[ISEA2015] Artist Statement: Nicole Clouston — Artist as Researcher: Knowledge at the intersection of art and science

Artist Statement

Research is the act of posing questions and then searching for answers to those questions. The goal of this act is the expansion of human knowledge. When contemplating research it is most often the field of science that comes to mind and rarely, if ever, the fine arts. Scientific research is commonly thought of as the attempt to understand natural phenomena through the scientific method, which involves observation, the formulation of hypotheses, experiments to test them and the drawing of conclusions that confirm or modify them. Accompanying this rigor is the demand to achieve complete objectivity by eliminating personal biases and subjecting all findings to extensive repeated testing and independent verification. Due to this idyllic exactitude, scientific research is imbued with an air of authority and is widely regarded as the only discourse that is able to produce and validate knowledge. This authority is reinforced by its long history: the scientific method traces back to the 1600s involving a chain of research events reaching from Copernicus to Newton. In contrast, the discourse surrounding artistic practice as a form of research is very new. In recent years there has been extensive writing on whether artists should be, or even could regarded as researchers.

  • Nicole Clouston (CA) is a practice-based researcher who completed her Ph.D. in Visual Art at York University and her MFA at the University of Victoria. In her practice she asks: What happens when we acknowledge, through an embodied experience, our connection to a world teeming with life both around and inside us? Nicole has exhibited across Canada and internationally, most recently in Detroit, Michigan. She was the artist in residence at the Coalesce Bio Art Lab at the University at Buffalo and the artist in residence at Idea Projects: Ontario Science Centre’s Studio Residencies at MOCA. nicoleclouston.com.

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