Intelligent Action: A History of Artistic Research, Aesthetic Experience, and Artists in Academia

Intelligent Action explores how artists challenged dominant conceptions of research and knowledge production in the 1960s through archival research and analysis of artworks by Gyorgy Kepes, Allan Kaprow, Mel Bochner, and Suzanne Lacy. It demonstrates how artists responded to ideas of research, knowledge production, information, and pedagogy, and how they developed new modes of practice and pedagogy in response to the demands of the cold war research university.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 186 pages
Publication date: 23 May 2024
Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Through extensive archival research and in-depth analysis of the works of artists such as Gyorgy Kepes, Allan Kaprow, Mel Bochner, and Suzanne Lacy, among others, Intelligent Action delves into the innovative approaches these artists took to challenge prevailing notions of research and knowledge production. The book is structured around specific institutional formations, including artistic research centers, proposals, exhibitions on college campuses, and the establishment of new schools or pedagogic programs. Formal and social analysis unveil how artists responded to ideas related to research, knowledge production, information, and pedagogy. The works discussed in the book were created between 1958 and 1975, a period characterized by the breakdown of boundaries between media in response to technological, cultural, and generational changes.

In the realm of academia, these artistic practices have adopted the aesthetics, methodologies, or language of various research and teaching practices. Artists have responded to the demands of cold war research universities in some instances, while in others, they have pioneered new modes of practice and pedagogy. By examining these works through their institutional histories, author Tim Ridlem demonstrates how artistic research practices and artistic subjectivity evolved in the long 1960s within and alongside academia, ultimately transforming the role of artists in the process.

Weight: 227g
Dimension: 235 x 156 x 13 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781978837706