DFG Research Training Group 2686: Contradiction Studies –

Constellations, Heuristics, and Concepts of the Contradictory

DFG Research Training Group 2686: Contradiction Studies –

Constellations, Heuristics, and Concepts of the Contradictory

Verlernen

Article / Paper

Wagener, Kim & Kim Wagener

2025

These political decisions are linked to the question of the institutional location and the further development of artistic research in terms of content and aesthetics. The latter is addressed in the volume Permeations – Interpenetrations between Artistic Research and Aesthetic Theory, published by Spector Books in 2025. It revisits the old question of collaboration between theory and practice and sees itself as a blueprint for new coalitions between critical knowledge formation and artistic research. The event aims to combine the book presentation with a discussion about artistic research inside and outside art academies and to open up the question of the different constellations of research-based art in relation to theory and science.

Wagener, Kim & Kim Wagener. 2025. Verlernen. In Christoph Brunner, Kathrin Busch & Knut Ebeling (eds.), Permeationen. Durchdringungen von ästhetischer Theorie und künstlerischer Forschung. Leipzig: Spector Books, https://www.spectorbooks.com/de/buch/permeationen.

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Is contradiction eurocentric?

“Is contradiction a eurocentric concept, operational phenomenon, and instrument of power?”
Kerstin Knopf

coherence in thought

“The imperative of non-contradiction generally produces a coherence in thought that is often at odds with social complexities.”
Yan Suarsana

decolonial scholarship

“Creating decentralizing and decolonizing scholarship on contradiction, contradictory phenomena, and contradicting processes is a challenging task.”
Kerstin Knopf

sustained engagement

“The history of Western philosophy can be understood as a sustained engagement with contradiction.”
Norman Sieroka

Afterlife of colonialism

“Contradiction comes in many different forms. None is so debilitating than when the coloniser transitions, textually not politically, to decoloniality without taking the responsibility for the afterlife of colonialism, which they continue to benefit from. Self-examination and self-interrogation of the relations of coloniality, a necessity, seem nearly impossible for the coloniser who continues to act as beneficiary, masked in the new-found language of White fragility, devoid of an ethical responsibility of the very system of White domination they claim to be against.” (Black Consciousness and the Politics of the Flesh)
Rozena Maart