Kunstiteaduse instituudi avatud loengute sari “Space, Media, Mediation” lõpeb prof Irit Rogoffi loenguga “The Way We Work Now” esmaspäeval, 25. mail kell 18.00 Teaduste Akadeemia saalis, Kohtu 6.
Method is one of the significant infrastructures of knowledge, as significant as institutional and other structures within which that knowledge circulates. Can the actual knowledge being produced, in the very particularly contemporary ways in which it is being produced, become a critical intervention ? I have at this moment, many permissions of how I might work. But they are not a menu from which to order. Not simply a set of templates to choose from as one would a style. Each set of permissions is underwritten by certain critical exhortations and each makes a demand and requires a risk.
At present we have the possibility of working in ways, inventive and experimental, that critically embody the critical insights of the past 40 years of the project of critique. The subject cannot be defined, the sign cannot be stabilized, we ask not what something is but what it makes possible, we recognize difference as an internal dynamic rather than an embodied identity, we gather as singularities rather than as identities and we invent our politics rather than fight over their meager remains. Rather than digging for hidden knowledge, we recognize the secret in full light and rather than fit in with designated readerships, we constitute new audiences – that is the way we work now.
I am interested in thinking method as the last frontier of knowledge production, moving the sense of legitimacy away from respectable subjects to methodologies that are not only experimental but also practice driven in the widest sense.
Prof dr Irit Rogoff is the founder and professor of the Department of Visual Cultures at the Goldsmiths University of London. Her broad field of research comprises visual culture, contemporary art and critical theory, postcolonialism, globalization, geography, education and gender politics. “Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture” (2000), “Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles” (koos Daniel J. Shermaniga, 2004) and “Visual Cultures as Seriousness” (in cooperation with Gavin Buttiga, 2013) can be brought out as some of her most important books. In addition to writing, she is a recognized curator. She is the head of the doctoral programme in curating at the Goldsmiths University of London.