THE OFFICE OF EXPERIMENTS [00E]

Experimental Aesthetics

The experimental is of critical importance to contemporary culture as it defines a process by which contestation has become a method of representation. In this sense, we mean the experiment is a process that through a series of structured events contests current ideas, practices, structures and behaviours. The recurring nature of this process leads us to position the experiment as a form that can define the ressurgence in the aesthetic experience of contemporary life.

As embedded observers of the patterns of events within the closed spaces of laboratories and studios, museums and archives, to the development of new networked forms and the structures of emergent social practices, we believe the process and cycles of this experimental method require first the comprehension of the context in which contesting takes place (by mapping, documentation or other forms), and then the analysis of this context to derive a suitable strategy, device, performance, artefact, theory etc. The aim of the method is to create recurring experimental conditions to contest the context.

The experiment can then become a site and a practice based on temporal, physical action - operating from somewhere between the spheres of interpretation and expression, activism and resistance, rationality and intuition - borrowing from institutional behaviour, academic discipline or logical intervention, but without fear of performing risk, creating unsustainable practices, building unstable structures, or celebrating temporary actions.

From interventions in archives to collaborations on databases, field research and visual and audio documentation, to performance and publication, our research gives rise to practice in which a cyclic aesthetic is derived from the experiment itself.

Neal White

The artist Neal White is founder and co-ordinator of the ‘Office of Experiments’. Established 2004.

 

 

 

 

 

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