Of Sponge, Stone and the Intertwinement with the Here and Now: A Methodology of Artistic Research (Vis-a-Vis)

Published with vis-à-vis.

Of Sponge, Stone and the Intertwinement with the Here and Now explores the notion of “experience” as a key concept in a methodology of artistic research. In this concise, compulsively readable volume, scholar and art critic Janneke Wesseling traces a genealogy of “experience” that stretches from William James, John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead to Brian Massumi, placing this concept into a framework of research in visual art. Wesseling’s argument comes out of her own practice of artistic research, and her reflections on the interweaving of thinking and making. Part of Valiz’s vis-à-vis series of accessible introductions to academic subjects in contemporary art, this publication represents an expanded and extended version of Wesseling’s inaugural lecture at Leiden University, given in September 2016, and includes a collaboration with the Austrian performance artist Lilo Nein.