Open call: Drawing Instruments Or: how to calibrate an artist?

symposium – exhibition
Maastricht, Herdenkingsplein 12, March 16 & 17, 2017

In this first yearly symposium of the Lectoraat AOK, we will approach the artist as a research instrument. Sidestepping the
fandamental debate about whether art can be research, we focus on artistic research practice. What do artistic researchers
actually do? And how can we talk about their work in a productive way? To gain a perspective on this practice, we use the
metaphor of the research instrument. We approach artistic research practice as a space in which the artist develops a
methodology of her own: the artist as research instrument. This focus helps us to ask specific questions: How is an
artist-as-instrument made sensitive? What kinds of embodied, aesthetic, intimate, sensory ways of knowing are developed?
How does the artist-as-instrument become attuned or calibrated? What does it probe and find out? How can we know
whether it is working well? What kind of standards emerge along the way?

This year, the symposium marks the closing of the Lectoraat A OKs interdisciplinary research studio Institute of Calibration
made and led by Dear Hunter, a duo of architects working in the Euregion as spatial anthropologists. This research studio
focused particularly on drawing: The artist-as-instrument that draws, but also the drawing of the artist-as-instrument as a
way of reflecting on and honing artistic research practices.

The symposium will take place in an exhibition space that reconstructs the research studio Institute of Calibration.
It will be a hands-on working session in which thinking-through-making is central.

The call

Rather than presenting finished work, the symposium will be a working session in which instruments are produced and
compared in situ by participants. Qi course, research instruments only fanction in particular contexts to address specific
problems. Therefore, we are looking for contributions that originate in a developed artistic research practice and/or from
a researchers need to reflect on and articulate their methods.

We invite contributions by artists and/or academics presenting and reflecting on the artist-as-instrument. The form in
which you send in your proposal is quite open. We suggest you could submit a drawing or abstract of your presentation
(you will be given a maximum of 30 minutes at the symposium for presentation) before January 27th 20I7 via email to
milou.willems@zuydnl. Proposals should include the authors name and contact details, a title and a summary of around
500 words and/or drawings outlining the instrument, the problems it deals with and the argument the presenter would like
to make about it. The proposals will be evaluated by the organizing committee of Drawing Instruments. Selected
participants will be invited to present their instrument at the symposium Drawing Instruments.

Organivng committee
Ruth Benschop: reader Lectoraat AOKI Research Centre for Arts, Autonomy and Public Sphere,
Faculty of the Arts, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences.
Remy Kroese: member of Dear Hunter, a research practice for spatial anthropology
and organizers of the Institute of Calibration.
Veerle Spronck: researcher in the Research Centre for Arts,
Autonomy and Public Sphere and at Maastricht University.
Marlies Vermeulen: member of Dear Hunter, a research practice for spatial anthropology
and organizers of the Institute of Calibration.

We are very happy to announce that our session formally closes on Friday-morning with a lecture by Lorraine Daston,
who will speak about practices of drawing and scientific illustration, and the ways in which different standards of
objectivity are achieved. This lecture is co-hosted by the Master of Scientific Illustration, Zuyd / AEIMS conference.

Drawing: Dear Hunter -SM mmR 1.
Sea Monster map making Research lnstrwnent