The problem of critique in art-geography: five propositions for immanent evaluation after Deleuze

Abstract

This paper argues that we need to challenge transcendent modes of evaluating creative practices in geography, both in order to question dominant ways of thinking about creativity and to cultivate a broader playing field on which to transform concepts and practices of aesthetics. This is important because the intervention of creative research must be coupled with a framework that can amplify it and make it count thereafter, or we risk returning to a familiar conceptual apparatus over the greater challenge of developing how creative practices make us think differently. In doing so, the paper presents five propositions for immanent evaluation elaborated through Gilles Deleuze, which are crucial for exploring a plurality of ‘aesthetic justifications’. Empirically, the paper draws on an exhibition entitled Sounding the City, which the author curated in Bristol, UK, in August 2014. The aim is not to explore the politics of curation, but to experiment with a mode of presenting research that supports the propositions for evaluation staged in the paper.