Porosity of the Frame:
material experiments on the boundary
between art and everyday life
​
​
Research Summary
​
Treating everything in the world as maybe-art, I experiment with framing to leash and unleash objects, movements and meanings. This study aims to reconcile the idea and practice of open-ended arting with expectations of outcome specificity in the goal-oriented cultural environment in a deterministic world governed by natural laws. Ultimately, I am exploring how embracing uncertainty through art can help us navigate the surrounding complexity.
Sustaining a productive tension between the academic PhD framework and my artistic frame-bending experiments, I engage with performative ontology, system aesthetics, actor-network theory, conceptual art, image-, sound- and object-making and collaborative strategies. To frame the artistic and theoretical outcomes of the project, I draft an art lens ontology, recast artmaking as a mobilisation of heterogeneous resources to summon up the art lens, provisionally consolidate my practice as the Aimless Research Institute, and assemble a dissertation as a hybrid piece of theory-art.
Version of 10-JUN-2024
​
- - -
​
Research Summary
​
Treating everything in the world as maybe-art, I experiment with framing to leash and unleash objects, movements and meanings. My focus is on reconciling: the specificity of an artwork with its interpretive openness; my open-ended arting with the dominant goal-oriented culture; and the notion of creativity with a world governed by natural laws. Ultimately, I am exploring how embracing uncertainty through art can help us navigate the unfathomable complexity of the real world.
Sustaining a productive tension between the academic PhD framework and my artistic frame-bending experiments, I engage with performative ontology, system aesthetics, actor-network theory, conceptual art, image-, sound- and object-making and collaborative strategies. To frame the artistic and theoretical outcomes of the project, I draft an art lens ontology, recast artmaking as a mobilisation of heterogeneous resources to summon up the art lens, provisionally consolidate my practice as the Aimless Research Institute, and assemble a dissertation as a hybrid piece of theory-art.
​
Version of 20-MAY-2024
​
- - -
​
Research Summary
​
Treating everything in the world as maybe-art, I experiment with framing to leash and unleash identities, meanings and actions. When I point out something as an artistic proposition, I aim to ignite an open-ended search for meaning. Ultimately, I am exploring how communication without consensus can help us navigate the unfathomable complexity of the world.
​
Framed as a creative practice-based PhD project, the present process is fuelled by productive tension between the academic research framework and my frame-bending experiments. I reflect on my spontaneous arting against eclectically snowballed engagements with texts and artworks covering performative ontology, system aesthetics, actor-network theory, conceptual art, performance, installation, sculpture, jewellery, sound, photography, video, printmaking and participatory strategies. In the process, I draft an art lens ontology, recast artmaking as a mobilisation of heterogeneous resources to summon up the art lens, provisionally consolidate my practice as the Aimless Research Institute, and assemble a dissertation as a hybrid piece of theory-art.
​
Version of 17-MAY-2024
​
- - -
​
Research Summary
​
This PhD project experiments with means to spot art amongst everything else. It aims to expand the knowledge gap about the art-everyday interrelation, inviting re-examination of how “art” and “non-art” co-frame each other, how framing devices affect our perceptive acuity, and how boundaries and their breaches gain significance. I seek no conclusive answers, letting emerging insights ignite new queries, infinitely nuancing the interplay between the perceiver and the perceived.
I delve into the subject matter through my conceptual art practice, aimlessly yet purposively exploring the affordances of my environment. I reflect on my spontaneous arting against eclectically snowballed engagements with texts and artworks covering performative ontology, system aesthetics, actor-network theory, conceptual art, performance, installation, sculpture, jewellery, sound, photography, video, printmaking and participatory strategies. In the process, I draft an art lens ontology, recast artmaking as a mobilisation of heterogeneous resources to summon up the art lens, provisionally consolidate my practice as the Aimless Research Institute, and write a dissertation as yet another instance of an ambiguous art-everyday interface.
Version of 18-APR-2024
​
- - -
​
Research Summary
​
This project explores framing as an uncertainty-fuelled vehicle for meaning creation. By playing with the perceptibility and openness of the artwork’s boundary, whatever its material-conceptual-institutional makeup may be, I aim to conjure unforeseen meanings and experiences. I splice the odd into the usual, presentations with representations, art into everyday and vice versa, seeking to create thought-provoking tension and unleash an unspecified yet productive search for meaning. My key concern is constructing a frame that can simultaneously contain and release - to sustain interest in the indeterminate flux without arresting the latter while showcasing the emergent diversity of effects.
​
Focusing on framing and its physical and conceptual porosity enables me to blaze an idiosyncratic trail through art history, bringing my work into dialogue with highly diverse precedents.
Keywords: boundary, uncertainty, sensemaking
Version of 22-MAY-2023
​
- - -
​
Research Summary
​
This artistic practice-based research explores ways to generate meaning through expanded framing applications. Whether as an edge of a painting or a gallery perimeter containing an installation or a written artist statement, framing functions as a stabiliser. It establishes a boundary between art and non-art, facilitates attribution of authorship and demarcates a space where the oeuvre, genre or medium conventions may be substituted for everyday rules. But the more stable the constitution and contextualisation of an artwork, the more circumscribed is its meaning. My experimentation seeks to expand the artwork’s meaning potential by destabilising its frame.
​
Typically, I start framing something mundane, letting resistance in the materials, chance encounters, and audience responses affect the process. It is conceptual art done backwards. Rather than using ideas as artmaking machines, I turn artworks into meaning-generating devices fuelled by the conceptual tension between restrictive (e.g., Greenberg, Fried) and expansive (e.g., Dewey, Eco, Burnham) theorisations of art. Is the artistic value contained within the frame, or does it overflow it, including the whole situation and the diversity of the experiencing audience itself?
Research Question
​
How can framing disrupt the reproduction of meaning within an expanded artistic process?
​
Version of 16-MAY-2022
- - -
​
Research Summary
​
This practice-based research explores how framing facilitates meaning.
Typically, framing devices – like the sharp edges of a video projection or the perimeter of a gallery space hosting an installation – are employed to stabilise the composition, distinguishing it as an artwork from its non-art surroundings. This separation guides the audience's attention and prompts the substitution of the artworld conventions for everyday rules. Objects on plinths will rarely be touched, while the murder in "The Death of Marat" is more likely to be interpreted in relation to art historical canons than the Criminal Code. The recognition and efficacy of an artwork appear to hinge on the solidity of the frame.
And yet, John Dewey suggests that "the actual work of art is what the product does with and in experience". Jack Burnham describes how Haacke's sculpture "merges with the environment in a relationship that is better understood as a 'system' of interdependent processes". In his white cube critique, Brian O'Doherty discusses "how the context devours the object, becoming it." Here, the frame is no longer solid. The plurality of individual experiences, ongoing interactions with the environment and shifting contextualisation render the artwork dynamic, its framing sketchy and porous. By extension, traditional conceptions of the medium, meaning, artistic intent, authorship, completion, and artistic value get upset.
My practice explores the radical openness that this shift of perspective enables. I leave the framing intentionally porous and observe emerging meanings and modes of engagement. It is conceptual art made backwards – creating intrinsically meaningless works as meaning-generating devices, as opposed to Sol LeWitt's ideas as machines that make art. Through this reversal, I am rethinking how art and everyday gain significance in each other in the age where art is increasingly assessed on criteria developed for other fields of human activity.
​
Research Questions
In what ways does framing facilitate meaning in artistic processes?
How can open-ended artistic processes reconstitute artistic values?
​
Methods/Methodology
​
I am experimenting with conceptual, durational, spatial, digital, and material strategies, mixing them freely. Drawing on System Esthetics and audience response theories, I envision my propositions as intermedia situations that trigger unscripted meanings and experiences.
I approach my making through the flat ontology of Actor-Network Theory, regarding any involved people, animals, objects, materials, and other elements of the physical, social, or discursive context as my co-makers.
Version of 18-NOV-2021
- - -
​
Research Summary
​
This art practice-based research explores fuzzy framing strategies for dynamic, open-ended conceptual propositions.
Typically, framing devices – like the edges of a video projection or the perimeter of a gallery space presenting an installation – stabilise the composition, distinguishing it as artwork from its non-art surroundings. This separation guides the audience, often substituting within the frame artworld conventions for everyday rules. For example, objects on plinths will rarely be touched, while the murder in "The Death of Marat" (1) is more likely to be interpreted in relation to art historical canons than the Criminal Code.
However, following John Dewey, "the actual work of art is what the product does with and in experience" (2). Embracing Dewey, my practice aims to provoke and showcase unscripted sensemaking, absorbing audience response into the frame whenever possible. I also let internal and external, physical and discursive forces keep reconfiguring my propositions over time, rendering their composition dynamic and fuzzy. The outline of the work becomes uncertain, creating uncertainty about its meaning and applicable rules and prompting the audience to make decisions on the spot. I use the resulting destabilisation to rethink the interplay between the artist, the artwork, and the audience and the boundary between art and everyday life.
​
Research Questions
​
How can framing facilitate meaning generation in an open-ended artistic process?
How to approach artistic value in fuzzy and malleable propositions?
Methods/Methodology
​
I seek to burst any fixed frame into multiple shifting frames entering conversations with each other - and yet to maintain the integrity of the artwork. To that end, I experiment with strategies from Conceptual, Process, Performance, Sound, Video, Object, and Internet Art. Drawing on System Esthetics (3) and audience response theories (4), I envision my propositions as improvised intermedia (5) encounters geared towards generating unscripted meanings and experiences.
I approach my making through the flat ontology of Actor-Network Theory (6), regarding any involved people, animals, objects, materials, and other elements of the physical, social, or discursive context as my co-makers.
1 David, Jacques-Louis. 1793. The Death of Marat. Painting. Brussels: Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.
2 Dewey, John. 2005 [1934]. Art as Experience. New York: Berkley.
3 Burnham, Jack. 1968. ”Systems Esthetics”. Artforum.
4 E.g., Eco, Umberto. 1989. The Open Work. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
5 Higgins, Dick, and Hannah Higgins. 2001. ”Intermedia”. Leonardo (Oxford) 34, no 1: 49–54.
6 Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: University Press.
Version of 17-OCT-2021
- - -
​
Research Summary
​
This art practice-based research explores fuzzy framing strategies for dynamic and open-ended conceptual propositions.
Typically, framing devices – like the edges of a video projection or the perimeter of a gallery space presenting an installation – stabilise the composition, distinguishing it as artwork from its non-art surroundings. This separation guides the audience, often substituting within the frame artworld conventions for everyday rules. For example, objects on plinths will rarely be touched, while the murder in "The Death of Marat" is more likely to be interpreted in relation to art historical canons than the Criminal Code.
However, following John Dewey, "the actual work of art is what the product does with and in experience". Embracing Dewey, my practice aims to provoke and showcase unscripted sensemaking, absorbing audience response into the frame. I also let internal and external, physical and discursive forces reconfigure my propositions over time, rendering their framing fuzzy. The resulting destabilisation prompts me to rethink the interplay between the artist, the artwork, and the audience and the boundary between art and everyday life.
​
Research Questions
​
How can fuzzy framing devices entice the audience to contribute new meanings to an open-ended artistic process?
How to approach artistic value in fuzzy and malleable propositions?
​
Methods/Methodology
​
I seek to burst any fixed frame into multiple shifting frames entering conversations with each other - and yet to maintain the integrity of the artwork. To that end, I experiment with strategies from Conceptual, Process, Performance, Sound, Video, Object, and Internet Art. Drawing on System Esthetics and audience response theories, I envision my propositions as improvised intermedia encounters geared towards generating unscripted meanings and experiences.
I approach my making through the flat ontology of Actor-Network Theory, regarding any involved people, animals, objects, materials, and other elements of the physical, social, or discursive context as my co-makers.
Version of 14-OCT-2021
- - -
​
Research Summary
​
This practice-based research explores framing strategies for conceptual, process- or intermedia-oriented or otherwise complex and unstable artistic propositions.
Framing devices help identify, organise, and contain artistic content, separating it from the everyday and subjecting it to another set of rules - like artistic freedom or art historical canons. They may also restrict interpretations and modes of engagement, creating tensions with artistic strategies aiming to transcend boundaries and accomplish something new in art or even in the world outside the frame. And yet, some form of framing is always necessary to identify the object of consideration.
In my making, I am playing out the creative process's destabilising force against the framing's stabilising power. I clash them to rethink how art and the world gain significance in each other.
​
Research Questions
​
How to frame a process aiming for significance outside the frame?
​
Methods/Methodology
​
To create work reaching out beyond the traditional frame, I am combining strategies from Conceptual Art, Process Art, Sound Art, Video Art, Intermedia, Improvisation, System Esthetics and audience response theories. Rather than focusing on polished resolutions, I envision my process as a series of encounters generating unscripted meanings and modes of engagement. I approach them through the flat ontology of Actor-Network Theory, regarding any involved materials, objects, technologies, elements of the physical, social, or discursive context, people, and animals as my co-makers. Their participation in the artwork simultaneously as they are involved in other networks facilitates the circulation of matter and ideas across the frame. In fact, "the frame" bursts into multiple moving and malleable frames. In terms of ANT, they outline oligoptic positions that never afford a complete overview, but "what they see, they see it well" – helping to conceptualise the emergence of diverse meanings and experiences from the same work.
Version of 23-SEP-2021
- - -
​
Research Summary
This project explores the performativity of the boundary delineating an artwork and, by extension, the performativity of the artwork itself. It is based on an experimental practice conceived as Performative Intermedia. Any materials, objects, technologies, elements of the physical, social, or discursive context, people - including any audience - or animals are seen as participating performers. The artistic value is sought in unpredictable conceptual and aesthetic forms emerging through their co-performance/s. This conceptualization of the artwork draws on the flat ontology of ANT, various derivatives of John L. Austin's idea of performativity, John Dewey’s "Art as Experience”, Umberto Eco’s "Open Work", and rich artistic heritage of Fluxus, improvisation and Conceptual Art.
​
The openness for arbitrary absorption into the work of any elements that contribute to its artistic value in the eyes of the perceiver destabilizes the boundary between the artwork and everyday life. If a frame typically insulates its contents from “reality”, signalling suspension of disbelief, literal meanings, and many real-world consequences of the artistic propositions contained within – what would art be like, what could it do in the world when the framing is intentionally left blurry and porous?
​
Research Questions
How does the framing of an artwork influence what it can do in the world?
How to stage situations enabling the audience to appreciate unpredictable conceptual and aesthetic forms emerging, inter alia, through their co-performance?
[Can art emerge/happen rather than be made? What would the difference be?]
​
Methods/Methodology
​
Conceptually, the project is radically rethinking art, its delineation, and its value focusing on what it could do in the world beyond authorial intent. Thus, a close reading of Austin, Derrida, Dewey, Duchamp, Eco, Grosz, von Hantelmann, Kim-Cohen, Latour and others would be underpinning it theoretically.
​
Practically, the project seeks to stage situations that may trigger the emergence of new conceptual or aesthetic forms and other real-world consequences. For that purpose, the constitution of the work will be left ambiguous, encouraging the perceivers to make their own choices as to what to include or exclude, how to engage and how to make sense of the experience. Those emerging qualities will be captured through various strategies, including autoethnography, documentation of any observable changes caused by engagement (movements in space, markings on surfaces, sounds etc.) or inviting the audience to debriefing sessions. Inspiration will be drawn from Ablinger, Abramovic, Asher, Baldessari, Buren, Busche, Cage, Creed, Delvoye, Duchamp, Fluxus, Gladwell, Hijikata, Kaprow, Nauman, Paterson, Sehgal, Thaemlitz, Weiner, Wilson and others.
​
Version of 11-SEP-2021