Knowledge does not simply consist of abstract thought; it is embedded within material,
gestures, feelings, narratives and practical routines. As lived experience, knowledge and competences are written into our bodies as embodied experience. As such it can be accessed and rehearsed through bodily action – these insights into the foundations of knowledge belong to the central understandings of 20th century philosophy, epistemology and the sociology of science. The seminar Creativity & Performance takes these understandings as its starting point.
To our students the seminar offers a new approach, one that responds to the fact that what is often called “embodied” or “implicit” knowledge has become increasingly relevant not only for science, but also to the emergent post-industrial work environment. While traditional seminar forms only have limited access to this kind of knowledge and conceptual analysis is often insufficient or inappropriate, implicit knowledge is accessed best through intuitive and situational approaches. It is neither enough to be informed, to observe, nor to analyze – implicit forms of knowledge need to be experienced and practiced through the body. The arts provide an appropriate field of practice, one in which a kind of thinking that is articulated through observing, creating, improvising, acting and feeling can be undertaken.
There are four aspects within this extended field of knowledge that can be accessed through artistic practices and techniques:
Aesthetic experience and emotional knowledge: body techniques (such as yoga, dance or theatre) raise awareness of spatial and social atmospherics.
Action-based knowledge: when we draw, write or are involved in music, we develop ways of thinking that arise from action. These ways follow a causality of propositional thought rather than the logic of the material or specific rhythms of movements.
Imaginative and creative techniques: while filming, drawing, designing, composing and experimenting with materials, we generate images, narratives and symbols and through these create something surprising and unforeseen. Associations and assertions are picked up, traced and transformed playfully.
Narrative knowledge: knowing and understanding oneself and others; designing and inventing identities, situations, and possibilities of action depend to a large extent on narrations: in understanding oneself and our relation to others, our current position as well as our chances and limitations, we depend on narrations. It is the temporality of any narration that allows us not only to understand our experiences over time, but to reach an understanding of its structures and potential.
With the form of our program ‘Creativity & Performance’, Zeppelin University has developed a sustained and mature study concept, one which is unique in Germany and reflects the latest developments in the understanding of research and science.
For the course ‘Creativity & Performance' students are asked to choose two artistic disciplines, which should correspond to their own interests and affinities. Accompanied by experienced artists, their perception is sharpened as they get to explore their environment in an experimental manner. Signs and sign systems, images and narrations form a process of engagement with reality which is not understood as representation, but rather as the bodily experience of construction and criticism.
The Laboratory for Implicit and Artistic Knowledge (LIKWI) is a research unit at Zeppelin University that analyses the results of the Creativity & Performance courses. Together with a network of partners from other universities, its purpose is to draw out and investigate the epistemological, aesthetic and pedagogical insights gained from this format. LIKWI is part of the Center for Cultural Production with some of workshops being held in cooperation with Zeppelin University's artsprogram.
