The work of Dutton and Swindells: An art of errancy, animals and encounter (Steve Dutton)

If the explicit claim for research is that it creates new knowledge, how can one claim that an art practice constitutes research? Indeed, might it be possible to claim that some forms of art practice position themselves as  knowledge’s ‘other’, making some-form/thing in the shadows of knowledge, going so far as to apply concepts of 'magic', 'seduction' or 'aura'.

Taking a cue from Marcel Broodthaers’ well known ambivalence about theory (seeing it as advertising for the ideology from which it emerged) by drawing on examples of my own practice and applying a collage of work and thinking by other artists and thinkers Steve Dutton presented a discussion of art as a form of eroticisation of ‘nothing’, a series of mute encounters made through the ritual of practice. Professor Dutton did this by drawing parallels to the encounter with the work of art and the encounter with the animal.

Lecture date: 21 January 2009