Clemens

• Name: Clemens Driessen
• Affiliation: cultural geography, wageningen university

Procedural starting point

The way I described my methods or process in my last funding application was: i tend to talk about semi-structured #interviews, maybe #focus_groups, or #expert_workshops. in general: = starting with #literaturereview on a particular topic, associated issue. = then moving into some form of (multispecies) #ethnography, in which I aim to #spend_time with human experts as well as (building on their approaches) seeking to observe the active shaping of environments by #nonhumans. how do #humans and nonhumans make sense of their environment and each other? this can be framed as #cultivating_attentiveness = i would announce different field sites, places defined by somewhat different conditions and experiences = this could be complemented by #archival work or #historical #literature, situating the issue and its associated #context and questions. perhaps i would use the notion of #genealogy here. = the supposed analysis phase i would probably describe as #discourse analysis, and could involve some form of #mapping, #diagramming, or otherwise #making that fits academic outputs, leading to journal publications, speaking back to the literature, and some form of public #outreach

What I actually did was / what I usually do is: = i go some place, e.g. a pig farm, a palace, where probably #something_interesting_is_going_on, and i try to get to know people there and what #motivates and #bothers them, as well as #wonder what i find weird, sad, annoying, smelly, or otherwise #noticable. = i like to think there's a productive role for the threat of boredom (what is actually really interesting here) and panic (ow i promised this thing but what am i actually going to do?) = then i get into a collecting/reading frenzy/stupor, just gather and maybe read everything academic on the topic (as time allows) and meanwhile/earlier also reading just everything nonacademic, following rather random associations. that's also a good way to see what may be actually interesting and would make for a relevant interevention in the moral experience/affective politics of the situation - with a view of actually making something (in collaboration with someone arriving from another logic or background, e.g. farmer, artist) - this could be considered a breaching experiment in the field site, but with a straight face: suggesting this is just a normal response to the situation (e.g. making a game with pigs, or proposing some black box/mcguffin) = based on this i connect abstract questions, big concepts (time, ethics, sovereignty, freedom, play) to open these up in relation to scholarly debates, e.g. on deliberative democracy, interspecies play, sovereign space, human/nature relations - and move across these terms as discussed in literature and done in practice, without privileging either abstract or concrete, theoretical or practical/applied. = then write about the process of making/thinking in a way that does justice to the combination now of course the question is whether the grant proposal or this self mystification is more honest/real. looking forward to this event thanks for organizing

My previous experience between 'academic' and 'artistic' work:

several people have been saying i’m actually an artist pretending to be a scientist. i for a while thought i was a scientist pretending to be an artist. i realize now both may be the case. which means i’m more confused than ever.

i like to collaborate with a range of people, drawing on a range of fascinations and approaches, not being very worried most of the time which belongs where. i do realize there’s elements to generating novelty, messing about ‘units of analysis’ - and then being very rigorous and systematic in analysing and reporting on this.

things that come to mind are:

–treating the technoscientific development of in vitro/cultured meat as working along the lines of artistic interventions: disclosing new worlds, unsettling everyday ontological certainties (what actually is real meat? who am i as a consumer? what is my food culture really about?). favourite notions from the art/critcism world, such as paradox, ambiguity/ambivalence, were helpful to use to undermine existing approaches to consumer studies or impacts of technologies which assume clearly delineated subjects and objects

–with Henriette we wrote a book collecting a range of professionals and collectives working on water. we included theatre makers, composers, engineers, architects, physical geographers, etc. It was interesting to focus with them on the process of making, the development of crafts, learning with materials, the experience of surprise, … check it out! - https://valiz.nl/en/publications/water-works

–a decade ago i organized an exchange between phd students at my university, many of whom were natural science researchers, and two art schools. we supported collaboration across fields in the form of exchanges of materials, knowledges, ways of working, and ways of communicating. it was fun.

–most recently i contributed to an exhibition where the research i was doing led to a collaborative process of making, ending in a black box with various peep holes installed on the roof of a 17th century palace. this felt productive as it generated an occasion for me reading a range of works with a very specific set of questions in mind (what are ways to understand what ‘perspective’ does to experience) and seek ways of inviting people to enter into dialogue with this experience, without myself taking a very strong or developed position.