SCHOLART: Borja Andrea

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Scholart Exhibition in the ARTS House

November 14, 2014, we opened the first (conscious) exhibition on scholart in the ARTS House Otaniemi (Aalto University). We had been planning to make it already in the spring (producer: Farbod Fakharzadeh), but because of some problems with gallery which stood up on us in the last moment, we finished the exhibition quite late that year.

The main question here was to discuss what it means to use artistic methods to discuss scholarly issues - when you are not an artist, or when you don't it as an artist.

Scholartists: Max Ryynänen, Taina Rajanti, Farbod Fakharzadeh, Eva Pavlic Siefert, Melinda Abercrombie, Sari Kivimäki and Andrea Coyotzi Borja.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Sentences on Scholart

When we realized that we have found a phenomenon, which is already quite old and which does yet not have any name, I wrote a manifesto to start the discussion with. Sentences on Scholart was published on this blog 12 Feb 2014, after a whole winter of discussions on how to proceed with our ideas.

SENTENCES ON SCHOLART

1. Scholart is not art.
2. Scholart is not research.
3. Artists cannot create scholart. A scholartist can have no identity as an artist, and cannot be taken seriously as one. Otherwise his/her scholart would be seen as art.
4. A scholartist uses contemporary artistic methods (installations, manifestos, etc.) to conduct theoretical discourse.
5. Scholart is always situated between art and theory.
6. Works of scholart cannot be explained in words only.
7. Scholart is outlaw, underground and outsiderish. If it ever becomes mainstream, serious-minded or codified, scholart has died.
8. Objects of scholart can include text, but the text shouldn't function as an explanation.
9. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
10. These sentences comment on scholart, but are not scholart.

Sentences on Scholart is an attempt to catch in a playful way what scholart is about. It refers to the following chain of artistic manifesto work:
Sol Lewitt Sentences on Conceptual Art
John Baldessari's comment on Lewitt's sentences
Bumsteinas' musical comment on Lewitt and Baldessari

(See also my tribute to Baldessari and Bumsteinas: I sing the sentences on scholart, filmed by Andrea Coyotzi Borja.)

Max Ryynänen

On Scholart

Why think about Sartre's, Camus' and Simone de Beauvoir's literary work as artistic? Leonardo worked hard to develop an accurate way of representing the world by painting and drawing - and called his work scientific. Manifests are quite scholarly and quite artistic, but neither of these words really describes the surrealist or dadaist manifesto.

We thnk we need a new concept, scholart, to stand for the use of artistic methods in scholarly (non art) work.

Diogenes’ performative philosophy was scholartist by nature, and the same could be said of Wittgenstein’s house - or Kristeva's novel The Samurai (without forgetting Kierkegaard). Anthropologists often do scholart when they film as a method in studying their topics (see e.g. the work of Michael Taussig). The concept could be extended to discuss sufism as a religiously laden form of scholartism and yoga as a form of scholartism of the body.

The scholartist manifesto was published February 12, 2014, and it is an invertion of the Sol Lewitt’s Sentences on Conceptual Art (1969). The first scholartist exhibition was opened November 14, 2014, in the ARTS House of Aalto University at Otaniemi Espoo (Finland). It presented the work of Taina Rajanti, Max Ryynänen, Farbod Farkharzadeh, Eva Pavlic Seifert, Melinda Abercrombie and Andrea Coyotzi Borja. The first course on Scholart started Sept 26, 2016. This blog will start to present and discuss the history and contemporary forms of scholartism.