Handling som kunskapande. En kunskapskritisk reflexion över konstnären och designern som forskare

Abstract

The article consists in a discussion of the epistemological implications of the knowledge claims in practice-based research. Rather than arguing a special case for knowledge in art and design, it tries to problematize what is often taken for granted in the distinction between theory and practice, as well as between formal scientific method and creative action. Thus the question is posed: how come knowledge in praxis, creation and action seems problematic in relation to conventional scientific epistemology? Point of departure is the problems and failures of the design theory movement, as well as different attempts to reconcile and negotiate what is often described as a ”structural anxiety”, in the relation between practice based and conventional research. This is analyzed in relation to the complex and intricate picture of how research actually is done, as well as to the critique of conventional scientific epistemology and scientific self-image, offered by the last decades science- and technology studies, most notably from a feminist perspective. With subsequent attempts to envisage a different, more responsible, kind of research: in the concepts of situated knowledges, strong objectivity and in the relentless insisting on the active and necessary it is not only possible, but also more interesting and fruitful, to couple the question of practicebased research. What was seen as problematic in relation to conventional scientific epistemology, the situatedness and embodiedness, the difficulties in making generalizations, the role of artefacts, is here seen as a strength. It does not, however, say that anything goes: it rather sets up a different set of standards for good knowledge construction which can be summarized as a critical including of our positions and aims (relevance), a radical curiosity and humbleness in the meeting with that, or those, we regard as our objects of knowledge, and a recognition of the controversies, value conflicts and insecurities that lies at the heart of the political projects we inevitably are involved in. And that practice-based research thus, especially coupled with the critical and constructive perspective of feminist epistemology, can offer new paths and models also for more conventional areas of knowledge production.