Staging Knowledge - Mise-en-Scène of Knowledge Spaces and Performative Communication of Culture

The "Staging Knowledge" project has set itself the goal of establishing an artistic-scientific research practice at the interface of knowledge production and knowledge representation as an experimental experiential medium of artistic productivity. To this end, a multi-media "knowledge space" is to be designed and implemented in exhibition format. This space will consist of walls which will convey information ("Hermeneutic Wallpapers" with integrated media installations, an emblematic-symbolic floor covering - "Psychonautic Carpet"). This is intended to indicate that the associative content of discursive knowledge is based on strategies of artistic productivity as a reality of imagination. The artistic-cognitive "intelligence of taste" is to emerge on this "stage" - an intelligence which, usually in suppressed form, comes to bear in the unconscious production of imagery and fantasies in innovative acts of science. This artistic-scientific process of research will find its base and implementation in three "Staging Knowledge" exhibitions (that will take place at the University of Art in Linz), three colloquia (with outstanding international experts), the rhetorical-performative presence of experts, artists and students which will transform the exhibition into a "stage of knowledge". An interdisciplinary research team composed of three young experts and artists will be responsible for studying and contextualizing the complex contents and applying different methods from various perspectives (Nietzsche) - translating into reality a scientifically appealing "artistic research practice" serving as an inspiring medium of knowledge. It will be exemplary for the graduate students and doctoral candidates of the University of Art in Linz who will be actively involved in this project. "Staging Knowledge" will also have a permanent virtual forum online. This dissemination strategy is a constitutive element of this research project and it will make it possible to implement a new relation between scientific form of intellectual aesthetics and artistic rationality. One didactic goal of "Staging Knowledge" is to break the objectivity-based convention of science and allow a subjectivity-based paradigm of artistic productivity to gain ground. The themes that are reflected on by means of "aesthetic-cognitive" strategies of representation and then disseminated include the following: "INGENUITY as common source of creativity for art and science", "INTELLIGENCE OF TASTE as potential aesthetic knowledge" and "PERVERTED FANTASIES OF OMNIPOTENCE in the mise-en-scène of dictators of the interwar period". Here an attempt is made to relate with the end of the 18th century (a debut de siècle) as marking the beginning of modernity and using its sense of freedom and exemplary individualism to "arrive in the present at the beginning of the 21st century".

The cultural tool of Staging Knowledge is used to create knowledge spaces as an exhibition format as well as auditory or visual augmentation of exhibition spaces through intellectual discourses and artistic performances. In the course of the project, transdisciplinary interaction of artists, scholars, technology experts, et cetera sparked an experimental synergy that led to the design and implementation of exhibitions: Die Da-Ponte-Opern Mozarts (Mozarts Da-Ponte Operas), Vienna State Opera 2011; Phantasie und Pharmazie (Fantasy and Pharmacy), April 2011; Gustav MahlerProduktive Dekadenz in Wien um 1900 (Gustav MahlerProductive Decadence in Fin-De-Siècle Vienna), Berlin 2011; Mediale Lebens[t]räume-droht uns eine digitale Heimat? (Life Dreams in Media SpacesAre We Doomed to a Digital Home?), Erfurt 2011; Sehen im Traum (Seeing in Dreams), Vienna 2011; Schweben und Stürzen (Flying and Falling), Innsbruck, Vienna 2012/13; Wunschfamilie (Perfect Family), Vienna 2012/13; Siegen und Herrschen. Kampf, Eroberung, Machterhalt (Victory and Rule. Struggle, Conquest, Preservation of Power), Vienna 2013. Furthermore, the themes of these exhibitions were adapted through trans-disciplinary cooperation with students and teachers. The continuation of some exhibitions, therefore, also stands for the sustainability of future processes of teaching and learning. This also allowed us to probe the question, is there a training for education? It became evident that, above all, the aesthetic judgment, that is to say taste, plays a frequently underrated role in all relevant processes of consciousnesseven though the judgment of taste is commonly dismissed as arbitrary, random, and merely subjective. Overcoming the well-known restrictions of rational discourses in a constructive manner, however, is precisely about the rediscovery of the aesthetic subject. The common bias of the objectifying cognitive capacity, which places theoretical discourses and their power of interpretation above the experience of artistic productivity, must be confronted with the question of whether aesthetic judgment, in the form of an intelligence of taste (Geschmacksintelligenz), should not be considered a form of cognition sui generis. As a position of artistic-scholarly research practice, this has certainly been confirmed through our project work. Additionally, in the application of the cultural tool of Staging Knowledge in the area of school education and teacher training, a successful implementation was achieved in the subject of art education: On the stage of the cognitively revalued subject of art education, interdisciplinary cooperation across main subjects can take place (German, history, English, geography, biology etc.). Students and teachers are involved in a common experimental process of learning and teaching until the respective exhibition openings. The project has shown that students at schools and universities harbour a great desire for pictorial thinking. Ultimately, today more than ever, as the virtual reality of technology abounds, the real virtuality of the powers of imagination comes to the fore. The strong acceptance of Staging Knowledge exhibitions was not limited to academic or school education circles, it was also voiced by a wider public and across social strata and age groups. On an international level, institutions of excellence have expressed strong interest in Staging Knowledge and have become actively involved in this approach: Stanford University, CA, Kings College London, Cambridge University, Bauhaus University, Weimar, and the recently founded School of Education at the University of Innsbruck.