Il futuro del futuro: Ricerca artistica e ricerca scientifica: coniugare il mondo oltre la logica duale

Abstract

If it is extremely difficult to define what art is, even more difficult it appears to be to
determine what artistic research actually is. Umberto Eco stated that “a general definition
of art knows that it is indispensable: it is a gesture that must be made, a duty that must be

performed; to try to place a point of reference to those discourses that are instead on pur-
pose historical, partial, limited, goal-oriented (critical or operative).” As in the myth of Sis-
yphus, the inescapable attempt to define the concept is constantly alternates with the need

to s-define it, alternating between structuring instances and deconstructing projections. In

the economy of this text we will try to keep our distance from questions of an epistemolog-
ical character, easily leading to ontological drifts concerning the nature of art and the origin

of the work of art, which as Eco himself suggests leads toward “a metaphysical conception
of dialectics,” adopting on the heuristic level the definition of artistic research proposed
in 2009 by Simon Sheikh, in the threefold meaning of 1. Research on artistic practices and
materials; 2. Art practice as research (i.e., where the production of art is seen as a form of
inquiry); 3. Research art (i.e., an aesthetic approach to scientific research and the objects
of science), with the aim of reopening the discussion of what Morin would call a problem
word and not a solution word.

Il futuro è il tempo di una coniugazione, il tempo più concreto della coniugazione, se è vero che
il presente è inafferrabile, sempre travolto dal tempo che passa, e il passato sempre oltrepassato,
irrimediabilmente compiuto o dimenticato. Il futuro è la vita che si vive individualmente.
L’arte propone a tutti, e a ciascuno di noi singolarmente, l’occasione di vivere un inizio.
(Marc Augé, Futuro, 2012)