TEXTUAL PERFORMANCE, ART ≠ SCIENCE

ARTISTIC THINKING AND WORKING

18. Artistic thinking is personal and authentic.

19. Creativity means generating insight.

20. The elements of an artwork should not offer an explanation. 21. In artistic work some things will necessarily remain undiscovered.

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ARTISTIC WORK 4

Ursula Bertram

TAG UND NACHT (DAY AND NIGHT)

Mainz State Theatre forecourt, small hall, 1997/98 Cone-shaped objects, glass, metal, and text fragments

A brilliant design by the architect Klaus Möbius provides for a subterranean passageway between the new theatre and the existing opera house designed by Moller. Additional rehearsal spaces were created for the latter, making it possible to meet the great demand for space on the site of what was formerly an inner-city parking lot. Two orchestra rehearsal rooms were located directly underneath the theatre forecourt, and yet were supposed to be lit from above. Moreover, the site required a sign indicating the theatre entrance. The concept of the cones responds to both requirements. By day the underground spaces receive light through glass panels, and by night they illuminate the square from within. The tip of the smaller night cone consists of mouth-blown glass and is the only one to have emerged flawlessly from a production series of 15 glass cones. The texts have been carved individually into the metal, while the sandblasting method used for the eight-metre-high day cone offers two advantages. Firstly, due to the cone’s opaque surface, it is not possible to see into the choir space from the outside, and secondly, it renders the text legible. The text fragments were penned by the art writer Dr Dieter Mahlow, whose non-linear way of thinking manifests itself in his writing style. They act as a sort of emblem for artistic staging processes that require equal measures of chaos and order.

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Figure 1: Staatstheater Mainz, Architekt Klaus Möbius

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INTELLIGENT UNKNOWING An interview with Doris Rothauer

INTELLIGENT UNKNOWING

DR: How should artistic thought and action be defined? UB: It is scientific to ask for a definition, because it is an attempt to definitively fix and decipher something (de-finition). That’s why in the past I suggested that the definition of artistic thought and action should be written in water rather than ink. That would make its temporary validity clear in a visual way too. An open field becomes visible. And the important thing is not to decipher, but to play this field. Deciphering always implies that there is a fixed truth to be found, which means that I lack something, as when solving a mathematical equation. But that’s not the case here: the solution does not lie in a lack, but in a playground of possibility and of intelligent unknowing. Unknowing doesn’t mean testing stupidity, but testing doubt, letting go, non-standardized thought, thinking outside the box, experimentation, free invention and lateral thinking. If I am fixated only on the result, I will never reach the goal. Artistic thinking is neither a creative technique nor a science, so it is not to be found either in practice nor in the lofty realms of logic. Unlike scientific work, artistic thinking has no presuppositions, unless it is the presupposition that there are none. It requires no words and comes into the world at the same time as the thing produced. It is a kind of porous state, one of open-ended perception and inventive power that follows no conventions. It is not based on knowledge but rather generates knowledge through its own idiosyncrasy. It is a way of acting that, in attending to the open, reveals itself in a kind of fluid matrix of possibilities. DR: How does the difference between artistic creativity and normal creativity manifest? UB: In my view, creativity is not a prisoner of art. Artistic thought and action is what is left over when you subtract “images”. It is located in the heads of scientists, economists and artists, to the extent that it has established itself there, which a number of good examples demonstrate. It is a kind of blueprint for uncontrollable procedures. It is more like a skin than clothing and it cannot easily be removed or handed on like a recipe. Artistic thinking is not a technique, not even a technique for creativity, just as logical thinking is not a technique. It is more a way of acting, which has to grow with the individual person. And it is by means of this lateral way of acting that we will manage to come to terms with our social, economic and ecological future. There are probably also lateral teams. It will be a matter of synergizing logically-grounded knowledge with the artistic ability to navigate open systems.

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DR: What can we learn from artistic creativity? UB: In detail: - how to deal with uncertainty and navigate open systems, - how to create subsystems that offer orientation without norms, - how to develop a position, - what it means to be motivated to work in the absence of a brief, - how to survive on an island outside the mainstream, - what it means to get to know oneself little by little, - how to say something without words that everyone understands, - the significance subjectivity can have for processes, - how enthusiasm can dissolve blockages, - what possibilities for communication there are, - why for artists there’s no such thing as burnout, - how values can be transposed, - how to think outside the box, - how to be efficient through detours, - and how to generate innovations. DR: Why is it important for you to transfer this thinking and acting to areas beyond art? UB: On July 26, 2014, Markus Rehm won the German championship for able-bodied athletes with a jump of 8.24 metres. In doing so he defeated former European champion Christian Reif (8.20 metres) and broke his own Paralympic world record by 29 centimetres. He attributed his success to his now world-famous prosthesis, which was developed by a team comprised of a designer, a doctor and a technologist using a completely different kind of thinking, which I would call artistic. Thinking outside of existing conventions is one of the core competencies of art. It is much more than a goal-oriented optimising of prior successes, and many businesses have come to recognise this. The Innovation Manager at Deutsche Post DHL, Uwe Radetzki, is calling for the company establish connections with each of the particular creative disciplines. In the business world, companies join forces with large research groups, such as Connect Creativity by future_bizz, which cooperates with up and coming artists. One of the most successful conferences is ‘Falling Walls’ in Berlin, which brings together specialist disciplines, particularly art, in large future-oriented projects. Non-linear approaches have long been established not only on the web but also in mechanical engineering and logistics under the term Industry 4.0. Here the new kind of factory is conceived as something like a jazz band. According to Wolfgang Wahlster of

INTELLIGENT UNKNOWING

the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence, “there is a rough schema that all machines have to hold to, but there is room for improvisation.” Interdisciplinarity, flexible points of view, alternative approaches, networked thought processes, personal development and visionary development potential are the demands of the future. Schools and universities will inevitably need to stay abreast of new social conditions and supplement the traditional mode of linear, result-oriented learning with cross-disciplinary, non-linear competencies, which must be given equal standing. The Centre for Artistic Transfer/[ID]factory has already tested 500 enthusiastic students from all fields on what it means to utilise core artistic competencies outside of art. In conjunction with businesses, we develop strategies for transferring the navigation of the open system of art, sharing the necessary competencies of improvisation, carrying artistic thinking over into other areas and making it effective in the education and economic systems of the future.

As a culture manager, curator and consultant, Doris Rothauer works at the intersection between art and the economy as well as in the creative industries. In autumn 2006 she founded the OFFICE FOR TRANSFER with Martin Sirlinger in Vienna, which she has run alone since 2009.

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Ursula Bertram

MARIA LIEBT RE (MARY LOVES RA) A combination of dance, theatre, installation and video Opening event for the First Dortmunder Forschungstage at the Harenberg City Center, Dortmund, January 1995 A combination of dance, theatre, installation and video Opening event for the First Dortmunder Forschungstage at the Harenberg City Center, Dortmund, January 1995 Concept and installation: Ursula Bertram, Dortmund Choreography and dance: O.S.M. Tanztheater, Wiesbaden Music and composition: Robert Merdzo, München Accompanied by Bodo Harenberg and Dietrich Groh 2 dancers, 1 musician, 1 tin bowl, ladder objects, 1 motor device, 600 roses, 4 monitors

The notion that religions could love one another instead of fighting each other led to the conception of a performance that was repeated in different locations. The most beautiful location was the Harenberg City Center in Dortmund, which has an atrium in its foyer. In this rectangular stairwell extending over 4 floors, 600 red roses were hung on invisible threads, like a fragrant cloud reaching up to the ceiling. All flower heads pointed towards Mary, who at first remained still in her red dress. The elements connecting the religions were tall narrow ladders and a wooden object with a smooth, semi-circular surface that allowed the bodies to glide and that was inspired by the design of a barque. The rhythms of the dance and the presentation were dominated by the unpretentious sounds of a large tin bowl, from which Robert Merdzo teased out a magnificent composition. And indeed: Mary loved Ra!

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MARY LOVES RA

During daytime hours, the Egyptian sun god Ra sails the skies in two barques, and at night he descends into the underworld. In the morning he calls himself Khepri, at noon Ra, and at night Atum. He morphs into a creature with a bird’s head, into a sun disk and into a scarab beetle. He fights the gods of the underworld and, while sailing the skies in his barque, gains as much worldly experience as possible each and every day. He is energetic, mutable, fascinating, and invincible. He is intertwined with the world view of Nut, the goddess of the sky, who at night unites with Geb, the god of the Earth; Shu, the god of the air, keeps god and goddess apart at daytime. Mary discovers her womanhood, abandons her civilisation and destiny, and travels to Egypt. She adopts the name of Nut.

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POROUS CONDITIONS Invisible ink as a model for the future*

* First published in Feldvermessung Kunstdidaktik: Positionsbestimmungen zum Fachverständnis. Engels et al, eds. kopaed, Munich, 2013: 252–260.

POROUS CONDITIONS

When I was child I used to write with invisible ink made from lemon juice to keep secrets. Writing written in lemon juice is initially unreadable, most importantly by grown-ups. But the initiated know to hold the paper over a candle, which makes the writing visible. Now I am a grown-up and I wonder if lemon juice invisible ink isn’t the right tool for grasping artistic thought in words, which is what I’ve been called upon to do. It is unquestionably more inconspicuous than a visible text and probably more meaningful. Dokumenta participant Karen Barad describes it as follows: “Nothingness is not absence, but an infinite fullness of openness.”1 Lemon juice invisible ink doesn’t relinquish its secret, it cannot be thoughtlessly consumed and it excludes uninterested reading. Which is a good condition for pursuing art. An enhanced version of lemon juice texts is texts made with water, whose secrets do not even come to the surface under candlelight. In this way artistic thought is excellently put into writing. For the sake of orientation, I closed each thought with a period, and placed a comma where one was required. Let’s assume that the omission only pertains to letters, not thinking; that the absence of words is not thoughtlessness, but only the absence of the alphabet. They are thoughts that cannot be alphabetised. Avoiding the use of the alphabet is a way of thinking outside of conventional reader expectations. An invisible writing for sharper thinking. It also helps with painting.

1 | Barad, Karen, Was ist das Maß des Nichts? Unendlichkeit, Virtualität, Gerechtigkeit (dOCUMENTA 13): 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts, 100 Notizen – 100 Gedanken # 099. Hantje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2012.

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE READER: READ IMPARTIALLY. TAKE YOUR TIME. DON’T HESITATE TO CHANGE THE INTERPRETATION THROUGH YOUR OWN THINKING. Leseanleitung: Lesen Sie unvoreingenommen. Nehmen Sie sich Zeit. Scheuen Sie sich nicht die Interpunktion durch eigenes Denken zu verändern.

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Similarly, sweeping the floor of a studio to get in the mood for painting can itself be considered invisible painting. Artist Jan Kolata calls this air-painting and describes an experience of seeing this in China: “On a large paved square in Wuhan an old man holding a bucket of water and long paintbrush painted, in full-body, almost dance-like movements, a character larger than his own body onto the pavement. The form and extent of the character determined the almost choreographic-seeming trace, a character that lay in eye-catching black on the pavement only to later evaporate. Internal composure is what is decisive; the image is only the visible trace”.3 Our point of departure was artistic thinking and acting, whose justified scientific comprehension is contained but also vanishes in the invisibility of the text. An open field becomes visible. Just make sure you don’t run into a cul-de-sac! The thing is to play the field, not decipher it. Deciphering always implies that there is a fixed truth to be found, which means that I lack something, as when solving a mathematical equation. But that’s not the case here: the solution does not lie in a lack, but in a playground of possibility and of intelligent unknowing. Unknowing doesn’t mean testing stupidity, but testing doubt, letting go, non-standardised thought, thinking outside the box, experimentation, free invention and lateral thinking. If I am fixated only on the result, I will never reach the goal. Artistic thinking is neither a creative technique nor a science, so it is not to be found either in practice nor in the lofty realms of logic. Unlike scientific work, artistic thinking has no presuppositions, unless it is the presupposition that there are none. It requires no words and comes into the world at the same time as the thing produced. It is a kind of porous state, one of open-ended perception and inventive power that follows no conventions. It is not based on knowledge but rather generates knowledge through its own idiosyncrasy. It is a way of acting that, in attending to the open, reveals itself in a kind of fluid matrix of possibilities.

3 | Kolata, Jan, ‘Innovation und Invention im Prozess der Malerei’, in Innovation – wie geht das? Studien zur Kunst in außerkünstlerischen Feldern. Band 1, Bertram ed. BoD, Nordersted, 2010: 132.

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Ursula Bertram

HAMLET Copenhagen/Denmark, 1996 Opening event for the European Capital of Culture Copenhagen A performance at Castle Helsingør, at the old harbour and seafront, together with the dance theatre teatret cantabile and Nullo Facchini.

Project Director: Nullo Facchini Composer: Marco Spallanzani Set design: Ursula Bertram Costumes: Gerda Graf Director: Kristian Knudsen Site-specific installations, set designs, objects, video performance

The figure of Hamlet remained ambivalent until the end. He solved the puzzles he was given, but his madness could not be proven. He was thus given a puzzle consisting of three large sections, to test his sanity. He assembled it into a throne. This was a task for the set design: a perfect puzzle, a perfect throne. The installations extended over three kilometres of performance space at Castle Helsingør near the old harbour area. The audience moved from location to location. A colossal crown became a scaffold, a secret video system inside the crown on Hamlet’s head projected moving images of the fight onto the large castle wall via radio transmission. The famous cock’s crow in Shakespeare’s drama was translated inside an old harbour warehouse: A big brown rooster fell dead from a nine-metre-high ceiling. He “died” precisely 11 times, dying again during each performance. Between these deaths, he was stored in a freezer. Nullo Facchini’s group of 12 actors, the lighting engineer, the costumes and the orchestration of the site coalesced into images so impressive that you could take them home with you – in your head.

HAMLET

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HAMLET

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WHAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF FROG? An interview by m:conVISIONS*

* First published in m:conVISIONS, April 2013: 10–13.

WHAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF FROG?

m:con: What can we hope to gain from transferring artistic thinking into other areas? UB: I would like to move both scholarly and artistic thought and action forward in equal measure. In my experience, the transfer of artistic thinking into other areas like the sciences promises to create a whole new kind of capacity for innovation. It enables us to keep knowledge fluid, to continually renew our methods, to work at the boundaries and, to that extent, to achieve a new capacity for integration. We are only now beginning to scratch the surface of the ‘sacred’ boundary between art and research. m:con: ‘Art Sponsors the Sciences’ was the title of a symposium you organised in November 2012. What new findings have you obtained since? UB: The symposium – a follow-up to ‘Art Sponsors Business’ in 2010 – received a lot of interest. Twenty-two higher education institutions took part. Twenty-four disciplines were represented, from economics, art, art history and theology to chemistry, physics and mathematics. The natural sciences, the humanities and art were all mixed together. This shows that the interdisciplinary interest in the content advanced by art and the sciences is on the rise. Our existing systems ended up in cul-desacs. We find problems in every nook and cranny. Then systems like art come to the fore that until now have carried on in isolation. Managers, leaders and researchers are increasingly open to artistic strategies. The symposium confirmed that this topic is being worked on in many places. m:con: What characterises artistic thinking in contrast to scientific thinking? UB: Firstly, scientific thinking is a construct. The brain itself has no interest in whether we call what it does scientific or artistic. It just thinks what it thinks. Professor Gerald Hüther, a great thinker and neurologist, explained this in his Instruction manual for a human brain. If you use your brain in a particular way for a long time, then it organises itself in that way and thinks like that. While scientific thinking pursues logic, objectivity and truth, and has set up a system of rules that excludes all that cannot be proven, artistic thinking works according to the rule that there are no rules. There is of course an academic approach to the study of art, which analyses artworks according to these or those methods. But when an artwork is being created, you are completely alone with your own subsystem and you have to navigate uncertainty, and whoever says that there is a rule to follow here is wrong. In many instances we

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have failed to deal with this uncertainty; it would be great to learn how to do so. Because also in business and research, those in charge find themselves increasingly confronted with unstable processes and situations.

m:con: Does that mean that we are all conditioned in our thinking? UB: At school we primarily learn logical-rational thinking, while artistic thinking is reduced to a 1-hour art class, which also unfolds in an 80% linear manner and is cancelled as soon as there is a shortage of staff. Non-linear, non-goal-oriented thinking is not promoted and to this extent we also don’t think artistically because we don’t know how. In Europe we have undoubtedly achieved great successes, in medicine as well as in other scientific disciplines. But we need to keep our knowledge in movement. m:con: Does this mean that artistic thinking is a kind of creativity technique? UB: Artistic and creative thinking is not a creativity technique, nor is it a matter of painting pictures or making sculptures. That too is a prejudice that needs to be shaken off: creativity is not a prisoner of art. Artistic thinking, just like scientific thinking, is located on a higher level. Artistic thinking is found everywhere, in all minds, in every discipline, in all areas of life. It is the thinking that remains after I subtract all “images”. It is non-linear, creative thinking and that is something interdisciplinary. m:con: How can we teach this? UB: Everyone can think artistically in their own occupation. This could be expressed by simply thinking the opposite. When you have spent a bit of time wondering what the opposite of a frog is, then you start to get a sense for new perspectives. Is it an elephant? A warm-blooded creature? A stone? The important thing is that in such exercises there is no right or wrong answer. Artistic thinking requires trust and openness, otherwise it remains a creativity technique that I can just pull out of a hat, without any trust. m:con: Can everyone learn the language of art? UB: We have particular thought schemas in our minds and these produce particular worldviews and truths. A change can only take place, when the brain’s basic rules allow us to leave the well-trodden paths behind and try out others. Popper calls these “testing movements”. They are non-linear movements. And anyone can learn to adopt this kind of trial displacement [Verrücken] or trial madness [Verrücktsein].

WHAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF FROG?

Everybody knows that the best ideas pop into your mind in the shower or when you’re taking a walk in a forest. Why? Because that is when you let yourself go and creative thinking has a chance to develop. If we practised this enough in school, if we supported it enough, then we would have a whole other kind of creative potential at our disposal. Research and business would be better able to move through a kind of fluid matrix of thought.

m:con: Could you give a concrete example? UB: I would say that every major scientific discovery is paired with artistic thinking, whether designated as such or not. Stem cell researchers John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka recently received the Nobel Prize for their work in re-programming mature somatic cells into a state in which, like embryonic stem cells, they could develop into all possible kinds of tissue. They dared to think in the opposite direction of existing research. Which is fantastic, regardless of what we now think of their discovery. But thinking the opposite of what we do all the time, that belongs to the realm of artistic thinking. And in my view, this takes place in all innovative scientific knowledge, even when not designated as such. In business, it could also be helpful to spend the day before making a major decision discussing the issue with someone who thinks artistically. An artistic thinker can illuminate the issue from a new point of view, before the decision is fully carried-out and then people realise that it doesn’t work. m:con: How can research and art find common ground? What conditions would we need to establish for this to occur? UB: It’s not that simple! The knowledge base is the same, but the basic rules of research and art seem incompatible. Those of the former move from the person outward to objectivity, those of the latter move toward the person and into subjectivity. But they cross-fertilise each other, and that is where the potential lies. The artistic director of Documenta, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev recognised this in September 2012 when she installed a science laboratory in an art exhibition. In doing so she strengthened the idea of art as research and of research as art. The most important condition for creating synergies would be to allow schools to run invention workshops, in which artistic thinking could develop, from the very first year. Invention workshops in which students constantly invent, regardless of whether the inventions make any sense or not. Over time that would be more sustainable than conferences and

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congresses are, even if it only creates the basic foundations. Business is watching this exchange with a lot of curiosity. Our publication ‘Art Sponsors Business’ came just at the right time.

m:con: What would an invention workshop look like? UB: The ideal invention workshop would work without grades and without anxiety, and with the highest possible degree of enthusiasm. Because it is only with enthusiasm that you learn fast: neurologists have confirmed this. Particular inventions would be of interest at particular school ages, and all inventions would have to be permitted, regardless of whether they were meaningful or meaningless: without goals, but with reason. It would be ideal if not only art teachers but also experts from various scientific disciplines would take part in the invention workshops. Onward together. m:con: Are people born as artists or as scientists? UB: People are born as artists and then gradually the knowledge of existing orders forms, and then they go over into the basic rules of reason. When someone punctures a ball for the first time and notices that it no longer bounces, then they have learnt in a non-linear way, and a lot is learnt in this way. I think that we are more born as artists and then reformed scientifically. A great deal of creativity is hidden in all of us; we only need to allow it to unfold, and of course our surroundings must also allow this. We’re working on it!

WHAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF FROG?

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Ursula Bertram

ZEITENWENDE (EPOCHAL SHIFT)

A combination of dance theatre, installation and video Opening event for the Third Dortmunder Forschungstage at the Harenberg City Center, Dortmund, January 1999 Concept and choreography: Ursula Bertram A cooperation between the University of Dortmund and the University of Iowa/USA, with Carlos Matos and Sabrina Sifrig, Theater Dortmund, dance; Ursula Steffens, costumes; Andre Vlatten and Sascha Kendiorra, chess; Eric Janson, composer; Joachim Striepens, clarinet; Maik Hester, accordion; Carsten Bebder, drums; Brigitte Hitschler, words; Horst Hauschke, rabbits. Accompanied by Bodo Harenberg and Dietrich Groh. Also involved: 1 costume for 2, moments from life on video, 2 sound pieces on time, 1 mayfly, 1 stone, 2 dancers, 2 chess players, 5 rabbits, and 1 tango

The chess players continue their game, unimpressed by the tango couple whirling across the chess board. Rabbits nibble on their carrots in the glass elevator, scenes from everyday life are projected onto giant pillows inside the atrium. Two dancers struggle to share one costume. A stone tells the story of its birth, the mayfly tries to experience a fraction of it. Reflections on an epochal shift, orchestrated with sounds, images, words, costumes, and figures.

URSULA BERTRAM

ZEITENWENDE

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EPOCHAL SHIFT

Figure 1: Ursula Bertram: ZEITENWENDE (EPOCHAL SHIFT)

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THE ARTISTIC PROCESS*

* First published in Bertram, U. and Preißing W., Navigation in Open Systems, Container-Verlag, Filderstadt, 2007: 53.

THE ARTISTIC PROCESS

the level of ideas

the level of elements

Figure 1: Werner Preißing: The artistic process

I want to be able to see with clarity something that exists only vaguely within me. But as soon as I try to grasp it conceptually, it begins to be obscured. It is no longer wholly and mysteriously connected with me. I have no choice but to let it continue to grow in me, in its entirely diffuse way, and to develop forms for it. When I have created a form and it doesn’t suit what I want, I recognise this. But I can’t say how the form is real and how it will progress. I work in layers. Sometimes I feel that I’m really close. I try again and it is entirely possible that I will distance myself from it again. It is excruciating. I never know what the next attempt will bring. If I’m lucky, on this path I encounter the form that was already hidden within me. I recognise this form when I see it.

Figure 2: Ursula Bertram: The artistic process

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Ursula Bertram

LÜGEN HÜHNER? (DO CHICKENS LIE?)

An installation for the Kunsttage Trier at Keller Kesselstadt Trier, 1995 Kunstverein Trier, curator Dr. Birgit Schwarz, Vienna Installation and live broadcast with 6 monitors, 14 chickens, 12 loudspeakers below wine barrels, with rooster crowing and around 80 guests

The conflict is perfect: chickens puff out their chests, cackle and form groups in the temporary chicken coop. In the wine cellar at the far end, an exhausting art week is being concluded. Chests puff out, there is cackling, and groups are formed in the wine cellar. Both scenes come together in a live broadcast, until their noises become one. Do chickens lie?

GRUSSWORT

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DO CHICKENS LIE?

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ARTISTIC THOUGHT AND ACTION*

* First published as ‘Künstlerisches Denken und Handeln’, in Tröndle and Warmers Eds., Kunstforschung als ästhetische Wissenschaft, Transcript, Bielefeld, 2011: 293–316.

ARTISTIC THOUGHT AND ACTION

To start with, it is not a priori an issue how we name the realm of artistic thought and action, nor who claims it for themselves. There may even be a more appropriate term that does not exclude non-artists. Artistic thinking is a skill that happens in the heads of scientists, artists and entrepreneurs, if and when it has become part and parcel of their repertoire of experiences. This, however, is not easy to accomplish; “pure knowledge” about it is of no use. We need to get into another mode of awareness and that is what all this text is about. By differentiating, little by little, what research should be and what it should comprise, a separate environment has evolved; an environment that includes everything that cannot be scientifically verified, objectified and falsified. As a result of, or more accurately, in the course of setting these limits, the “system of art” has come into being. When looking at it this way art might also be perceived as an intriguing by-product, one that could be optimally condensed by deliberately splitting it off from scientific methods. This otherness is so striking that, to date, the terms Kunst (art) and Wissenschaft (scholarship, research, science) are used beside each other and appear as two seemingly incompatible items in the German Basic Law.1 However, the aim should be to use the great opportunity that the parallel evolution of both systems offers. This is practically already the thesis which I am going to explain more precisely, intending to convince scientists to go on reading after this point. For formulating a thesis has nothing to do with artistic thought and action, quite the contrary. Artists, in return, are likely to stop reading here because, in certain ways, a thesis is not open, but oriented by targets and results. The ultimate purpose of a thesis is to verify the thesis and support it with arguments. However, an artistic process lacks a purpose; it is meant to produce an open-ended result. An artistic process is not restricted to a certain type of readability and even less so to finding evidence. From an artistic point of view, every thought that a reader can derive from these concepts is as correct and important as the one that I pursue. This gives rise to a number of theses that I would like to explain, in more detail, in the second part of my “testing movements”2 as Karl R. Popper so aptly called them. 1 | see Section 5 Subsection 3 of the German Basic Law. 2 | cf. Popper, K., Alles Leben ist Problemlösen: Über Erkenntnis, Geschichte und Politik, Piper, München, 1996: 15–45. (English edition: All Life is Problem Solving, 1999).

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Theses: - - - -

Scientific research takes a direction (away from the researcher). Artistic research takes a direction (towards the researcher). Both directions are opposed to each other. Artistic potential has an eccentric effect on research and, finally, on the economy. - Artistic potential cannot be built up using scientific methods but is generated by means of non-linear processes: these methods should be incorporated into the curriculum of every study course, in the same way as the development of scientific potentials. That is why I call for our thinking to be steered into various, tentative and differing directions: to come up with an angle of view that might open up a new perspective. The approach is three-fold. First, I seek to approach the borderline between scholarship and art. A borderline by which current fields of research are often bound, while our understanding of different territories is subject to change. Then I will take you on an odyssey between tradition and change. In the last section, artistic thought and action will be outlined and explored first in the field of arts and art-related specialties, before we cross the thrilling, but demanding boundaries towards extra-artistic fields. With the help of the first two sections and some practical examples, I am going to show that successful art research has more to do with dismantling territories, limits and mental blockades, than with attempting to build up knowledge. The sacred boundary between scholarship and art. There is no long tradition of mixing, or better, of bringing the two subjects together. While in the 1980s a clear distinction was made between physics, geography or biology, the boundaries are fluid these days; geophysics, geo-biology, biophysics (“We bring our physics back to life!”3) and bio-geology blur the old boundaries between subjects and translate into a large variety of Master’s courses. Google shows the most astonishing combinations of courses. For example, if you combine the search terms “biology” and “art”, you get results about so-called “BioArt”, an art practice or strat-

3 | Slogan of the Institute for Biophysics, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, 2009.

ARTISTIC THOUGHT AND ACTION

egy that makes use of genetic engineering, biotechnology and surgery.4 The discipline is hard to define in a linear way, it focuses on artists looking at scientific results from an artistic point of view, as opposed to analysing data with traditional laboratory techniques. One of the most renowned pioneers in this field is the artist ORLAN from France who has been changing her face with plastic surgery for years.5 In the performance installation Disembodied Cuisine for example, the artists work with semi-living biomass designed for the purpose of “victimless meat production”. The Australian Tissue Culture & Art Project creates a pseudo-positivist junk food alternative to intensive livestock breeding by growing tissue. Edible “semi-living sculptures” are grown from resected frog muscle cells on biodegradable polymer structures in bioreactors. Every day the “semi living sculptures” are “fed” by the bio-artists with a nutrient solution. The sculptures are to be consumed, flambéed in Calvados, after an eight-week live cell culture in the gallery-laboratory in the framework of a Nouvelle Cuisine BBQ evening. The polymer structure used for biological meat production has proven to be tough and indigestive, constituting a certain physical risk. The meal is attended by vitally croaking frogs in aquariums highlighting that the living are spared.6 As early as 2003, Jeremy Rifkin clearly described how the boundaries between science and art had started to shift. Rifkin mentions a whole range of projects that cross the borders between high-tech laboratories and artists’ workshops:7 scientists like Craig Venter with his Celera Genomics enterprise use the credo of artistic creation to legitimise their fiddling with nature. Others have introduced the anti-freeze gene from the flatfish into the genetic code of tomatoes to allow them to survive frost. The genes of a sheep and a goat are combined to create a new creature called “geep”, with the head of sheep and the body of a goat.8 Hybrid creatures like these

4 | Peter Weibel already described this art discipline on the occasion of the 1993 Ars Electronica, cf. Gerbel K., and Weibel P., Genetische Kunst (1993). 5 | This project of self-hybridisation of the artist ORLAN has the title The Re-Incarnation of St. Orlan (1990–1993). 6 | cf. Hauser, J., Bio Kunst (version of: 10/05/2011). 7 | cf. Rifkin, J., Dazzled by the Science (version of: 10/05/2011). 8 | Timm Ulrich has anticipated this development in an ironic manner with his Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing – Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing (1995/2010), shown by the Kunstverein Hannover.

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are developed in science labs. A few years ago, artists also discovered that DNA has a new creative possibility and use; using biotechnological tools in the same way as their predecessors used paint brushes. The American artist Eduardo Kac, is said to have made a glowing rabbit, named Alba, in cooperation with a French laboratory. Alba was made to glow by combining the hare’s DNA with that of a phosphorescent jellyfish. Is the boundary between science and art disappearing after half a millennium? I feel that, by asking this question, we are looking in the wrong direction. The artistic search for expansion has discovered a new territory in the form of biological or biotechnical means. This discovery offers new and novel technical possibilities for artistic digressions and dialogues, aided by collaboration across disciplines. BioArt may appear to be a term describing a really surprising working method but it is no proof of a better exchange between art and science. At all times, the most recent scientific findings have been adopted, even though not always as patently as by the doubly-talented Leonardo da Vinci. Science can serve as an engine, support or motivation for art, as a platform providing friction or as a lucky dip. Today the focus is on the possibilities of the digital world and genetic engineering, but tomorrow it is likely to shift elsewhere. Nam Jun Paik has started to introduce digital means in his artistic work and the next generation of artists may one day be called nano-artists. The understanding will develop that the mechanistic handling of genetic materials or hyper-ware is not sufficient for an in principle sensory and holistic network linking art and science; on the contrary, a neo-Cartesian system is revived. The new artist, a type of scientist-artist or art researcher, fails to draw interest until he is back again in his own territory with his final product. Whatever limits are perceivable on the horizon, contemporary artists and scientists will explore them and seek to come close to them on their way to making further discoveries, digressions and findings. Whether, in doing so, the boundaries between science and art are really crossed sustainably, remains to be seen. For the time being we are light years away from that. A fluorescent hare does not change the basic attitude in our day-today teaching activities. And the gift to cross borders in creative ways is not part of the set of multi-disciplinary basic skills of every student, although we are all aware of the call that the economist Joseph Alois Schumpet-

ARTISTIC THOUGHT AND ACTION

er makes for “creative destruction”.9 It took a round about 100 years until Pablo Picasso’s collage technique had trickled down to the educational system and cross-faculty training concepts were offered in the form of hybrid or multiple Master’s study courses. There is no doubt that the development of experiments in the labs of art and science is remarkable. However, as long as this happens at the level of “labour leasing”, by incorporating the mutual achievements back into one’s own specialty, we should not speak of an approximation in the sense of sharing skills, but rather of a seismographic tendency that is limited to the surface. Without a doubt, the borderline is the place where things develop. Instead of the products, it could be exciting to look at the higher-level processes, to grant creativity an autonomous status as a Prisoner of Art: to incorporate creativity into the educational potential of science, in the form of artistic thought and action. Enshrining the artistic strategy, as an exceptional skill in the sets of rules relating to science, is a paradigm shift in the perception of science. Back and Forth: Artistic research takes a direction The dramaturgy, currently still perceivable as art and science approaching each other, whether at congresses or in labs, speaks volumes. Clumsiness and constraints abound that shed light on the edge of firm ground; positioning in between systems that are constantly changing, the loss of security and, as a consequence, the search for orientation is associated with the big issue of values and/or a scale of values. It is understandable that quite a few feel frightened by this “boundless freedom”. Without any hold anywhere, navigating across the boundaries of disciplines is something that we do not practice and there is a call for a stable set of rules. People tend to crave definable territories as soon as they leave them. However, to perceive art as a process in extra-artistic fields is something that many academies of art also still consider as an aberrance, betrayal or violation. Even Joseph Beuys, with his 7000 Oaks and his ecological approach, seems to have changed nothing about this.10 In addition to under-

9 | cf. Schumpeter: Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy (2003), in particular ‘Chapter 7: The Process of Creative Destruction’. 10 | cf. Joseph Beuys, 7.000 Eichen – Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung (7000 Oaks), documenta 7, 19-28/09/1982.

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standable fears of losing territories and the craving for a limited and thus apparently reliable or at least manageable reference system, I feel that the chief reason has to do with the differing directions that artistic and scientific research embrace or that they usually take. Artistic research or artistic thought and action, as I prefer to call it, differ from the scientific approach for the following reasons:11 1. In a scientific approach, contemporary research moves away from the person; striving for objectivity and results that are oriented in targets, as far as possible. The starting point is the academic and analytical positioning in “special knowledge”, predominantly in the form of language. 2. In an artistic approach, the direction is first and foremost towards the person. based on the assumption of an intersubjective positioning, marked by an orientation in processes. The starting point is the personal and authentic “handwriting” so as to ensure recognition, predominantly by visual means. Thus being different refers basically to a direction that leads away from the person, in one case, and towards the person, in the other case. This gives rise to inevitable conflicts, especially if you try to bring these two practices together. This has consequences, mostly in educational practice. The brain takes no direction, to stick to this metaphor, at least not in the beginning. However, as stated by Gerald Hüther in The Compassionate Brain: How Empathy Creates Intelligence,12 if you train it with a view to certain processes for long enough, the brain will change according to its use. After 20 years at school, under the primacy of scientific thinking, the brain will have responded and adjusted its internal structures accordingly. As a consequence, when using the common path, where our thinking is accommodated, we will always get the feedback that we are “right”. This

11 | During the last ten years I have again and again observed, described and artistically dealt with this “being different”. For example, by concretely opposing 21 statements from the realm of scientific and artistic thinking respectively, premiered as a performance at the Symposium ‘Artistic Research als Ästhetische Wissenschaft?’ (Artistic Research as an Aesthetic Science?) in Stuttgart. See Bertram and Preißing, Navigieren im offenen System (2007): 68–71. 12 | Hüther, G., The Compassionate Brain: How Empathy Creates Intelligence (2006).

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is like a rat race of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If many people are familiarised with the same thought pattern, this has the additional effect that we will get acknowledgement from others, from the community of thinking individuals. This is how a thought pattern is established. We all know how convenient a functioning, common, basis of understanding is and how other structures of thought and action are perceived as irritating, inadequate or wrong. This is perceived above all by the people themselves, which means by their brains. The brain will give the feedback that we are on the wrong path and will suggest that we change direction, return to the usual or accustomed ways. Those who learn to think out of the established pattern at an early stage and who have not formed motorways of rational, analytical and dialectic approaches will encounter problems when they are examined. A lack of success or modest success will generally be the result; this is because the system examines itself. This result has little to do with the potential of the examinee. Doubtless, such conventions foster a common understanding and preserve tradition, but at the same time they curb alternative developments or changes. Our entire pedagogy is built on thought patterns, even the smallest unit in the school curricula. These thought patterns take root in the head and give rise to certain views of the world and truths. Change can only be brought about if the mind-sets in our brains allow us to use other paths, put aside established ways of thinking and try to change the direction of our thoughts. Popper calls this “testing movements”13 and regards them as fundamental for our entire evolution. I attach the utmost importance to practicing the skill of mental flexibility, uncovering hidden patterns, trying to disarrange things or getting out of our minds, in combination with insisting on singular points of view. It is no coincidence that art is a central concern of an “innovator” as it provides the option to think “outside the box”. Yet the question is how this desirable skill can be acquired. Every theoretical analysis is scientific by approach. Even this derivation itself may trigger further discourse, objections and considerations, but even so scientific analysis does not help to approach the originary artistic process. On the contrary, we get further and further away from its living core. Time and again, attempts have been made to decrypt the artistic

13 | cf. Popper, K., Alles Leben ist Problemlösen (1996): 15–45 (All Life is Problem Solving).

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process by way of scientific descriptions. If the artistic process is reduced to a dead object of study and if it is not supposed to be integrated, as a living process, into our lives, as our thought and action, then this procedure is acceptable. Nonetheless, then it morphs into pure theory and becomes foreign to its own nature. It is absorbed by science and loses its distinct properties. After all, artistic processes are difficult to describe in theory14 and cannot be learned by simply applying knowledge because they are not based on knowledge, but on experience. Artistic processes cannot be incorporated into my repertoire, or range of skills, by looking at them from outside. I literally have to emerge into these processes by trying them out; acting, reflecting, thinking outside the box, putting into practice, experimenting, discarding and discovering, using cameras, performance, pixels, colours, words, activities, confrontation, cooperation, and projects. I need to endure this direction, right towards the centre of myself, creating an authentic and individual position, far beyond any arbitrariness. To shape such a position with the required accuracy is not so easy to learn. This contrasts the direction that the scientific approach takes, with its focus on objectivity and analytical “truthfulness”, to move as far away as possible from a “unique” subjective connection. Today it is not enough to know just one direction. Knowing two directions marks the beginning of acceptance. Accepting two directions and adopting one of them is indicative of successful teamwork. Knowing and internalising two directions could be the future. In the following section I will try to highlight the nature of the artistic process by means of some examples. As already stated, it is going to remain a dead process on paper (like here) and hard to depict in theory; visual illustrations come closer to the process. Scientific thinking is based on a construction, a convention. Our brains do not think scientifically or artistically in the first place, they merely think. On their own initiative and without any external intervention, brains tend to think in non-linear ways. However, brains can be trained, and the scientific, analytical methodology is practiced throughout the entire education

14 | cf. Bertram, U., Innovation (2010); in particular, Luxenburger: Ohne Titel (Without title) (2010).

ARTISTIC THOUGHT AND ACTION

the level of ideas

the level of elements

Figure 1: Werner Preißing: Artistic Process 1

Figure 2: Ursula Bertram: Artistic Process 2

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process. Therefore most people are at their best when thinking in logical, rational, analytical, controlled and ideally structured ways. Passionate use of the brain will give rise to a dominant pattern, according to Hüther,15 and it can be assumed that this dominance spurs all thoughts that fit into this system, while blocking others. Therefore, the thinking direction needed for artistic processes remains mostly untapped in developing personal potentials. As a result, it should be recommended to embed artistic thinking at an early stage of the educational process and if possible, to incorporate it somewhere other than in art lessons; perhaps as “inventors’ workshops” in addition to and outside art courses. This helps to exclude misunderstandings and tackle the establishment of patterns of “tinkering and messing around”, “producing art” or “adding a touch of colour” and/or the clichés of creative workshops right from the beginning. Artistic Thought and Action – How does it work? As Beuys already said, artistic thinking can hardly be taught because it evolves only in unprejudiced surroundings; free from patterns, recipes, role models (including the teacher!) or clichés, free from fear, the obligation to succeed and distrust. It only evolves on a liquid matrix of possibilities, between enthusiasm, curiosity and the delight of dealing with your own person. I have always achieved the best success in “artistic thinking” when the participants did not realise they were engaged in it. Then there is no reason to oppose it or to lapse into clichés. “Navigating an open system”16 or “thinking outside the box” are also part of it. In an unprejudiced manner, students manage to create magnificent art objects, whether as a performance, a speech, thoughts or videos. I can observe how the well-structured input, ideally invisible or at least imperceptible, helps to untie knots and how the non-linear approach produces astonishing insights and results. Within the shortest time, sustainable changes can be achieved in the way individuals respond to the insecurity caused by novelty. The process is not consciously perceived, it is unconscious. Quite often the participants do not necessarily attribute the results to the input but experience the benefit for themselves; “Today I had a good day!” If anything, artistic thought and action can be learned indirectly.

15 | cf. Hüther, G., The Compassionate Brain: How Empathy Creates Intelligence (2006). 16 | Betram U., and Preißing, W., 2007.

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A lecture about boundaries is of no use, a lecture about border crossing based on the works of well-known artists is also useless. That would mean to impart pure knowledge while artistic thought and action evolve nurtured by experience. The practical instruction; “Please, depict a border!” will bring all patterns and clichés to the surface that a border has ever evoked (barbed wire, cannons, walls, etc.). If you start by calling the participants to think of and investigate borders, this does not help either. It is absolutely futile to speak of your own experiences or how you or others have crossed a border because experiences can only be made, not instilled. As we know, imparting experience is equivalent to imparting pure knowledge. So it is key to provide situations, spaces and impulses that promote and ideally initiate the process of experience itself. This is a complex issue that the teacher or moderator cannot steer directly, because the artistic thought process can only be supported if the effortlessness and informality is maintained. To illustrate this, we will describe a few exercises that we carry out at the [ID]factory at the TU Dortmund. The descriptions will also unveil some of the common mistakes and clichés. 1. The speech This exercise takes place in the Le Dreff ‘Thinking Workshop’, a branch of the [ID]factory in Brittany, on the coast. The participants receive three envelopes and open them one at a time, but only after they have completed the task contained in the previous envelope: - Envelope 1: Prepare a speech. Advocate for what you love most. Resolutely defend your point of view. - Envelope 2: Dress up for your appearance. - Envelope 3: Go waist-deep into the sea. Give your speech there. Speak so loudly that you can be heard over the sound of the waves. The participant in the photo uses a table for “her speech” which we had difficulty obtaining by negotiating with a Breton landlady. It had to be this one and not any old table. A chair and lamp are added, a piece of paper and a pen. Finally, the performance begins spontaneously, as the tide starts to rise in the evening. Clad in her spotted dress, the student sits on her chair at the desk halfway into the icy water and starts to slowly write a letter. While she writes she reads the sentences aloud. We stand at some distance and the wind swallows up her words, except for the fundamental

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Figure 3–4: Performance by Steffi Zeiler, Le Dreff 2003

tones. She pauses, ponders and writes with the waves splashing against her back. When the letter is ready, she stands up, walks off to one side, while the water topples the chair over and carries away the sheet of paper that floats very slowly towards the open sea. Nobody says a word, even though normally every performance is followed by much applause or loud comments. It is a moment of unfathomable si-

ARTISTIC THOUGHT AND ACTION

lence. The chair and the sheet of paper are dancing on the waves, and we do not exactly know why we are so deeply moved. We are unable to classify it. The next day the student tells me that the letter was addressed to her father to whom she had never said goodbye, because he passed away suddenly, when she was still a child. It was the authenticity of the situation and not the words of her letter, which we had been unable to understand anyway, that had created this intense situation. Ninety percent of my interlocutors from non-artistic backgrounds do not believe that holding a speech in the middle of the sea takes them any further forward. Ninety percent of the participants who were involved with such a situation do not want to miss the experience again. Lengthy explanations are harmful and block the experience of the performer. Another example: 2. Hell My collaboration with the Italian director Nullo Facchini, in the field of choreography and dance theatre, highlights another extraordinary example of non-linear nature. In 1990, we staged Dante’s Divine Comedy at the cruise missile station in Hahn-Hasselbach that the Americans had just abandoned. The project takes place at a spooky Cold War site: in missile bunkers, on the exercise area and in large hangars. On one morning the first dancing drafts are supposed to be developed, describing certain stages of hell according to Dante. Like Pina Bausch in Wuppertal, Facchini does not tell his dancers to use certain step sequences or precise movements. Instead Facchini focuses on the individuals’ body language and imagination. Ideas are always developed in variations, recursively by several members of the team. This morning Facchini asks pairs of male dancers to dance in a way that their two bodies repeatedly form unique sculptures. They are supposed to change positions in slow motion. The presentation in the evening takes place in a barren hangar with a technical look. All three male couples show their choreography, each in a different corner of the hall. Someone plays the violin. Again and again the male bodies pass by each other, moving slowly downwards into a new position in which they pose briefly, forming an inseparable whole. For the topic the result is highly convincing. What the dancers do not know is that the topic is hell as it is experienced by homosexuals – still perceived as wrong in Dante’s time. The dancers work exclusively and without preju-

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dices on the process, but not on the immediate aim of visually “translating” or even illustrating homosexuality. Thus the choreographer Facchini avoids the formation of patterns and clichés. This approach can be transferred to all processes that require innovation and understand innovation as a non-linear methodology. 3. The doll The next example shows the evolution of a student who develops her oeuvre in a linear manner. While constant input and corrections were necessary, the student resorts to all sorts of clichés until she reaches a wonderful solution. The proposed topic is not “human being, figure or doll”. Instead, the instruction is to develop something freely, using “cloth” as a material. At first the student stays on well-known terrain: she creates a cute little doll because rag dolls are certainly part of the standard repertoire. By talking to her, the pattern is derailed. (Why “doll”, when using cloth? And the Beuys question: Are you really interested in it [the doll]?) The ensuing intermediate results are marked by a strong-willed character, but also by a genuine despair about her own lack of repertoire and stability. A hand is made out of cloth and plants, studded with bolts and wire; absolutely wretched as a sculpture but apparently suitable as a breakout, even if she ends up in the opposite cliché. After further discussion the loss of three-dimensionality is brought back into focus, with a sort of airy object. The cloth has no special properties any more, but is used only as a surface. A thread is wrapped around a wire and the wire is bent. Surely my interventions are stressful for the student. No formal suggestions are offered concerning the object or concrete material changes; instead, she is helped to free herself and get rid of waste thoughts.

Figure 5–7: Process development of a student on the topic of “cloth”

ARTISTIC THOUGHT AND ACTION

Then, despite the temporary and concealed impatience on both ends, the astonishing turnaround happens: all of a sudden, knitted gloves and socks are incorporated and combined in unprecedented ways. This translates quickly into the following series of three objects, the last of which is an independently positioned piece of art. No longer a redundant or simplistic outcome, but a three-dimensional and extraordinarily exciting sculpture. The process presented here has a time span of three months including a weekly two-hour seminar. The interventions are less about building something up than about extinguishing something that has taken root in her brain as a model. Once the “dust-free thought and action” is restored, further development does not pose any problems.

Figure 8-10: Process development II of a student on the topic of “cloth”

The example highlights the connotations that tend to determine us. The fact that we associate cloth as a material with “dolls”, is something that can evidently be transferred to more complex settings. To generate innovation, we need to abandon conventions and standards in our thinking. Often this is not as easy a process as creative workshops suggest. If it is meant to be a sustainable process, limited not just to a few experiments disconnected from our daily lives, or a process which enables us to navigate in open systems, then we need perseverance to go through the stressful period of disorientation that precedes open-ended solutions. Moreover, an input is needed that constantly challenges the thoughts behind the product, not the surface of the product. Only by distancing ourselves from the product can we transfer the process, and this is not only valid for artistic thought and action. 4. The Precision Factory On the occasion of a temporary exhibition of sculptures, I placed a bright red “micro factory” on a distribution box in the public space of an avenue in Wiesbaden. It is big enough to hold a chair, on which a test person can

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sit, as well as a camera and a controller. A flight of steel stairs leads to the entrance; at the side, there is a box with instructions for use on a postcard with the following text: Learn the following text by heart: “Am I a piece of art or am I a human being? Can a human being be a piece of art? Can a piece of art talk? Is art useless? Am I being useless? Do I cease being useless if I am paid? Do I have to be ashamed of being an artist?” Memorise the text and repeat it in front of a camera running inside the Precision Factory at the following production times: 11th May – 6th July 2008. If you speak without a mistake, you will be paid 5 euros, if you have a proven immigration background you will be paid 6 euros. (Ages 16 and over, ID required.) You have three goes. You can watch the recording at the Precision Factory, outside production times. Figure 11-12: Ursula Bertram: Precision Factory, 2008

ARTISTIC THOUGHT AND ACTION

A participant calls me after one year and tells me that he still knows the text by heart and that, again and again, the text comes to mind when he looks at contemporary art. I have hundreds of recordings of people of the most different ages, social backgrounds and nationalities who do their best to repeat the text without mistakes. The most astonishing one shows an eighty-year-old Chinese person who talks flawlessly in front of the camera. At first most people are more concerned about the success or failure of their performance, then slowly they start to think about what has happened and whether this is art. Of course, reflecting about it is easily attainable, because the text sticks in their heads and people easily recall the picture of the bright red micro-factory. Because the participants have memorised the core questions (which may run in their heads afterwards), and have become involved in the process, de-conventionalisation is perfectly achieved. Many people may discover with a certain unavoidability and subsequent surprise, that they have become a contemporary piece of art, because the indirect process did not give them the option of rejection.

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Figure 13: Ursula Bertram: Educational Turn

Conclusion When it comes to learning artistic thought, the real problems are the existing standardised concepts of learning and of art and the corresponding defensive attitude. At school we are taught what makes “sense” and this certainly does not include the exercises described herein. The educational turn cannot be achieved as long as we are looking for artistic thought inside the boxes of conventions or disciplines. If this is the only box that we regard as valid for our educational structure, we will fail to build up this potential. According to Walter Grasskamp, artistic thinking figures among the most wonderful and most privileged forms of work: “Yet, these privileges are not granted (to the academies of art) because the state maintains certain reservations where exotic things are done, but because something exceptionally difficult has to be learned there.”17 And enormously valuable, one might add. Mediating in the process is a totally indirect issue. The more directly you aim at the goals, the more likely you are to miss them. Artistic thought is a process that classical analyt17 Grasskamp, W., Aufsatztitel (1996): 9.

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ical-scientific thought cannot grasp, even though it could largely benefit from its specific properties. A huge misunderstanding is generated by the assumption that artistic thought gives rise to art alone and does not occur in scientific contexts. Artistic thought and action are ideally suited as eccentric tappets in the process of gaining scientific insights: “Creativity is not a prisoner of art”. Artistic thinking subsumes research activities, which are also or explicitly about intuition and coincidence, letting go and thinking outside the box. Factors, that is, that are hard to objectify and grasp independently of people. As we know, to make fundamental scientific progress we must always abandon accustomed ways of thinking and cross borders to achieve a new view of an entire picture. This is the moment of an intuitive, novel idea. A thought that is not based on the scientific process as we typically understand science; the moment when something non-linear happens that turns our verifiable, falsifiable and objective knowledge upside down; the moment of thinking outside the box, thinking beyond our knowledge, getting a blurry picture and looking at things differently. This process cannot be explained by scientific thinking but by artistic thinking alone, which happens in art in good moments, but which can occur in scientific contexts too.

Who engages in artistic thinking? You could characterise it in the following way, without limiting it to these points: People who think artistically are those who - try to think beyond set limits; - break new ground while not knowing what they will face; - pursue a thought even if it cannot be mapped scientifically and economically; - challenge conventions and think beyond the methodological and formal limits of their disciplines; - are able to doubt and endure irritations; - feel that their personal experience is as important as knowledge; - are able to link knowledge and experience; - have the courage to find and defend positions of their own that do not fit into the standard boxes; - engage in “dust-free” thought and action and avoid clichés.

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So far, the moment of cross-border artistic thinking is hardly considered in the scientific set of rules and is not specifically promoted because, by nature, it takes place outside the scientific realm. A small study conducted at the TU Dortmund makes this quite clear. Ninety percent of the scientists interviewed agreed that creative thinking plays a major role in their work. Sixty percent believed that this ability cannot directly be traced back to the application of scientific method. But only 10 percent believe they exercise this ability. In my small survey, almost all scientists initially answer the question of whether they have an understanding of artistic thought in the negative. Yet the fact that creativity is part of their work is wholeheartedly affirmed by most of them. When asked how they train and optimise their creativity, the majority fail to provide clear answers and discussions ensue as to how this could work. More often than not, the view that artistic thought is necessary leads to a defensive attitude. It was in the wake of these experiences and considerations that I founded the [ID]factory. The [ID]factory brings artistic thought to extra-artistic realms, in a cross-faculty, multi-disciplinary and non-linear approach: an open-ended experiment.

today

in future transfer

90% science

10% art

Figure 14: Ursula Bertram/Werner Preißing: Educational Turn

logical thought

non-linear thought

ARTISTIC THOUGHT AND ACTION

Rebound

rigid, dead

Energy comes back unprocessed Figure 15: Werner Preißing: Synergies

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ARTISTIC WORK 9

Ursula Bertram

DIE HÖLLE – LA CITTA DOLENTE NACH DANTE (INFERNO – LA CITTA DOLENTE AFTER DANTE)

A performance at the missile launch site Hahn/Hasselbach, together with the dance theatre teatret cantabile and Nullo Facchini, 1994

INFERNO – LA CITTA DOLENTE AFTER DANTE

The American base property Hahn/Hasselbach in Germany served as the key launch site for long-range missiles which, in the case of an emergency, were supposed to reach Russia during the Cold War. Situated in an idyllic landscape in the Hunsrück region, Hahn is a village with 188 inhabitants. In the course of its history Hahn was considered part of France, then part of Prussia, and later of the newly-founded Rheinland-Palatinate, but essentially it belonged to the American occupying forces. They established a permanently guarded high-security military base that was much larger than the village itself. Together with Nullo Facchini’s actors, we visited the base for the first time in 1993. Closed down after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, the facility seemed as if it had been deserted only yesterday: barbed wire, warehouses, bunkers inviting us into their eerie interiors. The idea was to make the area accessible to people, to arrange our mental spectres and to furnish the site with images that stick. Dante’s Divine Comedy was helpful in this respect. We used its narrative as a field of associations. The wolf, who in Dante’s cantos blocks the

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path into the hereafter, confronts people in a dark bunker that they have to pass through to reach the other side. On the screen on the upper metal shelf, an American gives an utterly sober account of how he survived a nuclear test. The test was at Bikini Atoll where, in 1946, the Americans vaporised animals and pulverised the soil for the benefit of mankind. He also shows his hand, which is as big as a football: long-term effects. “If you do what you are told, there will be no harm”, his superiors had told him. Each day 500 people visit the military base after dark to attend the performance. They are being led from station to station with the help of whistles and dogs. Everybody is covered in grey blankets, not only due to the cold. One evening they all remain waiting within a tunnel that is 100 metres long, and at the end of which everyone has to walk through a blue laser curtain. Its glaring light makes it impossible to discern what to expect on the other side. A choir piece can be heard, nothing else. The feeling of walking through this immaterial wall seems like a premonition of the irrefutable reality of death. We have a propensity to repress the inconceivable, maybe with flowery wallpaper that has been carefully put up on the

INFERNO – LA CITTA DOLENTE AFTER DANTE

wall inside a missile silo, remaining there all these years later, as an image of how we make ourselves comfortable amid the horror. Two men keep forming an inseparable sculpture with their bodies, a violin plays forlornly inside the room. The emptiness in the large bunker is desolate: the hell of the homosexuals after Dante. Nullo Facchini’s actors were fabulous. They did not act life, they lived acting. All of us together furnished the site with a new identity. All these years later, the site was converted to peace through artistic play.

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OLIVER SCHEYTT

GRUSSWORT

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THE ARTISTIC ATTITUDE An interview by Dirk Dobiéy (Age of Artists) with Ursula Bertram*

THE ARTISTIC ATTITUDE

Introduction Prof. Ursula Bertram (www.ursula-bertram.de) is a visual artist with an originally traditional education in sculpture and an artistic focus on three-dimensional environments. She is professor at the Technical University in Dortmund Germany where her research focus is art transfer, more precisely the transfer of artistic thinking into other disciplines. Ursula Bertram is co-founder of the [ID]factory (www.id-factory.de), a cross-disciplinary community that focuses on how artistic thinking and action can be used for scientific insight and economic development. She is a known and well respected author in her research field and truly passionate about her mission to put artistic thinking and action on par with established scientific and economic views on the world.

Interview

AoA: How have you developed artistically, respectively how did you come to art and which artistic practice do you pursue? UB: I really don’t know any more how I came to art. I only know that journalism and art motivated me. Looking back I represent the artistic position of pushing back your boundaries and continually trying to open new doors. In addition I had classical training in sculpture and plastic art, for example life-modelling and portraits, which was greatly dedicated to realism. Moreover I had a very, very good teacher. His name was Heinz Hemrich and he taught us the philosophical dimension over and above the manual work. I had only just left the university when I began to explore related topics, and these were architecture, music and journalism. I have attempted, sometimes painstakingly, to open one door after another. I always needed a few years until I could handle these new topics. When I had tried out all the related areas my curiosity took me to a new boundary, which was no longer artistic, and that was the boundary to management and economics. At this point a whole new outlook opened up for me which then led me, with a different perspective, into the sciences, as an area beyond art. This is basically my personal way: always moving along at the boundaries. There are, of course, several special, personal pieces of work which play a role in this process.

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AoA: So your artistic work consistently reflects the new boundary experience? UB: Yes. I believe it’s the first adventure if you’re technically good, that is you have the basis you need to begin with juggling more than two balls. After my degree course I simply occupied myself with architecture until I understood what architecture is and what matters here. I drew like an architect. I learned to draw up plans, to read plans, to work to scale and so on. Introducing a finished product, that is the sculpture or the object, into architecture and opening the dialogue changes both, the architecture and the product. That was the first adventure. I’ve worked in this area of situational art for years and I’ve never completely lost touch with this. Actually I’ve never worked independently of space, only that I now call space environment. What was previously my three-dimensional space is today my social environment. This led me to another adventure. I was given the task of converting a site, which exists here in Mainz, and which was used during the Cold War and then abandoned. This woodland area was to be given a memorial of the Cold War. This was a challenging assignment when you consider all the memorials you know. I took up this challenge and the social environment was very important in doing so: the space, the past, the future. I decided against creating an object as such for the three countries Russia, Germany and America, which played a large role in the Cold War, but instead I went on a documentary journey to these countries. To choose the destinations I took a large military map, closed my eyes and pointed to Russia, Germany and America, and the places that my fingers touched seemed to be selected. I continued to enlarge the scale of the map until I could see houses in the vicinity where I had pointed to. I left things to chance for I asked myself who it should be then? Who in America? A woman or a man, a boy, an old person, an intellectual or somebody else? Handicapped or not handicapped – everyone was included. Next I travelled with a team to exactly these places and these houses and recorded these people because I wanted to set an example. I described where they lived. I wasn’t interested in the Cold War. I simply portrayed these three nationalities in the woodland area. Finally glass stelae were erected, which can be still be seen in the woods today, with a photo of the house residents, with a short description of where and who that is and what they are doing at that moment. This was a piece of work that moved along boundaries in both senses of the word. AoA: Because different aspects of your training and your artistic development were combined?

THE ARTISTIC ATTITUDE

UB: Exactly, and because the social context is very important since it is, so to say, going from architectural space into inhabited human space. Over time societal and social aspects became more and more important to me. Not in the way that you shape it and make portraits of people who have produced some sort of social achievement, but in that I go into society and actively develop something with the people. This was a milestone for participatory approaches in what followed.

AoA: I’m interested in the evolution of your work over time. How do you see this aspect? UB: Time is an important aspect. It doesn’t run on a linear path, of course. Looking back there is perhaps logic in this. But when you are in the process, you don’t actively know what the next step is. Above all when you are searching for something. You can’t assess this. Just as little as you can assess how long it will take. If someone had asked me how long do you want to examine architecture and art, I would have said it is my life and I’ll continually develop it. Suddenly it’s no longer interesting because you have completed it. But it’s quite difficult to say how long that will take. On the other hand if someone asks me today, “How long did you need for the drawing or the design?,” then I’ve perhaps worked seven hours on it. But I would say I’ve worked 20 years and seven hours. Because it plays a part in what has developed. AoA: So it doesn’t make sense for a work of art to stand alone at a point in time? UB: I don’t think so. – I believe there are milestones where you have learned something fundamental. But I wouldn’t say that it stands alone. Especially as it is connected with a person. I experience this with my students. I’m searching more for what there is in the person and what the characteristic features are. If I can crack that, then doors are opened for the students, who then suddenly realize, “It’s about me, I can be myself and this is my particular characteristic”. ‘I believe that searching for a special characteristic is an important search which makes every single person that which they are. AoA: Finding a position is important for artists. There was a report about the final papers of students of the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in a local newspaper, and that too much content and not enough courage were in them. Is that your experience too?

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UB: I'm not acquainted with the final papers in Dresden. However I do also observe a movement that you describe as a lot of content. A lot of information. Perhaps there is a lot of science in it. This is a new movement which is clearly relevant and important. Art and artistic work contain a scientific contingent and in this sense they perhaps contain a lot of information to begin with. But I don’t believe that this goes against innovation. Suddenly you are no longer searching yourself, like perhaps in the 1960s, but you are establishing the link to scientific work. I believe that this is innovative. I don’t know whether this was rightly seen in the report about Dresden. I appreciate internal searching but also the inclusion of external input.

AoA: Not a loss of courage, but simply another trend? UB: Not at all. I believe that courage was the same at all times and, after all, I can look back on a few years, to my teaching activity which I began in 1992. There is one group which just wants to have a profession and that as soon as possible. They simply pursue the goal of obtaining credit points quickly and getting through the Bachelor and Master degree courses as soon as possible. It’s quite difficult to intervene here because you need an incredibly large lever to crack this. There has always been this goal oriented group everywhere, and perhaps it has become rather larger due to the Bachelor and Master process and our current economic development. Around seven per cent of school subjects are concerned with art in the broadest sense. Seven per cent of artists, this is such a magic number, make a living from their art. And about seven per cent of first year students, who I have in front of me, are ruthlessly interested. This is my impression and my experience, about seven to ten per cent. AoA: We also talk about ten per cent on the topic of high potentials, top talents and similar interested persons in the economy, even when we know that around seven per cent in Germany do not get a school-leaving qualification. UB: That’s extremely interesting. We can see that already in the first term. But of course this doesn’t mean that one or another can’t find a very good place in professional society, because it is not only innovators and inventors that we need. We also need shapers to creatively transform the material available. Another figure I invented was the wolpertinger, accentuated by its environment and strong in the social area. We all need these. AoA: The aspect of artistic attitude is very important. Are the seven per cent you spoke of also the people who possess this artistic attitude?

THE ARTISTIC ATTITUDE

UB: Yes. At the end of their training.

AoA: How does this attitude manifest itself to you? What does this attitude consist of? UB: There is, of course, an artistic attitude, and also a scientific attitude. This manifests itself to me in the way that it has become like a skin. A skin has to grow. It’s almost like a biological process. You can’t remove a skin without damaging it and you can’t put it on like a dress. This belongs to an attitude, and an attitude needs, of course, a certain process, a certain time and, of course, a strong will and constancy. Once you have an attitude, then you can easily apply this to other areas. This means that, with an artistic attitude, you can not only paint pictures, but also conduct processes in totally different fields. You can also go into science with this, into economics, everywhere. However, if it is not an attitude but a result or products, then they remain singular. Perhaps I should also say about this that this artistic attitude, in a certain sense, is synergistically contradictory to scientific thinking and activity. Artistic thinking and activity lead to an attitude which, at best, make thinking and activity options possible, and they in turn produce material or immaterial results. Scientific and artistic approaches are like oil and water. It’s my opinion that they should not be mixed. If you mix colours, for example, you get grey. This doesn’t look good. If you mix together all of the bright colours you have – as in shown by Goethe’s colour circle – you will always get grey. Just imagine, no matter which colours you mix together, you will always get grey. Different shades of grey, but still grey. And I believe that the approaches we have in economics, art or in science should not be a grey area. They should be oscillating, bright areas which are not mixed together like in impressionism, but which stand alone next to each other and perhaps result in one colour when viewed from a distance, but unmixed and next to each other at close quarters. I believe we shouldn’t apply a set theory here. We are quick to draw two circles which overlap in the middle to obtain the wonderful mix of art and economics. This is not true in my opinion because this mixing only gives you a common denominator and this, you know, is the lowest, the lowest common denominator. AoA: That means that, to maintain such pointillism, we have to keep the areas separate from each other. Does that relate to the attitude or the activity or both? UB: In my view the approaches in the processes should remain separate. There is a logical, scientific, provable process, the science approach,

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which is based on justification, falsification and verification. In art there is quite a different approach which relates to curiosity, chance, playfulness, non-linearity, and this is a separate approach. They can combine together in the product but they should remain separate in the processes.

AoA: That reminds me of the overview which you have also repeatedly used in your publications and which contrasts the areas of science and art. If the areas should remain separate, but be combined in the product, can we then maintain that artistic attitude is not applicable to all areas? UB: It seems to me that this artistic thinking is not equally important in all areas. However I would say that it doesn’t do any harm to think artistically and thus have the attitude available. It’s the same with scientific thinking. It doesn’t do any harm to think logically. It’s useful to have two or more attitudes available, which you can slip back and forth between, or use one way or another. This is, however, far from being the case. We are unilaterally characterized by all of our training and the artistic attitude falls by the wayside. This is present for about one to ten per cent but definitely no more. In this respect it’s my view that artistic thinking, innovative thinking, should be embedded in everyone, in order to be able to use it at the right time. AoA: You have also described this artistic thinking in one of your publications. An attempt to capture this thinking, even though this is difficult. You also described how you can think artistically, but how can you act artistically? UB: Just let me say one thing about artistic thinking. There must not be a misunderstanding so that people think artistic thinking is only to be found among artists. Sometimes you can’t find it there at all. But it can often be found in non-artistic areas. This artistic thinking is in the minds of professional artists, and just as much in other creative minds. As you already said I have tried to grasp this, and have said then, that everyone who tries to think above and beyond set boundaries and enter new territories without knowing what lies in store for them, thinks artistically. Who pursue their thoughts even when they cannot be displayed immediately, at least not in a scientific or economic way. Who question patterns and conventions, observe intensely and can think above and beyond their disciplines. People who have doubts and can endure irritations. And also people who want to experience things subjectively and objectively and who consider both to be equally important. People who are able to link knowledge and experience, to find their own, non-prescribed positions and are also able, in a certain way, to think freely, to think clearly. Artistic thinking

THE ARTISTIC ATTITUDE

contains all this. When you look at these concepts you can see that art occursin them not one single time. It doesn’t even occur “visually” in them, or is something else that you associate with pictures or sculptures. This means it is the platform or the basis which is actually that which defines thinking artistically. Taking this as the starting point we can either invent a product in the economy, organize a great conference, paint a picture or act artistically in any other way.

AoA: If the points you have named as defining artistic thinking occur in other areas. Is it still necessary for me to concern myself with art by taking up art, or producing art myself in order to learn such a way of thinking, or are there other possibilities? UB: That’s an extremely interesting point which you find just as interesting as I do. This is also a central research point. I believe you can also achieve this otherwise than through art. We are doing trials with inventor workshops here. They have nothing to do with art in the proper sense of the word, and nothing at all to do with art products, but more with inventing. Of course art is a good field for having doubts, to learn without fear, to try things out, to work without pressure or the like. Art is really a great field for doing this. But if we can find possibilities to override norms, patterns, role models, prescriptions or standards, how we can avoid prejudices and not yield to pressure or fear or failure – if we can find, introduce, generate such practices or processes, then I believe we can manage without art. You are then in the middle of art, it’s just that the results no longer look like pictures. I believe this is something quite crucial. If I take away a picture from an artist, the artistic thinking will remain, and that is the essence that I can apply to other areas if it has become an attitude. If I associate art only with pictures, then I will only have a very small island which I can portray with a few colours, content and thoughts, but I cannot transfer it. I find this transfer possibility exciting. By the way not only in art, but also in science. What if I take words away from scientists? What remains then? There should be some scientific thinking remaining? How will that be realized? We have drawings, sketches, systems, etc. I would also go so far as to ask what if you take money or figures away from the economy? What remains then? Economic thinking. If we take the three essences together, economic thinking without figures, scientific thinking without words and artistic thinking without pictures and objects, if we put these together, then we will get a super essence.

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AoA: The super essence is the meaning of life or the search for truth and knowledge? UB: At the end of the day it’s the search for knowledge, in the philosophical sense, which drives us. With increasing knowledge you realize in yourself and in your environment that there are other perspectives. But I find this too general. I’ve just had grandchildren. When a child is growing up, it gradually discovers a natural ego and then, step by step, its environment. At some time it discovers that when the environment is thriving, he or she is thriving too. Later on the circles become wider and wider as the child discovers that when society is thriving, he is thriving too. These are thoughts which I would consider to be very positive in the economy. If people working with me thrive when I can get them to reach the peak of their abilities, then a lot will come across. Not if I take something away from them or build up competition, but like if, in a jazz band, I encourage the individual with glances, approaches and accompaniment to play a solo before it is passed on to the next one. If we could get that far, then I believe we will have done it. Of course manual skills and that which you have built up belong to this, but letting go and trusting other do too. These processes are not goal-oriented, but are an offer to play, swim, fly and navigate. AoA: Would that be the play instinct as defined by Friedrich Schiller? UB: I would rather quote de Bono than Schiller. Of course the play instinct belongs to this, but there is still more to it than that. It’s like igniting, and you always need two to ignite. One to ignite and the other who is ignited. I can’t motivate someone to play who doesn’t want to play and, of course, trusting and endeavouring to establish such a situation, which gives rise to this, belong to playing. You need places of self-assurance and letting go. AoA: What do you mean by place in this context? UB: I’m not quite so sure there myself, whether we are talking about a space. It’s definitely no bad thing to have spaces. But whether these are inner or outer spaces, I don’t exactly know. Perhaps I never will know. But I’m working together, for example, with an independent art school for child and youth development. I consider this to be extremely important. These are real places. The [ID]factory is also a real laboratory. I know other institutions too which are real places where you can get together. But there are also intellectual spaces. Our conversation just reminds me of that now. During my first conversation with you I realized that there is such a space.

THE ARTISTIC ATTITUDE

Although connected by telephone you can’t speak of a proper space. This is then more of an intellectual space. I believe that, to begin with, we need real spaces to generate things such as, for example, the placement of artistic processes next to scientific and economic processes. Google, for example, has understood about creating spaces for its employees, which are really quite different. There are spaces with green dots and swings where you can just hang out, and small acoustic islands which used to be there have been removed and replaced by others. They also have a rule that you can decide what to do yourself for part of the working time. This all takes place on ideal premises. People are attracted magically by this and so there should be more often such fields which facilitate the development of potential and enthusiasm.

AoA: So one characteristic of an artistic attitude is substantially influenced by the environment in which you work? In the light of your statements could we also replace the concept of environment with the concept of an open system? UB: You’ve said something important there, with open systems. In short, without openness, no innovation. If I visualize this figuratively, that I spread my arms wide to be open, then the spears, spikes and weapons of the others naturally strike extremely central and are possible deadly. Everyone who has tried out such systems has experienced this. There are at least two involved here. Because if there is no agreement, no structure, or someone has been forced into or prescribed an open system, then it can be very difficult. I’ve also experienced that. It’s certain that there must be an agreement a structure which makes navigation possible at all. Musicians can do this well, for example jazz musicians. When they play free jazz and one of them passes the notes on to another until he finds a point where he can take over. You also see this development in the glances. There are therefore tones and glances and then another person takes over. But someone who has no antenna, he doesn’t notice that someone is passing the notes on to him, not will he take over voluntarily. The playing is therefore linked to rules. Unfortunately there is also a certain hardening, which often has something to do with a certain age, where it simply becomes very difficult. I don’t know if that’s your experience too? AoA: As regards age I am rather more sceptical there because throughout my career I have profited from colleagues, no matter how old or experienced they were. I was able to learn from them because they set an example with their attitude which helped me on my way. I find it much more significant how

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people of all ages at school and in training are led away from art, and that incentives are created in professions which tend to limit innovations rather than to encourage them. For many people this development leads to a limited view of things. For some people earlier, for others later. UB: I believe we are working on a large process, which exceeds a lifetime. If we have wandered on the paths of Descartes for 500 years, who separated truth and logic on the one hand and magic on the other hand from one another, then such a paradigm shift will not occur overnight. I’ve noticed that in working with students there is a certain point beyond which it is very difficult to promote openness. Something existential has to occur for openness to be achieved. Therefore it’s my opinion that you should begin with these processes very early. Starting at school. It is really imperative that this happens very early and that we continually try out open processes. Just as we try out goal-oriented work and logic, we must also try out ignorance and illogicalness, but to quite a different extent from today. If you picture to yourself that it really wouldn’t take so long if we confront a six-year-old with open processes today, then we will already have this new constellation of switching between free navigation and goal-oriented work ten years later at the end of training. I don’t regard ten years as being very long. AoA: So you are also of the opinion that there should be a balance between this free navigation and goal-oriented work. Does that hold for artists as well as for other disciplines? UB: At the moment we have many people who can think in an incredibly logical and precise manner and this is very valuable. Our success in Europe in the last centuries is based on this. And we have people who are very good at navigating freely. It’s my wish to combine both in one person, or at least to achieve an awareness and appreciation for others despite personal focus, and to enable excellent cooperation from this insight. AoA: Above all, that you don’t oppose the other person? UB: That’s right. It would be sufficient if you accepted it. You don’t have to do it yourself, but have to accept it and namely on an equal footing. Therefore it’s my opinion that a 50/50 concept makes sense in training. 50 per cent applying to goal-oriented scientific work as before, and 50 percent for navigating in an open system. That’s my suggestion for optimal training.

THE ARTISTIC ATTITUDE

AoA: How does pull develop then in an open system? UB: Basically, pull develops in love when a man gets to know a woman or vice versa; a pull of attraction develops and if you could transfer this to processes in open systems, I would consider this optimal. Therefore it’s worthwhile to think about what attraction is and where it comes from, and also where enthusiasm comes from. It’s really a matter of literally igniting the spirit. When enthusiasm emerges, then a pull develops. This pull doesn’t actually emerge when you sit down together with document files just for a coffee, but often in a domain of encounters, conversations, experiences and happiness. Pull develops when you make music together. But you can also talk to each other in a creative manner. The environment has to feel right here. Therefore I’ll repeat once again: I’m in favour of creating places, domains which enable you to interact with each other in an atmosphere of trust. AoA: If we create these spaces, is it conceivable that people, who have already finished their training, will be able to find their way around such open situations and systems? UB: I think that a lot is submerged. Submerged by some circumstances or other, training and by day-to-day actions. If we open up possibilities to uncover that which is submerged, then quite astounding changes will even be possible for adults, for example through exciting processes in an open system, which are sometimes exhilarating, have a euphoric effect and generate enthusiasm. This can happen then very quickly. We’ve been researching this since 2003. AoA: I agree with your assessment and was able to observe this, for example, when design thinking was introduced into a large organization and what enthusiasm was unleashed in many people. UB: If we can now embed this enthusiasm, then we’ll have done it. AoA: From attitude to activity. How can you act artistically? UB: Artistic activity cannot be separated absolutely from artistic thinking, therefore we will probably always keep coming back to this. How do you act artistically? Let’s take the example of my students. Artistic activity means that I can take some action without knowing where it is going to lead me. I’m confident that I could also be on the wrong track. Artistic activity doesn’t mean scientific activity, that I think about something, analyse it, aim for a result and then implement this. It doesn’t mean that.

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With artistic activity the product is born at the same time as the process. Therefore there is no linear way, but a complexity of wrong tracks competing with each other and contributory streams which are in dispute with one another. It’s similar to the internet. At some time I produce something where not logic, but my feelings tell me, “That’s it.” You can’t actually even say what it is that you are going to produce. But when it is in front of you, you know it immediately. Then you say, “Yes, that’s it.” This is the very special thing about artistic activity. There is curiosity as a starting point, you need courage but there’s no such thing as failure, but only interim products on the way to a “work of art.” It could also be that you don’t get a result. Picasso demonstrated this in a very outstanding way in a film by Henri-Georges Clouzot, namely that you sometimes have to, or be able to tear something up. I would consider all of these processes to be artistic activity.

AoA: I’ll throw a few concepts at you now which we’ve frequently come across up to now. Doubts and the artistic crisis. What is your opinion on this? UB: I can do rather do something with the word “doubts.” A crisis, to quote Schumpeter, is firstly a form of creative destruction. These doubts about what is, about the norm, the pattern are important but uncomfortable. But first of all I have to know that I am in a pattern. I have to realize that there is a pattern and to be able to question this notwithstanding. This is only possible if I have balance somewhere, self awareness, a place of support or just a space where I can get support. Otherwise I will probably really drift into a crisis. AoA: The place of support is then part of the attitude? UB: When I’ve got to the point that I’ve found an attitude, then that is my place of support. Then I am, so to say, self-supporting. But if I haven’t yet found my attitude, then I need protected spaces available where I can get orientation and confidence and subsequently assurance. AoA: I get the idea that intellectual space could also include the artists who were on earth before us? UB: Yes. AoA: Picasso: “Good artists copy, great artists steal?” Find your own position by comparing and expanding that which was? UB: Yes, precisely.

THE ARTISTIC ATTITUDE

AoA: How do you see the role of criticism which can go from being unfriendly to painful candour? UB: It’s easier to go with the flow than to constantly be the target of criticism. Perhaps there’s another word for this. I’m talking about the development of potential. Such processes can hurt, but are unquestionably necessary. This is also how it is handled in the academies. You have a position and defend this in an area under critical eyes. The critical questions posed serve the purpose that you can stand up for yourself in a world that is not only friendly to you. The artistic world is definitely not only simple. It also serves to examine whether your own arguments are sufficient for the position which you have just worked out. If they are not sufficient then that will lead to new concerns of the person concerned who will then certainly – and this must be translated as positive – get a new chance to sharpen the position. This is a very critical moment which can be successful when confidence is there. But this doesn’t always happen without damage, and you’re not always successful in doing it yourself. That is clear. Those who develop potential should take a lot of time here to find out how the criticism was expressed exactly, but not generate any sustainable frustration. AoA: Do not cause damage to others but everyone should continue to develop further together? UB: I don’t wish to be romantic here. The art scene is ultimately an economic scene. The art market doesn’t have much to do with artistic thinking. It’s simply market, market activity and marketing. Everyone does just as he or she pleases and there is a great deal of competition. You can’t see that as being romantic at all, and it’s a cutthroat business. But even there it’s been realized that you can’t always make progress with this approach. There are a large number of groups of artists who mutually support one another. There are interdisciplinary conferences which do not set up barriers against one another, but where they attempt to work together with one another. The Falling Walls conference in Berlin, for example, in which many disciplines work together. I would not like to mix the art market and art marketing with artistic thinking. That would require a lot of backbone.. AoA: In the economy a lot is spoken about vision, mission, values and so on. We at Age of Artists believe in a future in which organizations pursue as their objectives things like sustainability, social responsibility and innovative strength on an equal footing with profit. To achieve this the persons acting must be very free, due to the variety of objectives when shaping the process-

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es. Artistic processes could develop in this way. This development would lead to different visions, missions and values. Is there an equivalent to this in art? UB: Artistic processes seem to have an incredible value for those who do these because everyone who works artistically knows that only seven per cent of them can live from this. But that doesn’t stop them from doing so at the limit of economic feasibility, sometimes for their whole life. This way of living seems therefore to possess incredible value. Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many of them. Otherwise many more of them would cease to do so. These are, so to say, the ideal workers. They work twelve hours a day for a minimum wage. This is the way it is, apart from the cases who can really earn money. It would be worthwhile to establish for once what the great value of this is then. I think that the value of this is, that I can also deal with myself in the reflection of my environment. I can, so to say, develop a very personal statement. This is definitely important. This leads first of all to a position. A position is defined for me by a magic triangle. This means that there are three things here. These are the person concerned, the environment and the idea. And these three things are inseparable for me. They are very important in order to pursue that which you perhaps call vision, but I call idea, and to consolidate it. The consolidation of the idea, the own person, what you consider to be valuable on the way to where you want to get. How can this be realized in my environment and what lies ahead of me? These are the three points which consolidate together into one position and at the same time, a long distance which is pursued in art. AoA: If I picture this as three circles which overlap with one another, then a small space emerges in the middle. Is this the position which emerges at the interface of person, environment and idea? UB: No. I don’t see it like that. That’s set theory for me and that no longer applies. I know what you mean and that’s even how we always draw it. I don’t believe that it is an interface. It’s another space, another level. If I take your image then I would assume a higher level where the idea, the vision is, and then there would be the relationship points to those three other important things I’ve named. The image with the overlapping areas, that’s all grey to me. Therefore we should go upwards and form a sort of pyramid. There’s a model by Werner Preißing which I use. He calls it the “Spindelhub” (spindle stroke). It’s a three-dimensional field which positions the idea at the tip of the pyramid and there is a circle on the material, formal and organizational area below where different factors can gather. The factors in this case are, of course, environment, persons and

THE ARTISTIC ATTITUDE

so on. There are other pyramids in the surrounding area which are attached to it. In this way you can move up and down infinitely. But at the end it’s important that each single factor of this interaction is ultimately connected with the overriding idea in some way. I believe it’s imperative that it follows an idea.

AoA: I think we’re actually talking about synonyms, for example vision and idea.. UB: What is interesting is that I am working with a visual system like Spindelhub, which comes from management, in art. Werner Preißing developed this from his research into company issues. I’ve projected this onto art and it fits absolutely. My students are great at handing the spindle and it helps them not to become linear, i.e. not to implement the first idea immediately. I find it a great misfortune if the first idea is implemented immediately where you don’t really need a lot of time to produce a second, third, fifth, tenth idea. Possibly after the tenth or even the twentieth idea, because only when you’re tired and have discarded the first layer of ideas, then the right ones come along. How long does that take? An hour, perhaps two. Then we can say for sure, “Aha, now I’ve been through everything there is as an alternative.” and perhaps go back to the first idea, but perhaps also on to another one. In my opinion the method of alternative factor fields to gather ideas is really important and doesn’t just stop at mind mapping. I’m no friend of mind mapping. It’s so one-dimensional and separates the fields and factors from each other. Those from Potsdam are clearly further on with their design thinking that we have developed further into non-artistic fields with artistic thinking. AoA: What are your wishes for the future at the interface of art, science and economics? UB: When we look each other in the eyes today, everyone usually knows what scientific thinking means. Everyone knows what that is. But if I talk about artistic thinking then first of all there is an aversion or many people reject it, and secondly no one knows what it is. We really have to do more work on this point so that we can get to the stage where we can talk to each other on an equal footing and that a community of people allows us to say that now we are thinking scientifically and now thinking artistically. What actually moves and drives me is that artistic thinking and activity will be established in equal measure alongside scientific thinking and activity and on an equal footing. The issue is not that creativity disappears in some slot or other of some science or other, because scientists and art-

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ists today are naturally already creative, but this is of no use to us here. We can’t make progress if we use old words like creativity because that which we wish to describe is not an attribute but a whole way: scientific thinking and artistic thinking. The brain doesn’t care about this at all. It neither thinks in an artistic way nor in a scientific way. It just thinks. It’s more a question of an agreement we have in society. The agreements we made in the past led to certain rules and patterns, namely how I can, and should, think scientifically. I’ve been doing this for decades and at some stage highways have formed in my brain, which also functions like this. And on the other hand there is artistic thinking. No highways form here, at the most a highway network, but on the other hand there are fears that we could behave like a child, there are team problems, there are challenges which are difficult to address. When we then begin to talk about creativity too, then it’s all over because no one sees the necessity to continue researching. Because we are creative anyway and we have the rather old-fashioned creative workshops. That summarizes apparently everything. Therefore it’s really important to me to call this something different conceptually and to proceed from the Grundgesetz (constitution). Art and science are placed side by side in the Grundgesetz. By the way, it says, “Art sand science are free.” We concentrate on this “free” the whole time. But we should concentrate on the fact that the legislators, the creators of the Grundgesetz, have separated art and science from one another because they are apparently incompatible and because we apparently have the same value in one as in the other, otherwise they would not have been placed on equal terms. Although there are, at the most, ten per cent artists and 90 per cent scientists, the concepts are placed on equal terms. At this point we still have resources which are undiscovered and which are apparently being tested, searched for, explored and elaborated in a very great movement across all disciplines. This is an incredibly exciting area for me, just like speaking to you today since you come from the field of economics. And we’re talking about such a topic. That would have been impossible 20 years ago. I think that’s great.

AoA: Because we from the field of economics recognize that the established values, structures and processes are no longer sufficient to shape the future successfully. On looking for solutions over and above the concepts of creativity and innovation we are in the process of identifying transferable patterns, although art doesn’t seem to allow any clear formation of patterns. And yet there is something there.

THE ARTISTIC ATTITUDE

UB: It’s that what I call the liquid matrix of possibility. We are trying to find a transferable pattern for something which allows no norm. That was defined really well. Such a liquid matrix of possibility is constantly moving. It is a matrix but it is liquid and, in this respect, it cannot be exactly located, and is not quite tangible. It’s a matter of possibilities. I find this is a lovely image for a dynamic pattern, which looks rather different from set theory, or mind mapping or other linear systems.

Figure 1: Werner Preißing: System sketch positioning

The interview was conducted by Dirk Dobiéy (Age of Artists, AoA) on 18 August 2014 by telephone after an introductory conversation on 21 July 2014. Professor Ursula Bertram was in Mainz, Dirk Dobiéy in Meissen near Dresden. This text is licenced under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 (creative commons.org).

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Ursula Bertram

US3OBEROLMERWALD

Installation at the conversion property of the former cruise-missile base 9 glass steles with portraits of 3 German, 3 Russian and 3 American families In cooperation with the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry for Internal Affairs, the landscape architects Bierbaum and Aichele, the photographer Christian Kain, the filmmaker Alfred Engler, and the musician and architect Werner Preißing.

The project brings together people from nations whose fate during the Cold War was entangled with the location of the former American military base OBEROLMERWALD. Ursula Bertram randomly selects buildings on military maps of Russia, America and Germany. Her journey in 2001 brings her twice to Siberia, once to a location near Moscow, to California, Kansas and Kentucky, to Thuringia, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Bavaria. Together with a photographer, a cinematographer and a guitarist, she travels 15,000 kilometres. The project progression and the encounters with the families are documented in photos and video recordings.

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Anyone could have been hit. The photo strike was aimed at buildings that were chosen at random from military maps. First, a region was randomly defined, followed by a zoom to a location and finally to a single building. The buildings that were hit were located in Nizhny Novgorod near Moscow, Irkutsk and Angarsk in Siberia, Reedley/California, Hickory/Kentucky, Meade/Kansas, Holzkirchen in Bavaria, Paderborn in North Rhine-Westphalia and Mühlhausen in Thuringia.

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US3OBEROLMERWALD

Alexander, Valentina and Katya dance in Russia; Breda, Curtis and Francesco in the USA; Karin, Thomas and Ulla in Germany. Who represents a nation? What is the difference between war and peace, superpower and loser, significant and insignificant? A conversion project at the end of the Cold War in cooperation with the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry for Internal Affairs.

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Pam collects crystal bells, since Curtis first declared his love and gave her a bell carrying a red rose. Pam wants nothing more than to have a child with Curtis. Together with two dogs, they live in Hickory, Kentucky, a town with 100 inhabitants and three churches.

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NAVIGATING IN OPEN SYSTEMS*

* First published in Bertram and Preißing, 2007: 41.

NAVIGATING IN OPEN SYSTEMS

We all learn what closed systems are in school. 1 + 1 = 2 is a correctly-solved equation. Every other solution is incorrect. (The binary number system, in which 1 + 1 = 10, we learn later on.) Paris is not located on the Ganges, but rather on the Seine. The Battle of Issus was in 333 BC. Important pieces of information such as these have left an indelible mark on our memories. One hallmark of closed systems is that there is “correct” and “false”, which means that mistakes can be clearly identified. Societal systems have conventions, taboos, and laws that operate in this sense. One is a member of (closed) society. Closed systems offer security and calm, and are so ubiquitous that they bring with them a complete life philosophy. To question self-evident facts is to attack the system. Closed systems offer security, but are inherently hostile to growth. In contrast, open systems enable growth, but also contain risks. Entrepreneurs or managers, who have to make important decisions about the future of their businesses, know what it means to navigate in open systems. For example: is it a good or bad idea to found a subsidiary in China? In order to assess opportunities and risks, vast amounts of data are collected systematically: potentialities are evaluated, and possible profit margins are calculated, all of which ultimately function to fulfil the underlying desire to construct a closed system. But it doesn’t work. The system remains open. Political influences can have serious consequences. Competition in the market is rife. Employees assigned to work overseas suddenly no longer want to go abroad. But it would be wrong not to act at all, as there is never absolute security, at least not in an open system. Ultimately, even after careful examination of all eventualities, the decision-maker stands alone. How do they decide? Alone! It is not only in terms of large-scale strategic manoeuvres but also in relation to everyday tasks, that important decisions have to be made: it’s with decisions like these that the fatal tendency (due to time constraints, among other things) to remain in apparently safe closed systems persists. Having to make a large number of these “smaller” decisions solidifies the closed nature of the system, and reduces the development of new business perspectives. Entrepreneurs or managers, who are aware of the ne-

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cessity of navigating in open systems, learn to draw on suitable methods that help them make such smaller decisions in a way that is more confident and aware. There is one profession that has specialized in the navigation of open systems like no other. For which working in closed systems is, by definition, essentially out of the question; a profession that has developed methods and survival strategies for moving through open systems, almost without realising, and brings products into the world with charisma and panache – the artist, or, more accurately, the good artist. Who better to learn from about the navigation of open systems? Despite this, it has occurred to hardly any entrepreneurs to observe an artist and see how their artworks are created. In any case, few if any artists would think to allow an entrepreneur to observe them during this process. It probably wouldn’t work anyway. Because of this, the elements of this process generally remain hidden. “Navigation in open systems” means opening up artistic processes and making them able to be experienced by others, in order to carry the elements of these processes across into company management. Such processes will infuse the business with the artistic sensibility required to release previously-unknown potential. The following non-linear methods can assist in this transfer process: - the factor field method - the cloverleaf model
 - system visualisation

NAVIGATING IN OPEN SYSTEMS

Figure 1: Werner Preißing: The factor field method

Figure 2: Ursula Bertram: The cloverleaf model

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Through practical exercises, artistic processes become transparent. System visualisation shows how to transfer methods into a business context. Components of this practical repertoire include the ability to playfully think outside the box, to experiment, and to newly or better position oneself within the context of an open system. The key requirement being the willingness to conceive of a business as an open system and not as a closed set of rules. Experience shows that a more natural environment, such as that found at the seminars at Finistère at the outermost edge of Brittany, has a unique and particularly positive influence. The natural surroundings have the effect of allowing elementary thoughts to be grasped.1

1 | This text seems to be written by Werner Preißing, but due to the interlocking nature of their research, the authors feel that attribution is sometimes impossible and also completely unnecessary. The thought sketches that appear in this book are only a small part of the visual discourse that is considered in much greater detail in Preißing’s book, Visual Thinking: Solving Problems with the Factor Field Method, Rudolf-Haufe, Munich, 2008.

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Boundaries are the site of development!

Figure 3: Ursula Bertram: The site of development

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Ursula Bertram

ZEITARBEIT II (TEMPORARY WORK II)

Photographs and exhibition performance at the Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, 2004 Curator: Dr Rosemarie E. Pahlke, Dortmund 10 knitters knitting black wool, 1 payroll office, 10 white chairs, 10 containers for wool, 10 time clocks, 900 metres of coloured wool

Using a simple knitting method, a woollen thread is wound around the crown sitting on the head of a knitting spool in the shape of a woman. The thread eventually re-emerges from underneath the skirt of the woman as a seemingly endless woollen tube. Ursula Bertram has translated this wondrous production process into photographic self-portraits. Like a forgotten umbilical cord, a woollen tube emerges from underneath her skirt and between her legs. The hose can be read as a metaphor for the creation of an artistic world.1 1 | Marina Schuster, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, in: Ursula Bertram, Zeitarbeit. München: Salon 2004.

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Bertram’s production-performance subtly interrogates the socio-political dimensions of both the economy and the art world. Through this visual experience, or the possibility of witnessing the value creation process at work, art is rendered visible, both for the audience and for the participant. The performance conceived by Ursula Bertram removes the structural aspects of economic work processes – for instance, production sequence and time management, concentration and monotony, cooperation and dedication – and places them in a parallel artistic universe. She constructs a specific work situation in which 6 knitters are hired for a period of 11 days and instructed to knit black wool. She has also hired a supervisor who has to make sure that the wool supply runs without interruption, and who is in charge of the payroll office. Posters advertise temporary work in this low-pay sector. 5 euros is paid at intervals of 60 minutes, indicated by the ticking time clock at the workplace.

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A MODEL FOR THE FUTURE Artistic Thought in Non-Artistic Fields*

* First published in: Bertram, 2012

A MODEL FOR THE FUTURE

Who didn’t do this as a child: write secret messages in lemon juice that could only be read by candlelight? Unreadable and invisible to adult eyes, this was a protected language just for children. Or at least so we thought. As children we were hardly able to imagine that adults were once children too and that our secret cryptography had, in fact, been passed down, from generation to generation, tried out each time with excitement anew. Now, thanks to a project named WTFT-11/1 at the Kunsthalle in Emden, adults can try this out again or for the first time themselves.1 Is it not a bit silly, to write in a white room without being able to see the results? Once a day, a black light is switched on, and only then do the thoughts become visible, now through fluorine rather than lemon juice. No one can see what the pen does when it is in action; its results remain hidden. But anyway, I write on the wall. There’s something archaic but also strangely uncontrolled – and uncontrollable – about it, because I can’t see whether the traces of my thoughts overlap with another’s. I mustn’t dwell on that though, because even if I tried I wouldn’t be able to discover any rules or guidelines. Thus I remain an anarchist, inventor, and child. And as the many other museum visitors do the same, and invisible letters continue to spread throughout the room, something really unexpected happens: the art grows beyond the confines of the museum and begins to extend out into daily life. And that is the real secret that initially – or perhaps even forever – remains invisible. While in the room with the fluorine symbols, the museum’s pedagogy inscribes a process into my brain, as devious as it is fantastical, that becomes visible not only under black light but also through parallel experience. A kind of “cryptography of artistic mediation”, one which undoubtedly transcends the limitations of citric script. No, I’m not an alchemist. I’m speaking of the art that exists outside of art; more specifically, artistic thought and action in non-artistic fields, such as research and business. Even if I worry that in Emden a secret language was invented. A language that is so secret, that it will take decades to be recognized and deciphered. Many of these border crossers come togeth1 | The participatory exhibition WTFT-11/1 took place until January 29th 2012 at Emden Kunsthalle, which was founded by Henry and Eske Nannen. Participants were able to freely and indiscriminately write on the walls with fluorine markers. Once a day, the inscriptions were made visible under blacklight. See http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersachsen/oldenburg/ kunsthalle277.html. (Last accessed on 01.03.2012)

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er in a movement which makes clear that we still have not exhausted all potential methods to bring about the changes that are necessary to navigate future fields. Perhaps no “creative destruction” is in fact necessary to navigate in open systems,2 as the Austrian economist Joseph A. Schumpeter suggests.3 It is possible that other concepts are more suitable, ones which act more subtly but with an extremely indirect and thus more effective element. Participatory forms, which like good art also keep secrets, communicate themselves not through knowledge transfer but rather via experience. With chemist and Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigogine’s discovery that “uncertainty is the key feature of natural phenomena,”4 the idea of the diffuse long ago achieved importance in the natural sciences. This idea was carried on in the writing of the physicist Fritjof Capra. Rational, reductionist, and linear analysis has gradually given way to a contextual, intuitive, holistic, and non-linear synthesis.5 Works such as artist Sabine Groß’s Fashionloop,6 occupy themselves with systems of classification and therefore with inherent chaos of all kinds. Systems that continue to elucidate the inherent subjectivity of perception and judgement. Groß allowed outsiders to influence her appearance and the selection of her clothes and then attempted to precisely implement the advice that they provided. Groß then presented the resulting new outfit to the next observer, and requested advice and improvements. The result was an unending sequence of photographs that captured these attempts at optimisation, with each new glimpse providing a new variation, without ever achieving a final resolution. Philosopher Vilém Flusser conceptualised uncertainties as opportunities: “Everything that one previously believed to be something real and had confidence was real, turned out to be a contingent, chance possibility 2 | Bertram, 2007. 3 | The concept of “creative destruction” is a central motif of Schumpeter’s work Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Francke, Bern, 1946. 4 | See Prigogine, I., and Stengers, I., The Paradox of Time: Time, Chaos, and Quanta. Piper, Munich, 1993. 5 | See Capra, F., Web of Life. An Understanding of the Living World. Scherz, Bern, 1996. 6 | Fashionloop, Kunsthalle Göppingen, 2001. See also Groß, S., Fashionloop exhibition catalogue. Published by Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt Frauennetzwerk Berlin e. V., Kunsthalle Göppingen, 2001.

A MODEL FOR THE FUTURE

[…]. To the surprise of all concerned, this loss of faith in reality did not lead to dark despair, as if the rug had been pulled out from under us. Instead, we are seized by a sense of staggering liberation by the possibilities of creative, artistic living”.7 Flusser, Heisenberg, Prigogine, Capra, Bazon Brock, and other innovative academics and artists, all saw this as a concept for living, with a number of businesses, including Google and Apple, following suit. These dissipative structures and non-linear systems, however, are yet to find a home in our educational and economic systems. Uncertainty continues to have a negative connotation, despite all the evidence that instable or flexible systems belong to the self-organisational structure of life. In the 1980s, artist Joseph Beuys lamented the “fragmentation of the holistic human into specialists” and the atomisation of the world into distinct fields. The insight that we perhaps should not constantly attempt to analyse, conquer, and get rid of chaos, but rather learn to deal with it and develop a new attitude towards uncertainty, is only now beginning to gain ground. This is Flusser’s idea of creative, artistic living, which Edward de Bono calls lateral thinking and the Centre for Artistic Transfer in Dortmund8 terms ‘IDdenken’. “We concern ourselves with non-linear thinking,” we wrote on the outer façade of our “lateral thinking factory”: located at the TU Dortmund, it aims to share artistic competence with others. We can think of art as the desire to act without direction. What we are seeking is to form words and sentences free of fear: to write into the unknown, to permit mistakes, to contribute to structures out of a sense of pleasure rather than obligation. Structures whose results are first seen as outcomes of a communal process; to use the invisible and non-linear as sources of development for intuitive process, to play purposefully and be useless, to laze about, permit the unexpected, allow oneself to relax, to laugh, to consider things from the opposite perspective, to approach scholarship artistically, and art in a scholarly way, to become curious, inspire enthusiasm in others, work passionately, create innovatively… sound good? More importantly, though, how would that work?

7 | See Flusser, Vilém, ‘The End of Tyranny’ in arch+ 111, 1992, pp. 20–25. 8 | www.id-factory.com

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Business is extremely interested in these processes, which would make every employee able to confidently carry out their tasks, just as in the arts. That’s obvious. The closer one comes to art, the closer one comes to a profile of how things will be in the future. Let’s set out on this promising path, which means, quite simply, to approach an objective in a non-linear way. But we have almost forgotten how that works. In the last 500 years, non-linear thought has not been a popular idea, not since Descartes imposed on the world a filter that only permitted objectively comprehensible evidential chains. It is only since the middle of the last century that non-linear thought has begun to earn a modicum of respect within chaos research. Because dynamic systems are very difficult to work with, however, they often turn out to be unsuitable for our daily lives, which rely on a functional mechanistic system of calculable facts – a place where reason prevails. Irrationality was (only) permitted to occur in “nature”, which did not align itself with progress. This can be seen, for example, in wild cloud formations, white water streams, and changes in the weather, which still elude definition, at least in a general context. Non-linear processes also appear in the diversity of faces and shapes that our genes produce, and, above all, in everything that cannot linearly be understood, categorised, ordered, fixed, and learned, such as acts of artistic creation. Now, the indeterminable is also beginning to suddenly crop up in the world of communication. The fixed, hierarchical conventions of the world of communication have not functioned since the Internet allowed for all possibilities of participation, as well as anonymity. We have arrived at the high point of disorder with the queen bee of our system having proven to be unreliable. The banking and finance system’s authority as guarantor has been shattered. Alan Greenspan has renounced it. What now? Now experts of all disciplines are taking stock of the situation and beginning to grapple with a system that has carried us through the past few centuries, bringing great progress along with it. Have we overlooked something, they ask? Tired and with an attempted composure we look towards alternative systems that have developed other survival strategies. We attempt to find out which mechanisms they make use of and what their secrets are. Management theorists look behind the curtain of the cultural sector, trying to understand its organisational structure and working conditions. Virtues long prevalent in business such as punctuality, thriftiness, and obedience are now slowly but surely being replaced by

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artistic skills such as creativity, spontaneity, and improvisation.9 Relatedly, a worldwide study conducted by Professor Anne Bamford10 yielded an astounding result regarding the development of innovation among adolescents: innovation increases with participation in art and culture. What this means is that the formerly isolated sphere known as “art” is examined not only as socially acceptable but perhaps even as serviceable: an unused resource for a different way of doing things, whose unconventional approach has created a kind of model for dealing with uncontrollable events. At least that’s the idea. This model is hard to recognise, however, because it emerged from something that is the antithesis of linear calculability and logic. This model is experience-based, and in a constant state of transformation. And it gets even worse: the model of art, which gives us images, movement, dance, sounds, and colours and stimulates our imaginations is not a dress that can simply be taken off and handed on, but a skin. The model must slowly grow with the person, layer by layer. It cannot be bought or found packaged up within an existent creative technique. It requires a process that yields a position. The waste matter from this approach constitutes the products. If the end products are placed at the forefront of the process, the model evaporates. Understandably, everyone is looking on curiously and expectantly at an invisible model that seems particularly useful for the non-artistic fields and that promises to change the future.

9 | See also the studies by Doris Ruth Eikhoff: http://www.management.stir.ac.uk/ people/ stirling-institute-for-socio-management/academic-staff/dr-doris-ruth-eikhof (accessed 23.02.2012). 10 | In 2006, Anne Bamford prepared the UNESCO-commissioned study ‘The Wow Factor’, which found, among other things, that the capacity for innovation dramatically increases due to human capital, openness, diversity, cultural environment, technology, institutional environment, and creative output. See Bamford, Anne, The Wow Factor. Global Research Compendium on the Impact of the Arts in Education, Waxmann, Munster, 2010.

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How Non-Linear Models are Formed

To develop this model, we need: Sites of self-affirmation,
 the letting go of rules, routines, and norms, of ignorance and doubt; a mistake-free zone, a space for unpunished attempts and errors, one for free realisation, which always affects and makes felt; a space that enables the development of potential and enthusiasm. A field for self-cultivation, with a free realm that permits indignation. An area for trying out one’s own abilities, for post-linguistic communication, for profound silence and the rejection of conceptual junk. A space for childhood ideas, for playing and just existing. An island of undisputed safety on which I can rescue myself when I need direction and love. A workshop in which I am permitted to think without having to come up with something specific. A place in which I can examine role models and then discard them. A path that sees detours as being as important as other routes.

All of these spaces lead to a model of artistic thought and action. This does not mean a kind of thought that must lead to the production of art, but rather the ways of thought and action that remain when I subtract images from art. It is an approach that goes beyond the field of art. An approach premised above all on non-linear options for thought and action, on interacting with the uncertain and indefinite. An approach that includes the subjective, individual experience, as well as excitement. Its secure status does not vary according to evidence, as occurs in the scientific process, but rather through the self-assertive power present in open and undefined systems. This is something that we urgently need to practice, and such locations need to be set up as soon as possible. These are undoubtedly the suitable sites for the development of skills that we will need in future, in order to be able to develop a system that constantly mutates, functions

A MODEL FOR THE FUTURE

globally, and works by attraction rather than by pressure. A skill that is not limited to one particular field of expertise – an art that exists in non-artistic fields: one as much at home in the most innovative academic and economic minds as it is in those of good artists. With the advent of the Internet, these structures have slowly become a reality, although we have not yet really recognised the necessity of navigation in open systems, let alone learned them. Painter Gerhard Richter11 knows this. At the Düsseldorfer Akademie Richter was able to help a student quickly develop an approach and decision-making capability that some do not reach in their entire lifetimes. This he did simply with three cubes – one red, one yellow, and one blue, which he prompted the student to paint. After she had completed her first picture, he changed the position of the cubes slightly and demanded the next picture, a process that was repeated until she eventually refused to continue following his instructions. She began to paint what really interested her, and changed studios. Choreographer and director Nullo Facchini12 knows this too, and considers detours to be both necessary and efficient. His Danish dance theatre company developed a staging of Dante’s Divine Comedy on the grounds of the cruise missile station in Hunsrick/Rheinland Palatinate that was abandoned in 1990. Facchini always backed the creativity of his team and allowed the dancers to test out their own choreography. There in the remnants of the Cold War, in the former rocket bunkers, on the training grounds and in the large hangers, whose grey-green blandness had a spooky effect, they did so. One morning, he instructed two male dancers to dance as if they were repeatedly shaping a single sculpture from their two bodies, as if they were in a time loop. The evening presentation took place in an austere hangar. The three teams of two male dancers performed their choreography, each in a different corner of the room, while someone accompanied on violin. Over and over again, the male bodies slowly glided over one another into a new position, in which they rapidly hardened into an inseparable whole.

11 | Gerhard Richter (born February 9th, 1932 in Dresden) is one of the most famous living German painters. From 1971 to 1993 he was the Professor of Painting at the Kunstakademier Düsseldorf. 12 | Facchini, N. and Bertram, U., Dante’s Divine Comedy, Tanztheater at the Raketengelände in Hahn-Hasselbach, 1990.

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The result was impressive. What the dancers didn’t know, and therefore were not hindered by in the development of their choreography, was that the piece was about the circle of hell reserved for homosexuals, which Dante considered a wicked act. The dancers worked exclusively and unencumbered on the process, rather than towards the immediate goal of a visual “translation” or an illustration of homosexuality. In doing so, Facchini eliminated any kind of pattern formation or cliché. This approach can be applied to all processes that require innovation and can be understood as a non-linear method. Modern science knows of this as well. Professor Hans Peter Dürr has declared disorder to be the norm and remarks that instability is a moment of highest sensitivity. The former assistant to Werner Heisenberg and director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics, accuses the modern sciences of fundamentalism, one which follows a Western “scientific-technical-economic ideology” and ignores other ways of thinking. As an example, he uses the image of a record. One will not find the soprano within by examining the grooves with a magnifying glass. “The soprano, with his diverse timbre, is in fact buried in the form of the groove, encoded in a relational structure.” He calls this way of thinking “poetic”. In contrast to the “sharpness” of the viewpoint that focuses on isolated details, “poetic observation” instead concentrates on the relational structure. Whoever cannot develop a sense for this behaves like an illiterate, who, for example, unable to read and therefore understand a poem by Goethe, is instead proud to be able to arrange the letters of the poem according to their shape and thereby create a clear structure.13

Figure 1 -2: Ursus Wehrli: Tidying away Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’

13 | See Dürr, H.-P., Make the Living More Alive. oekom, Munich, 2011; Wehowsky, S., The Living World of a Physicist (book review), in Journal 21, 05.11.2011: http://www.journal21.ch/die-lebendige-welt-eines-physikers (accessed 05.08.2012).

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In his own humorous way, Swiss artist Ursus Wehrli also explains how ordered strategies are not useful for artistic production, noting that any attempt to understand non-linear and holistic structures through analysis and categorisation will undoubtedly generate peculiar results.14 A job advertisement in Brand Eins, a magazine known for lateral thinking in economic contexts, implies that our aspirational concept is already finding its way into some niche areas of business. The ad contains the following text: “We are looking for an employee. Your field of expertise is irrelevant. We offer new fields of work for people who are capable of discovering and encouraging their own qualities, who can act consciously, develop their intelligence and ingenuity in group settings, and identify themselves with an idea”.15 This is a viewpoint nourished by the failure of current systems. The points of contact between art and business continue to operate on a highly superficial and downright naïve level. The misunderstanding perhaps lies in attempts to connect artists and entrepreneurs, artworks and economic products, and artistic strategies and economic strategies too directly, in a way that regularly leads to failure. Unsustainable offers and overly linear creative techniques are no replacement for fundamental and sustainable anchoring in training and further education. The real problem with the learning of artistic thought lies in the existing standardisation of thought around learning and art and the accompanying defensive attitude. What makes “sense” is taught to us at school and is unrelated to the aforementioned non-linear practical exercises. As long as people attempt to locate artistic thought in the realm of convention and the sciences there will be no educational turn. If only these areas are considered valid sources for the structuring of our educational systems, the development of this potential will not occur. According to Walter Graßkamp, artistic thinking is among the highest and most privileged forms of work. “These privileges are not granted (to art academies) because the state wants to support spaces for exotic experimentation, but rather because something extremely difficult is to be learned.”16 And extremely valuable, one might add.

14 | Wehrli, U., Tidying Up Art, Klein & Aber, Zürich, 2010. 15 | See the job advertisement section of Brand Eins magazine, 3/2001. 16 | Grasskamp, W., ‘Untitled’, in Klasse Olaf Metzel, Kissing and Cycling, Akademie der Bildenden Künste/Martin Luther, Munich, 1996: 9.

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The Expulsion from Paradise

Paradise

The Tree of Knowledge

Adam and Eve

Apple Figure 3: Werner Preißing: Closed and open systems

Artistic thought develops gradually. When we enter the linearly-focussed schooling system at the tender age of six, this potential begins to be buried under piles of knowledge. Artistic thought means renouncing familiar patterns and thought clichés. I have noticed that first-semester students begin to study art full of enthusiasm. Success is achieved quickly in the foundational courses: students sculpt, weld, paint, and so on. The majority are sure that their first bold and painstakingly-made efforts are profound works of art. By the end of the second or third semester, however, holes begin to appear. They sense that something doesn’t feel right, that another kind of approach is needed, but one which is not yet clear to them. This leads to a prolonged departure from known patterns, mostly due to a lack of obvious alternatives. Leaving clearly-defined spaces is not easy and never comfortable, least of all when copying strategies turn out not to be sustainable in the long term and the only option that remains is navigating in open systems. In such situations, a context that utilises an action plan not predicated on “right” or “wrong” can be helpful, one which trains personal skills and strengths. A free space in which one can autonomously gain experience not generated through knowledge, but that instead generates knowledge. An interdisciplinary space that permits creativity and which also overcomes the boundaries of art.

A MODEL FOR THE FUTURE

Why then artistic thought? We need the ability of artistic thought and action as a corrective, just as logic requires intuition. It is the motor of innovation: the balance required to make complex decisions, the corrective for objectivity, a platform for new approaches and experiences, a laboratory for new developments and seismographic future manifestations. An eccentric sheave for undiscovered perspectives, a force field for energies that generate not only products but also processes and, in the long run, a considered and sustainable approach. Like scientific thought, artistic thought is a skill that is not confined to a single area of expertise. What is meant is a kind of art that functions in non-artistic fields, one whose perspective is as much at home in the minds of scientists and economists as it is in those of artists. Artistic thought is an option that promises a new approach for dealing with uncertainty. A model for self-motivated research, towards goals that first become visible only as soon as they manifest, goals which inspire us and which are always worth engaging with. We need artistic thought and action as a form of self-assurance, as a way to develop the potential for experience, as a process of fermenting our own positioning. Such processes are transferable to all disciplines and organisational structures. We also need artistic thought and action to avoid undesired developments. To save money and resources in order to finally create organisational structures in the economy and scientific community: structures that imply uncertainty and openness without these things becoming arbitrary, and to attribute value to authentic approaches. Summary Artistic thought must firstly be recognised as equal to scientific thought and be given space to be tested out. The process by which subjective experience can be attained must be regarded as of equal importance to that of objective knowledge acquisition. My recommendation is for innovation workshops and inventors’ labs that support the development of potential. Labs with tasks that can produce no wrong answers and encourage non-linear thought through open processes that have no predetermined outcomes.

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Such innovation workshops should be established within the schooling system as soon as possible and also structured into further education. In order to avoid misunderstandings, they should not be integrated into art classes, but rather exist as independent experience labs which are utilised by a range of disciplines. This requires facilitators who do not have the end product in mind, but rather the process: the transferable process that first results in an approach, from which a product will eventually emerge. Here we must abstract artistic thought from artistic production. Of course, it’s fine to work on producing art, but the focus should be on the process, not on the end result. As soon as creativity serves as a kind of training for the solidification of an aesthetic in certain defined areas, it becomes the enemy of art, according to Heiner Goebbels. For this reason, he advocates for pilot projects around contemporary production techniques that are not subject to institutional forces, but rather function as laboratories for the future.17 What we need is to become comfortable with ignorance. To gain confidence in one’s own experience and the possibility of there being a range of solutions to a given problem, to get rid of unnecessary baggage in the process, and create space for new developments, also in terms of one’s own character. On the walls at Kunsthalle Emden, I wrote “Creativity is not a prisoner of Art” in a secret code with an invisible marker – a secret code that prevented us from directly approaching it and therefore immediately categorising and consigning it to the archive. Outsmarted! We don’t have to understand it, we just have to live it!

17 | Speech by Heiner Goebbels at the ‘Forum d’Avignon Ruhr’ on 09.03.2012.

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“Art, and modern art in particular, is perhaps the most innovative area of human praxis.”  Prof. Dr. Julian Nida-Rümelin

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Ursula Bertram

ZEITARBEIT VII (TEMPORARY WORK VII)

Dortmunder U Gallery on the university floor Dortmund, 2011/12 4 monitors, 2 containers for cards, cards, 1 chair, 1 camera, writing on the wall, 1 cinematographer, reciters

The task is to recite a text that has been learned by heart, without making a mistake. People without a migrant background receive 5 euros if they succeed, and people with a migrant background receive 6 euros. The precision factory has fixed production hours and a strict protocol. Every reciter receives a work certificate.

TEMPORARY WORK VII

Learn the following text by heart: “Am I a work of art or a human being? Can a human being be a work of art? Can a work of art speak? Is art meaningless? Am I meaningless now? Am I not meaningless if I get paid? Should I be ashamed of being an artist?”

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TEMPORARY WORK VII

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OLIVER SCHEYTT

GRUSSWORT

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THINKING DIFFERENTLY – WHERE DOES IT HAPPEN?*

* First published in Journal für Hochschuldidaktik, 1–2, 2012: 34–38

THINKING DIFFERENTLY – WHERE DOES IT HAPPEN?

Thinking differently is in high demand. Which should come as no surprise. When forecasts have a gloomy ring, and once the initial phase of laying down stricter rules and regulations, undertaking reviews, and reinforcing the bulwarks of convention has been left behind, at that point, at the latest, searching movements will metamorphose into hitherto neglected forms of thought and perception. Emergencies provide ideal conditions for the discovery of untapped resources. During an emergency, ideally, cultures of “thinking differently” receive attention as well, which can lead to further development. However, this can only happen if there is no overreaction to the discovery of these cultures of alternative thought. Ignorance is not helpful, but nor is an excessive enthusiasm that counts its chickens before they have hatched. An exaggerated rush to integrate is like the pillaging of the “other”, when its specific traits, images, words, and terminology are incorporated and applied by a given field, subsumed by it, and completely absorbed, losing its character in the process. The current higher education system tends to encourage students to conform to its mode of organisation. After numerous discussions with teachers and students, our conclusion is that all participants presently aim for the most “efficient” completion of their studies. From the students’ side, this means that they generally avoid “mistakes” and any form of opposition that would cost them “unnecessary” time or adversely affect their grades. With the examinations in mind, students learn to adapt their work to the expectations of the teachers, in order to acquire the necessary credit points as effectively as possible. In extreme cases (and they are not rare), this means putting aside their own opinions and ideas and instead reproducing the examiners’ positions, as a way to ensure a high grade with little effort. Meanwhile, narrow curricula and a variety of other tasks mean that many educators, too, lack either the time or the courage to enable their students to break out of this system. The groups of students or educators who stand opposed to this form of teaching and studying represent what we mean by thinking differently. It goes without saying that universities should include among their teaching objectives the ability to move through open spaces, unhindered by safe routines and norms, to find one’s own paths and to withstand the associated uncertainties. We must therefore ask ourselves what the places, spaces, and paths (in the physical and figurative sense) are that differently thinking individuals need in order to dare to think differently and not be worn out by the effort to conform. What would such places, spaces, and

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paths look like and what could universities do to make them available, so that higher education institutions could again be points where differently thinking individuals converge?1 Daring to think differently In a speech given at the auditorium of the TU Dortmund, Federal President Joachim Gauck said that “our system thrives on searching movements in the open, as part of a lively democracy. […] In research and scholarship, doubt is not a system failure but rather its foundation […]. We know that the traditional research process and its later applications have long ceased to be exclusive affairs,” (July 4, 2012).2 He added a recommendation for achieving a balance in science and scholarship between acceleration, rest, and leisure. It seems that, judging by the key words (searching movements, navigating open systems, doubt, deconventionalising research, deceleration), even the head of state was eager to expressly encourage the university to venture to think differently. In his lecture ‘What is Thinking?’ at dOCUMENTA 13,3 the philosopher Alexander Düttmann,4 known for his book Derrida und ich, explained that “that which is unthought is the motor of thought” and that the indeterminable is therefore the motor of the determinable. He added that this procedure proves to be very strenuous: “Strenuous means moving around in the strenuousness of openness, because I am not sure.” To remain in uncertainty makes us afraid at first and is incomparably more demanding than orienting ourselves in familiar surroundings. It takes a lot for the mind to leave its comfort zone, for the body to mobilise sufficient energies, and for reason to signal that detours are worthwhile, even if it is not known whether they lead to results or not.

1 | From a conversation with Dr. Tobias Haertel, Zentrum für Hochschulbildung (Centre of Higher Education), TU Dortmund.
 2 | On the occasion of the event ‘Von der Idee zur Erkenntnis’ (‘From the Idea to the Insight’), hosted by the Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG) 04/07/2012. 3 | Düttmann, A., ‘What is Thinking?’ a seminar at the dOCUMENTA (13), in Ständehaus, Kassel, 16/07/2012. 4 | Professor of Philosophy and Visual Culture at Goldsmiths University, London.

THINKING DIFFERENTLY – WHERE DOES IT HAPPEN?

Such a signal will only be sent if the mind senses something very attractive. It has to be attracted by, say, an island in the middle of a blue Pacific Ocean, with palm trees and coconuts and the aura of something that, if one were to miss out on it, would be irretrievably lost. At the moment of transition from one closed system to another, there is a temporary open system, an unprotected position that involves risks and, as a result, generates anxiety.

Figure 1: Werner Preißing: Closed and open systems (Bertram and Preißing 2007)

It is by no means easy to abandon secure areas, neither for the one who dares to take this step nor for the one who opens doors and breaks down barriers. It is a big mistake to believe that it is easy to transition into open systems, or to keep open systems open. Letting go of approved patterns of perception and thought is one of the most significant obstacles when studying art. Art education is mainly about “breaking down”, not “building up”. The most difficult thing is not producing but letting go. In this context, the economist Schumpeter speaks of “creative destruction”.

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Figure 3: Art pattern

Art, the other pattern Currently, art in its insularity is seen not only as socially acceptable, but maybe even as serviceable. An untapped resource for other ways of acting, whose unconventional approaches engender a kind of model or pattern for uncontrollable processes. That is the hope, in any case. But the pattern is hard to discern, since it has emerged from something that is the antithesis of linear calculability and logic, and because it is based on experience and changes constantly. And to make things worse, art’s pattern, which gives us images, movement, dance, sounds and colours, and which sparks our imagination, is not a dress – it is a skin. You cannot just take it off and hand it over. The pattern has to grow with the person, very slowly, layer by layer. It does not exist as a product to be purchased, not even when it comes in the packaging of a creative technique. It requires a process that leads to an attitude. The “waste products” of this attitude are, then, what generate the products. If we focus only on the products, the pattern will vanish. Everyone gazes with eager curiosity at an invisible pattern, which seems extraordinarily valuable to fields outside art and which promises to change the future.5

5 | Bertram 2012.

THINKING DIFFERENTLY – WHERE DOES IT HAPPEN?

In order to develop this pattern, we need spaces for returning to oneself, where it is possible to let go of rules, routines and norms, ignorance and doubt, where there are no mistakes, a space for unpunished trials and errors, a niche for free realisations, a space that affects people and is in turn affected by them, that enables enthusiasm and the development of potential. A personal field to plough and renew with an open-air zone for revolt. An area for testing your own abilities, for supralingual communication, for deep silence and for sorting through a flotsam of ideas. A space for bringing up ideas, for playing and letting go. An island of unchallenged safety where I can take refuge when in need of direction and love. A workshop in which I am allowed to think for myself without having to reach a specific result. A place where I’m allowed to consider role models and discard them again. A path that puts trial runs one a level with other approaches.

Figure 3: Bileam Kümper and Nora Kühnen: A joint effort between music and art

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Open systems only work by drawing in, not by applying pressure. For that reason, Heiner Goebbels, composer and dean of the Ruhrtriennale, advocates running pilot projects of contemporary approaches while exempting them from institutional forces, making them suitable to play the role of laboratories of the future.6 Such laboratories can give wings to higher education institutions’ capacity for innovation. Since they are very difficult to comprehensively integrate, they should be open spaces. They should be islands for new patterns and for individuals who will think differently, work in an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary way, and be driven by the enthusiasm necessary for overcoming comfort zones and navigating open systems. With the [ID]factory of the Centre for Artistic Transfer at the TU Dortmund, an attempt has been made to create such spaces in a knowledge society that has already recognised that existing knowledge will not enable us to make quantum leaps in research and development without innovators and people who think differently. Non-linear thinking research in the [ID]factory The pilot project Centre for Artistic Transfer at the TU Dortmund has been researching non-linear thought and action in open systems since 2003, in its previous think tank, and since 2007 in our factory for lateral thinkers, the [ID]factory. The [ID]factory is an experimental field for conducting searching movements and testing insecurity, a space for reflecting on utopia, social movement, educational policy trials, and participatory processes. A heterotopia in Foucault’s sense of the word, with its corresponding non-linear orientation and plenty of unprogrammed areas. Just as the museum can be understood as an alternative, unruly place, where new things are possible, where that which is “different” can be made manifest, where suppressed knowledge re-emerges and counter-narratives find their place, we understand the [ID]factory as an interstice between disciplines, as a field for initiation into interdisciplinary impulses, and as a place for intuition in the sense of “creative destruction” (Schumpeter), in order to make room for new territory, as a space for the critical examination of norms, and a place for “trial and error.”

6 | Bertram 2012.

THINKING DIFFERENTLY – WHERE DOES IT HAPPEN?

What does the theory look like in practice? Artistic Transfer, 2007–2012. In cooperation with various universities, lateral thinking was being tested in Leipzig, Bochum, Duisburg, the Steinbeis University of Berlin, and Merida (Venezuela). The events were interdisciplinary and open to participants from all faculties, currently with about 530 students from 54 different subjects. To accompany this, an ‘Inventor Workshop’ was developed, bringing non-linear thinking into work on objects and processes. The seminars on artistic transfer and art in non-artistic fields were attended by students from mechanical engineering, computer science, fine arts, spatial planning, sociology, theology, mathematics, journalism, Middle Eastern and Asian studies, archaeology, art studies, and statistics, just to name a few, who all wanted to experience and develop non-linear learning processes. This concept is now being used by various universities in the Ruhr region and beyond. The [ID]factory was a partner of the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010, with the symposium ‘Art Sponsors Business’, and the follow-up symposium ‘Art Sponsors the Sciences’ in November 2012. In 2012 this factory for lateral thinking was singled out by the initiative ‘Germany – Land of Ideas’, in cooperation with Deutsche Bank, to receive the one of the ‘365 Selected Landmarks’ prizes for “sustainable contributions to Germany’s future viability”. Collaborations are ongoing with the BfI (Bureau for Innovation Research) in Mainz, the Institute for Future-Oriented Competence Development (IZK) of the University of Bochum, the Electives Programme of the University of Bochum, the University of Duisburg, and with IFAN, a nationwide research group of the Universities of Berlin, Munich, Duisburg, Osnabruck and Dortmund investigating “Artistic thinking as a motor for social change”. [ID]factory prize 2007-2011. For the seventh time, in cooperation with business enterprises (e.g. Greenpeace Energy, Credit Suisse, the Future Bizz consortium), the [ID]factory prize has been awarded for the transfer of artistic thought and action into entrepreneurial practice, sponsoring both early-career researchers and up-and-coming artists.

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Figure 4: Presenting results

An interdisciplinary team lecture series from 2008/2009 and a junior lecture series ‘Innovation – how does it work?’7 were organised in cooperation with the faculties of economics, the social sciences, and mechanical engineering, the latter leading to a publication of the same name in which 14 representatives expressed very different perspectives (dance, environmental protection, art, mechanical engineering, etc.) on the generation of innovation in the humanities, the natural sciences and engineering. The future_bizz community’s Connect Creativity project, a nationwide network project, researches and visualises future environments in cooperation with various universities and a corporate consortium. In April 2008, the [ID]factory was at the centre of a nationwide meeting, moderating workshops at the TU Dortmund campus. Project partners of the corporate community include Bayer, Grohe, Melitta, Duravit, Hochtief, Vorwerk, Vaillant and others. The higher education project partners include the Dortmund, Darmstadt, Cologne and Delft Universities of Technology, the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle, the Universities of Applied Sciences of Lippe (Höxter), Coburg, and Pforzheim, the University of Bremen and the University of Wuppertal. 7 | Bertram 2010.

THINKING DIFFERENTLY – WHERE DOES IT HAPPEN?

Figure 5: ‘Connect Creativity’, 2008 event

As usual, the success of the project is reflected in the numbers, in the reputation of its cooperation partners and prizes. Much more persuasive, however, is the fact that the students of mechanical engineering call the [ID]factory a cult factory, that students of cultural studies frequent the place to organise their popular poetry slams, that spatial planning students, among others, encourage their groups to visit the factory so they, too, can “start to think differently”. Then there is the fact that non-linear processes have already led to the founding of companies such as the “Knüppelknifte”,8 the fact that team-building activities and friendships have developed between experts who otherwise would never have met, and the fact that young lecturers and young academics from other disciplines frequently use the [ID]factory as a place to exchange ideas or hold special events. And that young researchers and companies often come to ask about the possibility of collaborating. In short, the place is being acknowledged and seems to be quite attractive. I cannot say with certainty why this is the case, but it has to do with openness. The following feedback from a cultural studies student may be more informative than a view from outside: 8 | The Knüppelknifte is a clever gastronomic concept in which the old campfire bread on a stick becomes a design project: www.knueppelknifte.de.

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Feedback from John-Sebastian K., 12th semester, Cultural Studies: Unfortunately, I only got to know the [ID]factory during the last semester of my studies at the TU Dortmund [...] I simply wanted to do something different. The structure of the seminar, the environment, the teaching staff [...] have given me a completely new perspective on many things in the short period of time since the beginning of this semester. I’ve learnt how to generate ideas, how to boost my creativity and what it means to “think outside the box”. The spaces of the factory are very helpful in this regard because they create an atmosphere that, as a humanities scholar, I do not associate with a university at all, and that is exactly what is good about it. Coming into the factory spaces is like entering another world (academically) in which the focus is on experimenting, thinking, and creating, much more so than in a normal seminar room. For me, the various halls, the workshop area, the exhibition and seminar room, the cafeteria, and the outdoor area have the aura of what a university should be like without giving me the feeling of being at a university. That is exactly the contradiction that captivates me again and again. For me, the factory embodies the desire for novelty, the desire to rediscover yourself and your thinking, the desire to see well-established things from new perspectives. This is made possible both by the very open format of the seminar and by the qualities of a space that promotes this “desire for thinking”. Two hours in the factory were enough to give me (after one seminar) a feeling that not only had I learned something that day, but that I had taken a step forward, that I was different from who I was two hours ago. Creativity in its purest form has something about it that is childish and yet mature, that can at the same time be playful and deadly serious, and that continuously engages and moves me as a human being. Above all, interdisciplinary exchange has been of great importance. Because the special atmosphere of the factory depends on the interplay of the different perspectives presented in the seminar. In accordance with the renaming of the institution as a Technical University with a focus on both human and technical aspects, the factory seminars are a practical application of the overall motto of the TU. [...] The combination of theory and practice, of discussion and creation, of university and machine hall, of the natural sciences and the humanities, these are the factors that make up the [ID]factory [...]. I hope that many students (even those from other subject areas) will get to enjoy it. For me, unfortunately, the factory experience has ended after just one semester.

THINKING DIFFERENTLY – WHERE DOES IT HAPPEN?

Figure 6: Artistic transfer course participants

It is simply a mistake to believe that such an evidently valuable skill as the ability to think in an independent, interdisciplinary, and innovative manner in team settings just happens to fall from the sky. The concept of “having ideas” is misleading and is misinterpreted as demanding nothing else than waiting for them to spontaneously come into existence. Perhaps we only need a few islands like the [ID]factory in order to secure a win-win situation for the current system, which disseminates ways of thinking differently, so that we can work together for the future.

Figure 7: Work by Alischa Leutner

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ZEITARBEIT V (TEMPORARY WORK V)

Wiesbaden city centre Temporary interactive work Wiesbadener Sommer, 2008 Curator: Dr Isolde Schmitt, Wiesbaden 1 red steel container, banner ads, 1 mounted monitor, 1 container for cards, 1 steel staircase, 1 red chair, 1 camera, 1 cinematographer, reciters

Precision factory Situated inside a container, a bright red miniature factory hires workers to produce precision. Everybody can apply as a wage labourer. Participants receive a wage of 5 euros an hour. Every 15 minutes the position can be filled anew. Production goal: the production of a flawlessly recited text. The task is to accurately recite a text in front of a camera without making a mistake. If somebody makes a mistake, the rehearsal is ended. If the text is flawlessly recited by heart, the worker receives 5 euros. Text cards are provided at the production site and can be taken home as learning material. It is a short, medium-difficulty text and, with some practice, entirely possible to learn by heart. The text is about art and as plain and unadorned as the factory floor. Outside the production hours, the door is locked. The recordings of the previous days are shown outside on a monitor.

TEMPORARY WORK V

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Resolution We call for non-linear, artistic thinking and acting to be enshrined in the education system, so that they can be effective in the future. We advocate expanding the scope of knowledge transfer, testing open systems, and training transdisciplinary skills. We consider art and science to stand on an equal footing.1 We call for equality between art and science.2

1 | Summary recommendation of 170 participants of the symposium ‘Art Sponsors Business’ in 2010. 2 | The call for equality between art and science implied that future research should not only be defined as scientific but also as artistic. This makes clear that the TU Dortmund is obliged to practice not only science but also art. The motion filed by Senate member Bertram was approved by a large majority during a Senate meeting on April 22, 2015 and included in the preamble to the Bylaws of the Technical University Dortmund, as amended on October 16, 2015: “Insofar as these Bylaws refer to the sciences, they equally apply to the arts. For the purposes of these Bylaws, research refers to both scientific and artistic research.”

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Symposium 2010

ART SPONSORS BUSINESS Artistic Thinking in Non-Artistic Fields

VORTRAGENDE PROF. DR. OLIVER SCHEYTT (MANAGING DIRECTOR, RUHR.2010 GMBH) | WELCOMING ADDRESS | PROF. URSULA BERTRAM (ARTIST) ARTISTIC THINKING IN NON-ARTISTIC FIELDS | BIRGIT LUXENBURGER (ARTIST) UNTITLED (THE ARTISTIC PROCESS) | ALBERT SCHMITT (MUSICIAN, MANAGER) THE 5-SECOND-MODEL IN MUSIC AND INDUSTRY | PROF. TIMM ULRICHS (ARTIST) TOTAL ART | PROF. DR. GERALD HÜTHER (NEUROBIOLOGIST) WHAT BUSINESS CAN LEARN FROM NEUROSCIENCE | PROF. DR. GERHARD KILGER (PHYSICIST, PHILOSOPHER) ARTISTIC APPROACHES TO MEDIATION AND VISUALISATION IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH | REINHILD HOFFMANN (CHOREOGRAPHER) BORDERS AND CREATIVITY | PROF. DR. METIN TOLAN (PHYSICIST) NON-LINEAR SCIENCE WITH JAMES BOND | DR.-ING.
WERNER PREISSING (ARCHITECT) VISUAL THINKING | PROF. DR. JULIAN NIDA-RÜMELIN (PHILOSOPHER) MODERN ART AS A PARADIGM OF ECONOMIC INNOVATION | ECKARD FOLTIN (INNOVATION MANAGER) HOW WILL WE LIVE IN THE YEAR 2030?

ART SPONSORS BUSINESS

‘Art Sponsors Business’1 was the theme of an interdisciplinary symposium organised as part of the European Cultural Capital RUHR 2010. It comprised lectures, workshops and open spaces in which renowned scientists, artists and lateral thinkers from a wide range of disciplines participated. The focus on the ‘product’ in both business and the arts has repeatedly deflected attention away from the ‘process’, ultimately referring the observer back to their respective domains. The transfer between the disciplines and the augmenting of scientific thinking by artistic thinking offer a new perspective on how to develop and train new skills. It can figure as an eccentric sheave of scientific research and drive an increase in innovation capacity. This will ultimately be of key significance to our future economic system. Proceeding from the discourse between art, science and business, the interdiscipliFigure 1: Vice-Rector Prof. Dr. Claus Weihs, Rector nary symposium ‘Art Sponsors Prof. Dr. Eberhard Becker, Prof. Dr. Bazon Brock Business’ make recommendations for a future capable of innovation and in which non-linear thinking plays a major role. Among the 170 participants from the most diverse disciplines were the choreographer Reinhild Hoffmann from Berlin, the neurobiologist Prof. Dr. Gerald Hüther from Göttingen, and the philosopher Prof. Dr. Julian Nida-Rümelin (a former federal minister) from Munich. The recommendations for leaders and decision-makers were drawn up into a resolution. Bringing together artists, scientists and economic experts should help identify the role played by non-linear and artistic thought processes and methods in cognitive processes generally, so as to initiate their sustained incorporation into teaching and practice and to facilitate future cooperation on the topic between experts from various disciplines. This was the central task of the symposium. 1 | Bertram, 2012.

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Reinhild Hoffmann and Thomas Koch

Prof. Dr. Julian Nida-Rümelin

Prof. Dr. Gerhard Kilger

Prof. Dr. Oliver Scheytt

Prof. Dr Ursula Gather, Rektorin der TU Dortmund

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Birgit Luxenburger

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Dr,-Ing. Werner Preißing

Albert Schmitt

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Prof. Dr. Metin Tolan

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How does innovation emerge, and what role does “art” play in this?

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To what extent are non-linear or artistic thinking and acting accountable for sustained successes in economic performance and development?

Which processes and methods are characteristic of non-linear thinking?

And how can they be studied in extra-artistic fields?

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[ID]FACTORY: The Thought Factory

THE THOUGHT FACTORY

The [ID]factory is a space for reflection on utopias, social movements, pedagogical experiments and participatory processes. A heterotopia in Foucault’s sense, with an accordingly non-linear orientation and a sufficient amount of indeterminate space. In the same way as Laumann understands the museum as an alternative, unruly place, a place where the new is possible, ‘otherness’ can manifest, suppressed knowledge can surface, and counter-narratives find their place.1 We see the [ID]factory as a interstice between disciplines, an area for initiation into interdisciplinary impulses, and a place for intuition in the sense of constructive creative destruction (following Schumpeter). A place where there is room for uncharted territory, a place for critical engagement with norms, and a place for trial and error. Its point of departure is artistic strategies and their still barely-researched transfer. As an interdisciplinary think tank, the Centre for Artistic Transfer researches interdisciplinary key competencies for budding leaders, teachers and future specialists: people who want to understand problem-solving in new and interdisciplinary ways. The Centre makes artists, scientists and enterprises available for the interdisciplinary development of innovative ideas. The [ID]factory was founded in 2007, as a successor of the 2001 thought workshops at the Office for Research Innovation (BfI) Mainz and the Seminar on Plastic and Interdisciplinary Work (PIA), and linked to the Art and Criticism Seminar at the TU Dortmund. It benefits from the expertise of researchers from education, sociology, neurology, art, music, occupational psychology, economics, management, and other disciplines. The [ID]factory is a place and thought factory for artistic processes in non-artistic fields, and is open to all disciplines. The factory sees itself as a development space for ARTISTIC – TRANSFER and as a research space for gaining experience in the development of new, unplanned, surprising and non-linear processes. Since 2003 it has hosted seminars in the interdisciplinary field of artistic transfer and visual thinking. The [ID]factory/Centre for Artistic Transfer is a research project at the TU Dortmund, directed by Prof. Ursula Bertram from PIA in the Department of Art and Material Culture in conjunction with Werner Preißing from the BfI, Mainz. 1 | See Divjak, P., Integrative Inszenierungen. Zur Szenografie von partizipativen Räumen. transcript, Bielefeld, 2012.

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YOUNG LAB RESEARCH QUESTIONS FROM BUSINESS

YOUNG LAB – RESEARCH QUESTIONS FROM BUSINESS

The [ID]factory prize is awarded to a successful collaboration between business and art chosen from the interdisciplinary [ID]factory pool. The artistic transfer seminar is open to students from all faculties. Its goal is to work in an interdisciplinary way on a research question from a business or organisation with a novel way of doing things. Students from all faculties can enrol in the seminar, so as to be able to pose questions and contribute their different perspectives to the discussion. The well-remunerated prize has been offered since 2007 by the Centre for Artistic Transfer at the TU Dortmund and the BfI Mainz, and is awarded by a jury of scientists, artists, business people and representatives of the Centre’s business partners. To date we have had participants from 53 different disciplines from universities in Dortmund and Bochum. Guests also came from Berlin, Leipzig and Merida (Venezuela).

Figure 1: Daniel Braun: Travel salt shaker

Figure 2: Alischa Leutner: Entrepreneur III

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We break businesses down into their component parts and then put them back together anew. We link words to questions, refresh homepages with a cold shower and douse thoughts in champagne until the elementary particles constitute a point of departure for new, clear and breathtaking constellations of thoughts, words, forms, pixels and systems for both a business and its brand.

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ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNER: THE OFFICE FOR RESEARCH INNOVATION, MAINZ

2007–8 [ID]factory prize winner Sehra Karakus

HOW DOES A THOUGHT FACTORY WORK?

The [ID]factory allows itself to be observed from a distance. Artistic research in the Young Lab can lead to eye-catching images. Sehra Karakus sees the [ID]factory as a laboratory for non-linear processes and novel production methods. A group consisting of Ilona Kohut, Alischa Leutner, Stephanie Zeiler and Birgit Mittelstenschee devised a tandem bicycle as a symbol for the transfer between art and business. Other memorable creations included a sea bream on wheels, a speaking porta-loo, instructions for thinking outside the box, and an artistic formula based on the Navier-Stokes equations.

Figure 3: Ilona Kohut, Alischa Leutner, Birgit Mittelstenschee and Stephanie Zeiler: Factory tandem bicycle

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Figure 4: Sehra Karakus: The factory laboratory

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ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNER: GREENPEACE ENERGY, HAMBURG

2011 [ID]factory prize winner Erki Schwarzer

HOW CAN THE USE OF GREEN POWER BE INCREASED BY VIRAL MARKETING?

A little black beetle will travel from outside the front door of Greenpeace’s Hamburg office to Fukushima, Japan. After travelling tens of thousands of kilometres with the help of many accomplices, it will be deposited at the door of a nuclear power plant. Its journey comes to an end inside an irradiated and still radioactive fuel rod chamber. It will be accompanied by hundreds of people demanding an end to the use of nuclear power. They have come together online with the help of a beetle named Travelbug. A travel bug is a small metal chip embossed or printed with a number from the web-based GPS-supported game called Geocaching. Geocaching players are known as treasure hunters. There are over 1.5 million registered treasures and several million players worldwide. Bugs are hidden, found, and then their new owners return them to the game by giving them a new task. The energy bug has the task of travelling from Germany to Fukushima and increasing awareness of green energy, and energy companies like Greenpeace Energy, on the way. Finders can have their photo taken with their own message and with the Greenpeace energy bug. Using a number from geocaching.com, thousands can follow the journey.

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Figure 5: Erik Schwarzer: Travel Bug to Fukushima

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ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNER: IBK KOHNEN, FREINSHEIM

2008–9 [ID]factory prize winners Anja Reißig and Amelie Lüdke

HOW CAN WE MAKE NOISE REDUCTION A PRIORITY? “The biggest events are not the loudest, but rather the quietest moments of our lives”, Anja Reißig says, citing Friedrich Nietzsche. Reißig presents a different understanding of sound, with sign language and feathers that can be moved by inaudible sound waves, while Marcus Wiludda snapfreezes sound into ice and creates black noise. Figure 6: Anja Reißig: Lab(ear)atory noise

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Can noise be pom-pommed away? When I stand before a group of council members to discuss noise reduction measures for the city, this video could be used in place of a long introductory speech to emotionally bring the goal to the forefront and start the discussion in an ideal way.

Figure 7: Christine Böse: Pom-pom

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There must be portable housing that could accompany one through life. Something that remains a home, a constant, something secure, independent of how things go. A take-away house, even for when one wants to escape noise. Amelie Lüdke is committed to building in the gaps with mobile housing elements that can be transported by helicopter. Figure 8: Amelie Lüdke with Prof. Dr. Künne, Mechanical Engineering, TU Dortmund: Blowball

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Soundwaves from street noise power the traffic lights at the intersection. In places where noise cannot be prevented, it should be put to use.

Figure 9: Jakob Dawid and Fabian Menke: Airnergy

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ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNER: PERSONALANALYSTEN, FILDERSTADT

2010 [ID]factory prize winners: Nicola Gördes and Elza Javakhishvilli

WHAT DO SKILLS LOOK LIKE?

The eye of the other A recruitment consultancy wanted to improve their presence at trade fairs with the help of the lateral thinking [ID]factory. The task was to stand out from the monotony of hundreds of statements by other exhibitors. The question was how to intelligently visualise recruitment. The [ID]factory focused on competency and advertised with a poster entitled ‘Who would you hire?’ The poster depicted nine women in different outfits and with extremely different levels of charisma. They could have been taken from job application photos or job interviews. At a second glance, however, it became clear that the nine different faces were all of the same person. The draft was used as a poster and disconcerting eye-catcher at a trade fair. It was also distributed in postcard form, which proved highly popular. Advertising by thinking outside the bounds of a linear message was very successful. The consultancy discussed skills and their own analyses. The design is much more than mere advertising and is performatively grounded in ‘the eye of the other’, perception and deceptive appearances.

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Wie erkenntWho man ...would „Kompetenz“ you ?hire? Wie erkennt man ... „Kompetenz“? Wie erkennt man ... „Kompetenz“?

Wie erkennt man ...

Figure 10: Nicola Gördes and Eliza Javakhishvilli: What do skills look like?

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ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNER: BILFINGER SE, MANNHEIM SACHSENFONDS

2013 [ID]factory prize winner: Judith Klein

WHAT SIGN DOES THE BUILDING NEED?

The idea was to use artistic interventions to make one place stand out from those around it, and simultaneously to exploit the possibilities of the space and to find a clear language. Figure 11: Donja Nasseri: Autonomous leaves

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Figure 12: Donja Nasseri: Autonomous leaves

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Judith Klein’s work convincingly realises a thought that is as relevant to business as it is to the natural and social sciences: the duality of wave and matter, of physics and philosophy, represented through a screen print digitally printed onto a large glass pane. The frequencies depicted symbolically transfer their energy to the business and its employees.

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Figure 13: Judith Klein: Duality.

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KUNSTTRANSFER-PARTNER: LEIBNIZ-INSTITUT FÜR ANALYTISCHE WISSENSCHAFTEN ISAS

2016 [ID]factory prize winner Julia Batzdorf

WHAT IS A SURFACE?

Figure 14: Julia Batzdorf: GLEAM

YOUNG LAB – RESEARCH QUESTIONS FROM BUSINESS

A surface is created and constituted as such only through movement and velocity. Visible engines make bright green hoses rotate around their own axes, generating a barely-visible surface resulting from centrifugal force and velocity. At the same time, this alludes to the texture of all physical surfaces, which, as we know, consist of atoms, electrons, and velocity. Surface is ultimately an illusion.

Figure 15: Julia Batzdorf: GLEAM

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ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNERS: KPE DEVELOPMENT AGENCY, FRANKFURT AM MAIN CREDIT SUISSE, FRANKFURT AM MAIN

2009/10 [ID]factory prize winner Jan-Gerd Terhürne

WHAT IS THE IDEA BEHIND THE HOUSE?

The research question was posed by a team of architects who placed the Westfalentower at the centre of visual inventions in outdoor areas. From among the designs, six objects were realised in the urban area near Westfalendamm in Dortmund. A challenge for interdisciplinary teams of inventors, integrative thinkers, and professional implementers. Figure 16: Katrin Eßer: We are wandering back and forth

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Figure 17: Lisa Karnagel: Nest

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Figure 18: Jan-Gerd Terhürne: Urban Watchtower (rear pedestal)

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ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNERS: WIGASTONE, STEINWENDEN STEINTRADING INTERNATIONAL

2008 [ID]factory prize winners Stefan Bröckerhoff and Georg Luttermann

HOW CAN WE STAGE STONE?

Figure 19: Stefan Bröckerhoff and Georg Luttermann: Untitled

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Figure 20: Stefan Bröckerhoff and Georg Luttermann: Untitled

The way in which engineering students staged a material such as stone was astonishing. A green bucket filled with sand hangs in the eight-metre-high atrium of the [ID]factory. Its pendulum movement across the room creates unpredictable lines of sand flowing out through a small hole.

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ARTISTIC TRANSFER PARTNER: YOU!

A Recipe

WHAT YOU CAN DO IN ANY CASE

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Figure 21–23: Nicola Gördes and Elza Javakhishvilli: Video stills, Ursula Bertram: text

Guidelines for keeping a reasonable distance Distance yourself. Do this whenever you have lost your distance, but don’t act unilaterally. Take a pair of glasses, take a pair of scissors, scratch the lenses with the scissors. Now put on the uncertainty glasses. Do this whenever you have lost your view of the whole.

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PROFESSIONAL LAB: INTERVENTIONS FOR BUSINESS A PROTOTYPE

PROFESSIONAL LAB: INTERVENTIONS FOR BUSINESS

An invitation to a conference – ‘not again’ is what most participants think. A long and stressful journey, sleeping in an unfamiliar bed, having to wear a suit all day, lots of small talk, and endless PowerPoint presentations on topics that are not really relevant to your own work. If you are a speaker, you will look out at a sea of motionless faces. However catchy your presentation, they will be more enthralled by their smartphones. It’s just one more conference into which plenty of work and money have been put, while most participants can’t wait for it to end and will quickly forget about it. This is not much fun, neither for the organisers nor for the speakers and audience. A conference certainly relies on particular norms and formats. And above all it needs contents, because ultimately it is about the results and performances delivered by experts who make a company what it is. But how is it possible to whip up enthusiasm in the manager of department A for the results of department Z, or for the greater good, for the company’s grasp of innovation? How can employees be induced to adopt a completely new perspective for once? How can you create an atmosphere that, despite all formalities, not only allows for but actually stimulates spontaneity, open-mindedness and creativity? The targeted and selective interventions of the [ID]factory address employees and vault them out of their comfort zone, without them even immediately noticing. The interventions thus affect the big picture without Figure 1: Judith Klein: The Screen: A device for smartphone-addicted conference participants

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disfiguring it. Obviously the results of the ‘break out sessions’ will be presented to the plenum in keeping with the ‘no PowerPoint policy’. The highlight of the innovation conference is also the crux of the overall concept developed by the [ID]factory: the award ceremony is still as festive as it is formal, but a non-linear conference structure allows the audience to determine what they want to hear about and who they want to listen to on a particular topic. And the giveaways, which to some extent can be manufactured using in-house procedures and technologies, will act as tangible reminders of the event, even two years from now. It’s about a common effort to create an atmosphere that leaves a lasting impression. Developed specifically for business conferences, the interventions and participatory formats of the [ID]factory unfold on multiple levels: products, processes, and perspectives. These make it possible to involve both employees and the company’s products throughout the entire event. The [ID]factory has a fine-grained and selective way of working, but it also makes a sustained impact: we provide stimuli that trigger non-linear thinking and acting. In this way, the company makes its presence felt as an innovative and creative whole. It all comes down to the interplay between creativity and organisation, to navigating an open system.

Figure 2: Ursula Bertram and Brigitte Hitschler: Sketch of an innovation conference

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Figure 3: Ursula Bertram and Brigitte Hitschler: Sketch of an innovation conference

Partizipatorisches Konferenzformat »position-on-demand« On stage: - one moderator 
 - two speakers (experts on a particular issue) 
 - several videos (video stills) showing previously conducted interviews presenting different positions on the issue. In the audience: Every listener has a laser pointer with which they can point at the position they want to hear, for instance, at a video still or a person on stage. The position with the most ‘hits’ will be presented or screened.

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“Innotan” – a conference giveaway Innotan is a recipe against innovation. The information leaflet explains how to prevent innovation from occurring. Should innovation ever occur accidentally, there is always the morning-after pill.

Figure 4: Johanna Bielawski: From the ‘Skulptan’ series

Products napkin

company employees

pod-conference

in-time resolution

Processes

company products

morning-after pill

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NPPPolicy anchoring

company employees

Figure 5: Ursula Bertram and Brigitte Hitschler: Sketch of an innovation conference

The concept comprises three sections: products, processes and perspectives. It is a non-linear event format with a duration of 60 to 90 minutes and provides fundamental perspectives: togetherness, processual openness and participation.

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Lecture Series 2015-2017

JANUAR FORUM FACTORY INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO ARTISTIC THINKING IN EXTRA-ARTISTIC CONTEXTS ALWAYS IN JANUARY++ALWAYS ON WEDNESDAY++ALWAYS AT 6PM

DIRK DOBIÉY

Age of Artists, Dresden; former manager at SAP ‘WHY THE FUTURE WILL BE AN AGE OF ARTISTS: Facing economic and social challenges with artistic strategies’

GEORG MALLITZ

Rottstr5KUNSTHALLEN, Bochum ‘ACCIDENTAL PLAY: Curatorial Clichés and Ambulatory Thinking have an accident’

DORIS ROTHAUER Office for Transfer, Vienna

‘ARTISTIC TRANSFER: HOW DOES IT WORK? The new meaning of art in business and society’

Jedes Jahr im Januar lädt das Zentrum für Kunsttransfer/ [ID]factory zu einer außerordentlichen Vortragsreihe ein, die das Zusammenspiel von Kunst und Wirtschaft beleuchtet.

JANUAR FORUM FACTORY

255

‘

ROBERT KOCH

Institute for Music and Musicology, TU Dortmund ‘IDF three rooms – three pieces’

PROF. DR. LORENZ SCHWACHHÖFER Faculty of Mathematics, TU Dortmund

‘MATHEMATICAL THINKING: The foundations of mathematics and their axiomatic structure’

PROF. URSULA BERTRAM

Centre for Artistic Transfer, TU Dortmund ‘ARTISTIC THINKING’

DR. MARCO WEHR

Physicist, dancer and philosopher ‘THE LOGIC OF SUCCESS An untimely observation’

PROF. DR. OLIVER SCHEYTT

Thought leader in cultural and educational policy ‘WHAT CAN CULTURAL AND EDUCATIONAL POLICY LEARN FROM LISTENING TO MUSIC?’

JULIA BATZDORF

Artist

‘ARTISTIC INTERVENTION Why artistic research needs to enter the world of business’

R A U N JA U M F O R ORY FACT

256

OLIVER DISCUSSED SCHEYTT

How can we create the new?

Why is artistic thinking decisive not only for artists and how are machines invented?

JANUAR FORUM GRUSSWORT FACTORY

Why is innovation decisive for the future?

How are innovative processes created?

How do they operate in economic relationships?

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OLIVER DISCUSSED SCHEYTT

[ID]FACTORY MOBILE:

CLEUYOU CULTURE FACTORY

The cultural days at the edge of the world, in beautiful Finistère, are a real tradition. Every year, artists and scientists turn the Cleuyou Manoir into a place of exciting and unexpected interdisciplinary encounters between the most distant disciplines, such as mathematics, fine art, music, computer science, Gestalt therapy, and cuisine. Discussions, music and exchanges in the venerable Cleuyou Salon run late into the night. At Cleuyou, more than one hundred artists intervened with word and sound collages, video projects, installations and performances.

[ID]FACTORY MOBILE: CLEUYOU CULTURE GRUSSWORT FACTORY

In 2013, the cultural days took place wholly under the sign of music. Concerts by Prof. Eva-Maria Houben (organ) and Bileam Kümper (tuba/both from the TU Dortmund) in Saint-Guinal Church, Ergué-Gabéric (France), and by others in the salon, opened up an unforgettable world of tonal distinctions and silences. Prof. Michael Schwarz from the University of Vienna gave us an insight into his exciting research on the painter Giotto. In her talk, art historian Dr. Birgit Schwarz deciphered the link between the 19th century cult of genius and the Third Reich’s fanatical worship of genius. Dörthe Bäumer and Silvia Willkens showed graphical works. The following year however, the focus was on meetings between art and science, especially artistic and mathematical thinking, and were led by Marion Bertram. In the morning session, mathematics professor Dr. Lorenz Schwachhöfer gave a presentation on the foundations of mathematics and their structure. The juxtaposition of mathematics with the artistic compositions and contributions from musician Robert Koch (TU Dortmund), visual installations by Claudia Rottsahl and a culinary finale all provoked much discussion. What distinguishes artistic and mathematical thinking? What are the parallels between them? Are art and science currently approaching one another, like the experts did in this historic French location?

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Lecture series April 2008 to July 2009

INNOVATION: HOW DOES IT WORK? A look at ways of generating innovation and at the processes of invention in different fields

INNOVATION: HOW DOES IT WORK?

PRESENTERS: DR.-ING. WERNER BAUMANN (ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH, TU DORTMUND) ‘THE INNOVATION OF RECYCLING’ | UWE HASENBECK (MARKETING, KONZEPTHAUS MEDIEN UND MARKETING, MUNICH) ‘INNOVATION: HOW DOES IT WORK? DOCMED.TV AS EXAMPLE’  | PROF. DR. NILS BÜTTNER (ART HISTORY, TU DORTMUND) ‘INNOVATION AS A PRINCIPLE OF ART HISTORICAL WORK, OR: HOW TO TALK ABOUT DEAD PAINTERS’ | PROF. DR. BERND KÜNNE AND DIP.-ING BJÖRN PALM (MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, TU DORTMUND) ‘BEING INNOVATIVE IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING: A KEY COMPETENCY FOR ENGINEERS’ | PROF. DR. KLEMENS STÖRTKUHL (BIOLOGY, RUHR UNIVERSITY, BOCHUM) ‘THE SMELL OF BLUE LIGHT’ | PROF. JAN KOLATA (ART, TU DORTMUND) ‘INNOVATION AND INVENTION IN THE PROCESS OF PAINTING’ | PROF. DR. KLAUS HENNING UND ESTHER BOROWSKI (MECHANICAL ENGINEERING/COMPUTER SCIENCE, RWTH, AACHEN UNIVERSITY) ‘THE FUTURE FIRMLY IN OUR SIGHTS: INTERDISCIPLINARY INNOVATIONS’ | PROF. URSULA BERTRAM (ART, TU DORTMUND) ‘ARTISTIC THINKING IS THE ABILITY TO INNOVATE’ | PROF. DR. MICHAEL V. SCHWARZ (ART HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA) ‘HOW DOES SPACE COME TO THE SURFACE, AND WHAT ARE THE EUROPEANS STARTING WITH IT?’ | PROF. DR. HORST GESCHKA (ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS CONSULTING, DARMSTADT) ‘CONTROLLED CREATIVITY: SYSTEMATIC IDEA GENERATION AS PART OF OPERATIONAL INNOVATION PROCESSES’ | DR. -ING. WERNER PREISSING (ARCHITECT AND SYSTEMS ANALYST, MAINZ) ‘VISUAL THINKING: PROBLEM SOLVING WITH FACTOR FIELD METHODS’ | ECKHARD GRANSOW (ECONOMIST, GROHE AG, HEMER) ‘HOW DO INNOVATIONS DEVELOP IN A BUSINESS? GROHE AG AS EXAMPLE’ | MICHAEL KÜSTERMANN (THEOLOGIAN AND PRIEST, ST. REINOLDI, DORTMUND) ‘AKKU: CHURCH AND CULTURE PROJECTS IN DORTMUND’ | PROF. DR. BRIGITTE FALKENBURG (PHILOSOPHY/PHYSICS, TU DORTMUND) ‘INNOVATION AND THE INDIVIDUAL: A PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW OF THE NEW IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY’ | PROF. DR. KLAUS-PETER BUSSE (ART EDUCATION, TU DORTMUND) ‘HOT SPOT: IMAGE, PLACE, INSTITUTION’ | BIRGIT GÖTZ (DANCE, LIQUID MOVE, DORTMUND) ‘DOES DANCE NEED A STAGE? DANCE AND ITS INNOVATIVE DEVELOPMENTS’ | BIRGIT LUXENBURGER (ART, MAINZ) ‘UNTITLED’

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Symposium 2012

ART SPONSORS SCIENCE Non-linear thinking as innovative uncertainty for science

ART SPONSORS SCIENCE

PRESENTERS: PROF. DR. METIN TOLAN (PHYSICIST/WELCOME SPEECH) VICE-RECTOR OF THE TU DORTMUND | PROF. URSULA BERTRAM (ARTIST) ‘ARTISTIC THINKING AS THE INNOVATIVE UNSETTLING OF SCIENCE’ | PROF. DR. BAZON BROCK (ARTIST AND ART HISTORIAN) ‘WHAT LINKS ART AND SCIENCE AND WHY THEY DON’T BELONG TOGETHER’ | PROF. DR. WOLFGANG STARK, CHRISTOPHER DELL (EDUCATIONIST, MUSICIAN) ‘IMPROVISATION AS A BASIS FOR ORGANISATIONAL FORMS’ | PROF. DR. FRITZ BÖHLE (OCCUPATIONAL SOCIOLOGIST) ‘SCIENCE THROUGH NON-SCIENTIFIC THINKING AND ACTING: A VIEW FROM OCCUPATIONAL SOCIOLOGY’ | KUNSTUND WISSENSCHAFTSSLAM MIT RAINER HOLL UND TOBIAS RAUH | JULIAN KLEIN (THEATRE DIRECTOR AND COMPOSER) ‘PER.SPICE! | PROF. DR. BERND RUPING, EVA RENVERT (THEATRE EDUCATORS) ‘THE USES OF ART: ON THE PARADOX OF THEATRICAL RESEARCH IN ORGANISATIONS’ | GERALD NESTLER (ARTIST AND RESEARCHER) ‘KNOWING VERSUS UNKNOWING: EPISTEMIC STRATEGIES IN ART, SCIENCE AND THE ECONOMY’ MODERATOR: THOMAS F. KOCH (SÜDWESTRUNDFUNK)

263

Prof. Dr. Metin Tolan

Gerald Nestler

Prof. Dr. Bazon Brock

Julian Klein

Prof. Dr. Fritz Böhle

Marion Bertram

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Stark and Christopher Dell

Prof. Dr. Bernd Ruping

Eva Renvert

264 OLIVER SCHEYTT

Prof. Dr. Gerhard Kilger

Rainer Holl, Tobias Rauh, Slammer

Prof. Dr. Albert Klein and Prof. Dr. Metin Tolan

Thomas Koch (Moderator)

Prof. Ursula Bertram

Dr.-Ing. Werner Preißing

GRUSSWORT 265

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Does science even allow itself to be unsettled and why?

ART SPONSORS GRUSSWORT SCIENCE

Does non-linear thinking promote innovation?

What does art have to do with this?

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DISCUSSED

Science lab science slam

with art

science slam Korsakow podium

Science lab Arena with art

Art lab

Art lab

with science

Arena

with science

Korsakow podium generates

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Science with artistic methods Science with artistic methods

Art with scientific methods Art with scientifi

Scientists make use of Scientists make use of non-linear methods non-linear methods for scientific research for scientific research

Artists make use of Artists make use of scientific methods scientific methods for artistic research for artistic research

Fields of application: Fields of application: Science / Business / Education Science / Business / Education

Field of application: Field of application: Art Art

Figure 1: Science lab – art lab

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ART SPONSORS SCIENCE

Letting go of established models of perceiving and thinking is one of the most important and most difficult hurdles to artistic development. Withstanding non-linear phases of instability or of testing movements in uncertainty, and the navigation of unbounded, open systems without any assurances somewhat resembles a ghost train: it is as beautiful as it is creepy. It is the basic condition for the possibility of artistic work, and this is equally true for scientific innovation. The world is oscillating. Contemporary artists and scientists test out the reciprocity of their strategies. Pioneers of new ways of thinking from a variety of disciplines report on the current state of research.

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GRUSSWORT

Part 2

DEMANDED SAMPLED DISCUSSED TRANSFERRED

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TRANSFERRED

MODELS, STRATEGIES, PRINCIPLES

MODELS, STRATEGIES, PRINCIPLES

It is a fundamental human trait to search for a principle behind all appearances in the real world, and to thereby satisfy our need for order and security. Does this also work if reason and logic are suspended? Is the very key to efficiency hidden in the fundamental models of artistic work? As for example in ‘thinking outside the box’ rather than ‘reflection’ in the cloverleaf model, or in the oscillation between facts and ideas in the spindle model? Does the transfer of artistic strategies perhaps very precisely meet the needs of businesses, as the hourglass principle shows? Can the bolero principle only be understood as a frame for artistic processes, or could it also serve as a guideline for the development of efficient business strategies? Unruly thinking doesn’t suspend reason and logic, it rather sets well-adapted thinking in movement.

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THE PRINCIPLE OF ARTISTIC TRANSFER The transfer spindle The transfer pyramid The transfer between art and business doesn’t only take place in everyday life, but also in the world of ideas. Artistic and economic thinking have a common origin: thinking as such. Transfer thinking, in the sense of an unruly and transdisciplinary kind of thinking, is an approach involving unusual kinds of problem-solving and is therefore extremely efficient. The transfer pyramid spells out a framework for its concrete implementation.

Transfer Transfer

Economic thinking for artists!

Art

Artistic thinking for economists! economists

IDfactory

Artistic action for entrepreneurs Figure 1: Ursula Bertram, Werner Preißing: Transfer spindle (illustration adapted from Werner Preißing’s ‘Spindle model’)

Business Economic action for artists

MODELS, STRATEGIES, PRINCIPLES

Sharpness

Art

TRANSFER TRANSFER

Management

Management

Position - Performance - Presentation

Position

• • • •

Dissemination and presentation Positioning Performance Intuitive skills

Businessphilosophy

Profile

Art

Methods Principles Techniques

• • • •

Neuronal management Thinking in teams Conceptual development Work and ideas

Strategies

Complexity

Media Tools Instruments

Security within the system • • •

Possible applications Techniques Tools

Order

Diversity

Figure 2: Ursula Bertram: Transfer pyramid

Media Tools

System

Chaos

Navigating open systems

Simulation

Reduction

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THE HOURGLASS PRINCIPLE The artistic process as innovation pool

Here the essence of artistic processes is concentrated. Workshops are conceived on the basis of each of the recognizable artistic strategies. - Non-linear problem-solving - Efficiency through detours - Guerrilla skills - Spontaneous professionalism - Improvisation skills - Authentic positioning - Visual thinking: negotiating complexity - Participation skills Individual workshops could be dedicated to different exercises/formats, depending on goals and participants.

MODELS, STRATEGIES, PRINCIPLES

Marina Abramovic

Peter FischliMarcel und David Weiß Duchamps Duchamp

Pablo Picasso Doug Aitken

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artistic processes Artist A

Artist B

Francis Alys

Erwin Wurm

Inventors’ workshop

motivational speech Life-performance

artistic strategy

Patent fusion 24-hour self-experiment Einstein experiment

The Apollo program

concentration - Non-linear problem-solving - Efficiency through detours - Guerrilla skills - Spontaneous professionalism - Improvisation skills - Authentic positioning - Visual thinking: negotiating complexity - Participation skills

Transfer

Motivational exercises

Whoever has the image has power

Steadfastness when you have absolutely no idea

Open systems

© U. Bertram

Figure 3: Ursula Bertram: The hourglass principle

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THE CLOVERLEAF MODEL

If you give your brain free reign, it will search established methods and recommend what is quantitatively most likely. Especially when it is really disinterested and neither excited nor agitated. For then it is running idle. Only in this way can it deal quickly with tasks and remain effective. The brain will pull out of the archive whatever it has considered usable and has actually implemented in the past. In doing so it trains itself, cognitively and behaviourally. It ensures that we abide by agreed upon rules (like stopping at red lights), follow norms and recognize laws. This enables the brain to go through the day in a kind of comfort zone that spares it unnecessary overexertion. According to brain researcher Gerald Hüther, our brain acts in the way we usually use it and have used it in the past. In terms of the cloverleaf model, on average up to 90 percent of our education and training is taken up with order and logic, or the left-hand side of the model.

MODELS, STRATEGIES, PRINCIPLES

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The right-hand side of the cloverleaf primarily does one thing: support unconstrained, open, anarchic and highly-creative processes that make new forms and innovations possible. Initially it works during sleep. Neurologists have observed how in dream states, the brain switches itself into a completely different mode. As in a workshop of highly-creative people, in dreams impressions and memories are taken to pieces and then put back together as something new. In doing so it constructs what every person urgently needs: a plan for the future, according to US researcher G. William Domhoff. Movement created through thinking outside the box is the basis for every development, playing a key role in non-linear, unruly thinking. The cloverleaf is a powerful model for achieving an energetic balance; it can also be used to create a cloverleaf team. In doing so, new developments can be generated in positively breathtaking ways. Artistic thinking means movement and it can be at home in any head.

THOUGHT

REASON

INTUITION

thinking

thinking outside the box

formal

knowledge transfer classical

linear

testing movements artistic

IMMATERIAL

deconventionalising detours

non-lInear

stringent applied

ACTION

science

knowledge implementation results-oriented

goal-oriented

conventional implement

ORDER Figure 5: Ursula Bertam: Cloverleaf model

open system

process

experimental

non-linear

experience-based

artistic

open

testing movements

experiment

ANARCHY

MATERIAL

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THE BOLERO PRINCIPLE

The bolero principle is a form for constructing non-linear impulses in six steps. Artistic thinking and acting manifests here for different target areas. It helps one to discover one’s own resources and to experience new ways of approaching particular processes. In this, the six steps constitute the back stage for the intelligent, situational and non-linear creation of exercises on the part of the coach. The names of the respective steps (Be..., open..., etc.) initially remain in the background, as otherwise they can lead to linear, cliched actions. The most important aspects of a successful bolero are diverse places, a mood of energetic confidence, an enjoyable unfolding of the process, clear yet open instructions, precise time management that still allows room for chance, the development of demanding results alongside the process and a high level of attention and sensitivity to the moment and the people on the part of the coach. The steps experienced can be implemented in any artistic discipline and can also be transferred into development processes beyond art. The latter is indispensable for mutual understanding and for a sustainable grounding in everyday professional or personal life. This requires strong mental images, which emerge out of the bolero and endure. Ideally the images are also externally visible, encapsulating what was experienced and making art in one’s mind transferable, like Francis Alys’s moved mountain. A few such images are shown below, and are fed back into the steps and their concepts.

MODELS, STRATEGIES, PRINCIPLES

BOLERO BE OPEN MIND LINK YOUR DESIRE EXPLORE THE FIELD REDUCE THE FOCUS OPEN UP THE RESULT

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MODELS, STRATEGIES, PRINCIPLES

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BOLERO

be

GRUSSWORT

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BOLERO

open mind

GRUSSWORT

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BOLERO

link your desire

GRUSSWORT

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BOLERO

explore the field

GRUSSWORT

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BOLERO

reduce the focus

GRUSSWORT

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BOLERO

open up the result

GRUSSWORT

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PUBLICATIONS

Ursula Bertram (Hg.) PIA – Ein Forschungsprojekt zum Non-Linearen Dortmunder Schriften zur Kunst, Studies on Art in Extra-Artistic Fields – Vol. 4 © 2016 [ID]factory, Dortmund

Ursula Bertram (Hg.) KUNST FÖRDERT WIRTSCHAFT Zur Innovationskraft des künstlerischen Denkens transcript, Bielefeld, 2012 A publication on the occasion of the ‘Art Sponsors Business’ conference, November 2010

1

Ursula Bertram

Künstlerisches Denken und Handeln

Ursula Bertram KÜNSTLERISCHES DENKEN UND HANDELN Excerpt from: Martin Tröndle, Julia Warmers (eds.): Kunstforschung als ästhetische Wissenschaft. transcript, Bielefeld, 2011

Ursula Bertram/Werner Preißing

Navigieren im offenen System

Bertram/Preißing

Navigieren im offenen System

Published on the occasion of the award ceremony ‘Land of Ideas – Selected Landmark, 2012’ at the [ID]factory, Dortmund, March 2012

Ursula Bertram, Werner Preißing NAVIGIEREN IM OFFENEN SYSTEM Container-Verlag, Filderstadt, 2007

14.02.2007 12:18:12

Werner Preißing VISUAL THINKING Probleme lösen mit der Faktorenfeldmethode Haufe, Munich, 2008

Ursula Bertram (Hg.) Öffentliche Sätze – Unerlaubte Fragen A research project on the non-linear laboratory for artistic research © 2014 [ID]factory, Dortmund

PUBLICATIONS

Ursula Bertram (Hg.) INNOVATION – WIE GEHT DAS? Dortmunder Schriften zur Kunst – Vol. 1. BoD, Norderstedt, 2010 Talks given in the context of the lecture series ‘Innovation – how does it work?’ An event organised by the [ID]factory, Centre for Artistic Transfer, TU Dortmund, 2008/2009

Studien zur Kunst in außerkünstlerischen Feldern | Band 3

Ursula Bertram (Hg.)

GUERILLABUG TRIFFT ENERGIETOMATE

GUERILLABUG TRIFFT ENERGIETOMATE

Non-lineare Ideen für Ökostrom

Ursula Bertram (Hg.) GUERILLABUG TRIFFT ENERGIETOMATE Non-lineare Ideen für Ökostrom

Ursula Bertram (Hg.)

A cooperation project between the [ID]factory/Centre for Artistic Transfer, TU Dortmund, Department of Art and Material Culture, and Greenpeace Energy eG DORTMUNDER SCHRIFTEN ZUR KUNST

© 2012 [ID]factory

Ursula Bertram NON-LINEARES DENKEN UND HANDELN ENTWICKELN Improvisationskraft, Erfindungsgabe und Probierbewegungen in praeview – Zeitschrift für innovative Arbeitsgestaltung und Prävention, 2014(5): 8–9

Ursula Bertram WERDEN WIE EIN FROSCH? Innovationsgenerierung – Wie es geht In Exzellenz NRW – Das Clustermagazin Nordrhein-Westfalen, 7, September 4, 2013

Ursula Bertram PRO MOTIONEN Forschung als Missverständnis research as misunderstanding IDfactory, ISBN 978-3-934940-53-6

Ursula Bertram

KUNSTTRANSFER Effizienz durch unangepasstes Denken

Ursula Bertram KUNSTRANSFER Effizienz durch unangepasstes Denken transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, Juni 2017

Image

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bamford, A., Der Wow-Faktor. Eine weltweite Analyse der Qualität künstlerischer Bildung, Waxmann, Münster, 2010. Barad, K., Was ist das Maß des Nichts? Unendlichkeit, Virtualität, Gerechtigkeit (dOCUMENTA 13): 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts, 100 Notizen – 100 Gedanken # 099. Hantje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2012. Bertram, U., ‘Innovation – wie geht das?’ in Studien zur Kunst in außerkünstlerischen Feldern, 1, BoD, Norderstedt, 2010: 132. Bertram, U., ‘In die Zukunft schreiben. Wie sich künstlerische Strategien in unser Leben mogeln’, in Schmidt, F. and Ohmert, C. (eds.), Labor im Museum – Fünf museumspädagogische Projekte der Kunsthalle Emden. Kunsthalle Emden, Emden, 2012. Bertram, U., ‘Künstlerisches Denken und Handeln’, in Tröndle, M. and Warmers, J. (eds.), Kunstforschung als ästhetische Wissenschaft. transcript, Bielefeld, 2011: 293–316.

Positionsbestimmungen zum Fachverständnis. kopaed, Munich, 2013: 252–260. Bertram, U., ‘Non-lineares Denken und Handeln entwickeln. Improvisationskraft, Erfindungsgabe und Probierbewegungen’, in praeview – Zeitschrift für innovative Arbeitsgestaltung und Prävention, 5, 2014: 8–9. Bertram, U. and Preißing, W., Navigieren im offenen System, ContainerVerlag, Filderstadt, 2007. Bertram, U., PIA, Plastik und Interdisziplinäres Arbeiten, 2014 [ID]factory, Dortmund. Capra, F., Lebensnetz. Ein Verständnis der lebendigen Welt, Scherz, Bern, 1996. De Bono, E., Laterales Denken für Führungskräfte, Rowolt, Reinbeck, 1972. De Bono, E., Edward de Bono’s Denkschule. Zu mehr Innovation und Kreativität, MVG, Munich, 1996.

Bertram, U., (ed.), Kunst fördert Wirtschaft. Zur Innovationskraft des künstlerischen Denkens, transcript, Bielefeld, 2012.

Dell, C., Prinzip Improvisation, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2002.

Bertram, U., ‘Anders denken – Wie geht das?’, in Journal für Hochschuldidaktik, 1–2, 2012: 34–38.

Dell, C., Die improvisierende Organisation. Management nach dem Ende der Planbarkeit, transcript, Bielefeld, 2012.

Bertram, U., ‘Poröse Zustände. Zitronenschrift als Zukunftsmodell’, in Engels, S., Schnurr, A. and Preuss, R. (eds.), Feldvermessung Kunstdidaktik.

Divjak, P., Integrative Inszenierungen. Zur Szenografie von partizipativen Räumen, transcript, Bielefeld, 2012.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dobiéy, D., ‘The artistic attitude does not develop overnight: An Interview with Ursula Bertram’, in Age of Artists, August, 27, 2015. http://www. ageofartists. org/portfolio-item/an-artistic-atti tude-does-not-develop-overnight- interview-with-ursula-bertram/ (accessed 01.12.2016).

Heid, K. and John, R., ‘Was ist Transferkunst? Ein Terminus für transdisziplinäres, künstlerisches Arbeiten’, in JUNI kunst zeit schrift, 2003.

Dürr, H.-P., Das Lebende lebendiger werden lassen, oekom, Munich, 2011.

KEA European Affairs (ed.), Der Einfluss von Kultur auf Kreativität. Eine Studie im Auftrag der Europäischen Kommission vorbereited (Generaldirektion Bildung und Kultur). KEA European Affairs, Brussels, 2009.

Düttmann, A., ‘Kein Denker versteht sich selbst’, a talk as part of the ‘What is thinking? Or a taste that hates itself’ seminar series’, at dOCUMENTA (13), July 16, 2012. Düttmann, A., Derrida und ich. Das Problem der Dekonstruktion, transcript, Bielefeld, 2012. Flusser, V., Das Ende der Tyrannei, in arch+, 111, 1992: 20–25. Gerbel, K. and Weibel, P., Ars Electronica 93. Genetische Kunst – künstliches Leben. PVS Verleger, Linz, 1993. Grasskamp, W., ‘ohne Titel’, in Klasse Olaf Metzel: Küssen und Fahrradfahren, Akademie der Bildenden Künste/Martin Luther Verlag, Munich, 1996: 9. Groß, S., Fashionloop, Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt Frauennetzwerk Berlin e.V. (ed.), exhib. cat. Kunsthalle Göppingen, Medialis, Berlin, 2001. Hauser, J., ‘Bio Kunst – Taxonomie eines Wortmonsters’, in Stocker, G. et al (eds.), Hybrid – living in paradox. Ars Electronica 2005. Festival for art, technology and society, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2005.

Hüther, G., Bedienungsanleitung für ein menschliches Gehirn, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 2006.

Kolata, J., ‘Innovation und Invention im Prozess der Malerei’, in Bertram, U. (ed.), Innovation – wie geht das? Studien zur Kunst in außerkünstlerischen Feldern, 1, BoD, Norderstedt, 2010: 132. Mauzy, J. and Harimann, R. A., Creativity, Inc.: Building an Inventive Organization. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2003. m:convisions, ‘Was ist das Gegenteil von Frosch? Ein Interview von m:convisions mit Ursula Bertram’, in m:convisions, April 2013: 10–13. Popper, K. R., Alles Leben ist Problemlösen. Über Erkenntnis, Geschichte und Politik, Piper, Munich, 1996. Preißing, W., Visual Thinking. Probleme lösen mit der Faktorenfeldmethode. Haufe, Munich, 2008. Prigogine, I. and Stengers, I., Das Paradox der Zeit. Zeit, Chaos und Quanten, Piper, Munich, 1993.

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Rifkin, J., ‘Dazzled by the Science: Biologists who dress up hi-tech eugenics as a new art form are dangerously deluded’, in The Guardian, January 14, 2003. https://www.theguardian. com/ education/2003/jan/14/higher education.uk (accessed 10.05.2011). Schumpeter, J. A., Kapitalismus, Sozialismus und Demokratie, Francke, Bern, 1946.

Schuster, M., ‘Kunstpalast Düsseldorf’, in Bertram, U. (ed.), Zeitarbeit, Salon, Munich, 2004. Wehrli, U., Die Kunst aufzuräumen, Klein & Aber, Zürich, 2010. Wehowsky, S., ‘Die lebendige Welt eines Physikers (Buchbesprechung)’, in Journal 21, November 5, 2011. http:// www.journal21.ch/die-lebendige-welteines-physikers (accessed 05.08.2012).

Schumpeter, J. A., Kapitalismus, Sozialismus und Demokratie, UTB, Stuttgart, 2005.

Figure 1: Ursula Bertram: The submarine strategy of the [ID]factory

IMAGE CREDITS

IMAGE CREDITS pp. 4–5: Photo: Ursula Bertram; Denkskizze (Thought sketching): Werner Preißing p. 17: Kunst im Kopf (Art in the mind), drawing: Werner Preißing (fig. 1) p. 31: Der Wissenswürfel (The knowledge cube), drawing: Werner Preißing (fig. 1) p. 33: Ursula Bertram: Tor der Wissenschaften (Gateway to science), 1987, photo: Jürgen Hill p. 37: Geschlossene und Offene Systeme (Closed and open systems), drawing: Werner Preißing (fig. 1) p. 38: Die Vertreibung aus dem Paradies (The expulsion from paradise), drawing: Werner Preißing (fig. 2) pp. 41–49: Ursula Bertram: Seneca, installations, 1996, photos: Elmar Herlet p. 51: ‘Art Sponsors Science’ symposium, 2012, poetry slam, photo: Andreas Wahlbrink pp. 63–65: Ursula Bertram: Tag und Nacht (Day and night), installation, Theatre Mainz, 1997/98, photos: Gerhard Kassner pp. 66–67: State Theatre Mainz, architect Klaus Möbius, photo: Gerhard Kassner pp. 73–77: Ursula Bertram: Maria liebt Re (Mary loves Ra), Dortmund 1995, photos: Elmar Herlet pp. 83: Zitrone (Lemon), photo: photolia 5896010, pixel 66 pp. 85–87: Ursula Bertram: Scenography for Hamlet, Copenhagen 1996, photos: Ursula Bertram p. 93: Frosch (Frog): photolia pp. 95–97: Ursula Bertram: Zeitenwende (Epochal shift), Dortmund 1999, photos: Elmar Herlet p. 97: Zeitenwende (Epochal shift), Dortmund 2000, drawing: Ursula Bertram (fig. 1)

p. 99: Der künstlerische Prozess (The artistic process), drawing: Werner Preißing (fig. 1) p. 99: Der künstlerische Prozess (The artistic process), drawing: Ursula Bertram (fig. 2) pp. 101–103: Ursula Bertram: Lügen Hühner? (Do chickens lie?), Trier 1995, photos: Elmar Herlet p. 113: Der künstlerische Prozess 1 (The artistic process 1), drawing: Werner Preißing (fig. 1) p. 113: Der künstlerische Prozess 2 (The artistic process 2), drawing: Ursula Bertram (fig. 2) p. 117: Performance by Steffi Zeiler, 2003, photos: Ursula Bertram (fig. 3–4) pp. 119–120: Process development 1 and 2 of a student on the topic of “cloth”, photos: Ursula Bertram (fig. 5–10) pp. 120–122: Ursula Bertram: Präzisionsfabrik (Precision factory), Wiesbaden 2008, photos: Birgit Luxenburger (fig. 11–13) p. 124: The educational turn, drawing: Ursula Bertram and Werner Preißing (fig. 14) p. 125: Synergien (Synergies), drawing: Werner Preißing (fig. 15) pp. 127–131: Ursula Bertram: Die Hölle – La Citta Dolente nach Dante (Inferno – La Citta Dolente after Dante), Hahn-Hasselbach 1994, photos: Elmar Herlet p. 149: System sketch positioning, drawing: Werner Preißing (fig. 1) pp. 151–155: Ursula Bertram: US3OBEROLMERWALD, Mainz 2000/2004, photos: Christian Kain and Alfred Engler p. 159: Faktorenfeldmethode (Factor field method), drawing: Werner Preißing (fig. 1)

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IMAGE CREDITS

p. 159: Kleeblatt-Modell (Cloverleaf model), drawing: Ursula Bertram (fig. 2) p. 161: Der Ort der Entwicklung (The site of development), drawing: Ursula Bertram pp. 163–165: Zeitarbeit II (Temporary work II), photos: Ursula Bertram, Mark Wohlrab p. 174: Urs Wehrli: »Beethovens ›für Elise‹ aufräumen« (‘Cleaning Up Beethoven’s für Elise’), from: Wehrli 2004, pp. 40-41 (fig. 1–2) p. 176: Geschlossene und offene Systeme (Open and closed systems), drawing: Werner Preißing (fig. 3) pp. 181–185: Ursula Bertram: Zeitarbeit VII (Temporary work VII), photos: Erik Schwarzer p. 189: Geschlossene und offene Systeme (Open and closed systems), drawing: Werner Preißing, from: Bertram and Preißing 2007 (fig. 1) p. 190: Art pattern, photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 2) p. 191: Bileam Kümper and Nora Kühnen, collaborative work, photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 3) p. 193: Presentation of results, photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 4) p. 195: ‘Connect Creativity’, 2008 event, photo: future bizz (fig. 5) p. 197: Participants at the artistic transfer class, photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 6) p. 197: Work by Alischa Leutner, photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 7) pp. 199–201: Zeitarbeit V (Temporary work V), photos: Birgit Luxenburger p. 205: Resolution, photo: Mark Wohlrab pp. 206–209: ‘Art Sponsors Business’, impressions, photos: Mark Wohlrab pp. 210–211: Bileam Kümper and Nora Kühnen, collaborative work, photo: Mark Wohlrab pp. 214–215: Impressions from the artistic transfer seminar, photo: Ursula Bertram

p. 216: [ID]factory, photo: Mark Wohlrab p. 219: Daniel Braun: Reisesalzstreuer (Travel salt shaker), photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 1) p. 219: Alischa Leutner: Unternehmer III (Entrepreneur III), photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 2) p. 220–221: Award ceremony, photo: Mark Wohlrab p. 222: Factory tandem, collaborative work, photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 3) p. 223: Sehra Karakus: Factory laboratory, photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 4) p. 225: Erik Schwarzer: Travel Bug
to Fukushima, photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 5) p. 226: Anja Reißig: Labo(h)rklang (Labearatory noise), photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 6) p. 227: Christine Böse: Puschel (Pompom), photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 7) p. 228: Amelie Lüdtke: Blowball, photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 8) p. 229: Jakob Dawid and Fabian Menke: Airnergy, photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 9) p. 231: Wie erkennt man Kompetenz? (What do skills look like?), poster: Nicola Gördes and Elza Javakhishvilli (fig. 10) pp. 232–233: Donja Nasseri: Autonome Blätter (Autonomous leaves), photos: Roland Baege (fig. 11–12) pp. 234–235: Judith Klein: Dualität (Duality), photo: Roland Baege (fig. 13) pp. 236–237: Julia Batzdorf: GLEAM, photos: Michael Larßen (fig. 14–15) p. 238: Katrin Eßer: Wir wandern hin und her (We are wandering back and forth), photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 16) p. 239: Lisa Karnagel: Nest, photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 17) pp. 240–241: Exhibition photo with architecture models, Jan-Gerd Terhüne: Urbaner Wachturm (Urban Watchtower), photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 18) pp. 242–243: Stefan Bröckerhoff
and Georg Luttermann: o.T. (Untitled), photos: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 19–20)

IMAGE CREDITS

pp. 244–245: Nicola Gördes and Elza Javakhishvilli: Anleitung für einen vernünftigen Abstand (Guidelines for keeping a reasonable distance), video stills, photos: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 21–23) p. 247: Judith Klein: Der Schirm (The screen), photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 1) pp. 248–249: Sketches of an innovation conference, drawings: Ursula Bertram and Brigitte Hitschler (fig. 2–3) p. 250: Photo: Andreas Wahlbrink p. 251: Johanna Bielawski: from the ‘Skulptan’ series, photo: Mark Wohlrab (fig. 4) p. 251: Sketch of an innovation conference, drawing: Ursula Bertram and Brigitte Hitschler (fig. 5) pp. 254–255: January Forum Factory, talk by Doris Rothauer, photo: Mareile Vaags p. 255: Portrait of Dirk Dobiéy, photo: Dada Lin p. 255: Portrait of Georg Mallitz, private photo p. 255: Portrait of Doris Rothauer, private photo p. 255: Portrait of Robert Koch, private photo p. 255: Portrait of Lorenz Schwachhöfer, private photo p. 255: Portrait of Ursula Bertram, photo: Jürgen Huhn pp. 256–257: Microphones at the [ID] factory, photo: Mark Wohlrab pp. 258–259: Manoir du Cleuyou/ audience, photo: Ursula Bertram p. 259: Bileam Kümper at the Salon, photo: Ursula Bertram p. 259: Eva-Maria Houben playing the organ, photo: Ursula Bertram p. 259: Talk by Werner Preißing, photo: Ursula Bertram p. 259: Manoir du Cleuyou, long shot, photo: Ursula Bertram pp. 260–261: [ID]factory, photo: Mark Wohlrab pp. 262–263: ‘Art Sponsors the Sciences’ symposium, 2012, talk

by Renvert/Ruping, photo: Andreas Wahlbrink pp. 264–265: ‘Art Sponsors the Sciences’ symposium, 2012, impressions, photos: Andreas Wahlbrink, Mark Wohlrab pp. 266–267: ‘Art Sponsors the Sciences’ symposium, 2012, performance team Ruping, photo: Andreas Wahlbrink p. 268: Science lab – Art lab, drawings: Ursula Bertram p. 269: ‘Art Sponsors the Sciences’ symposium, 2012, talk by Metin and Tolan, photo: Andreas Wahlbrink p. 274: Transfer spindle, drawing: Ursula Bertram, Werner Preißing, drawing based on the ‘spindle model’ by Werner Preißing, from: Preißing 2008 (fig. 1) p. 275: Transferpyramide (The transfer pyramid), drawing: Ursula Bertram (fig. 2) p. 277: Das Prinzip Sanduhr (The hourglass principle), drawing: Ursula Bertram (fig. 3) p. 278: Hemisphärenmodell (The hemisphere model), drawing: Werner Preißing, from: Preißing 2008 (fig. 4) p. 279: Das Kleeblatt-Modell (The cloverleaf model), drawing: Ursula Bertram (fig. 5) pp. 282–283: Der gelbe Sessel (The yellow armchair), photo: Ursula Bertram pp. 284–285: Bretagne seminar, photo: Ursula Bertram pp. 286–287: Bretagne seminar, photo: Katrin Voidel pp. 290–291: Bretagne seminar, photo: Ellen Prieditis pp. 292–295: Bretagne seminar, photos: Ursula Bertram pp. 300: Ursula Bertram: Die Submarinestrategie der [ID]factory (The submarine strategy of the [id]factory) Special thanks to photographer Mark Wohlrab for capturing moments since 2007.

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IMPRINT

Dortmunder Schriften zur Kunst Studies on Art in Extra-Artistic Fields – Volume 5

Author Ursula Bertram Editors Ursula Bertram Brigitte Hitschler

Bibliographic information published by the German National Library The German National Library lists this publication in the German National Bibliography; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de

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Technical University Dortmund Department of Art and Material Culture Sculpture and Interdisciplinary Work Centre for Artistic Transfer/[ID]factory Leonhard-Euler-Str. 4 44227 Dortmund, Germany www.id-factory.de