24th May 2004

Can the process of making art be situated on the edges of credible knowledge i.e. pseudo - science, could it be more concerned with foreseeing  than prediction?  I get a couple of books on the work of artist Susan Hiller (who has excellent artworks on the internet, see, for example, Witness )

In Witness, Susan Hiller, who has been collecting statements from people who see strange phenomena for some years, brings recordings of these accounts together in an ambitious sound installation. In this installation Hiller invites the audience to explore an area where rational systems of explaining things no longer seem to hold.

Art can perhaps invest knowledge with potency.

Maybe art can destabilise what passes for truth.

I wonder whether it might be possible to question forms knowledge gleaned from science by siting an art work in a space that might act a as a counterpoise to science (its assumed rationality, objectivity etc.) I decide to look into the idea of using the underground passages in Exeter to make a sited work. If artwork were presented in such a space would it be possible to bring the viewer into some sort of relation with the irrational edges of the debates but am unsure about this line of thought.

I consider using recordings of voices, perhaps using staff at Egenis, to be overlaid and played as a part of an installation in an underground space but decide that this idea is a bit obvious and should be put on hold.