For years, even decades, I’ve been confused about what people mean when they name art experimental. “Ah, you know it’s pretty experimental.” But what does it actually mean? Is it a definition, a matter of giving something value, positive or negative, scornful, or just something one says when nothing else seems appropriate?
Does experimental make the art good or bad by definition, or is it an excuse for something that is not exactly good but still valuable because it approaches the margins of what we conventionally identify as art. It’s also possible that experimental has nothing to do with experimentation, outside the box or unstable ground, but has coagulated and become style, turned into an identity. If so, it’s a small tragedy, although totally zeitgeist, as identity, even though performative, is the opposite to experimentation. An old-school approach to queer can be regarded as experimental but the moment queer is consolidated into identity, community, even representation it slowly backs out of the experimental, which is probably positive because it’s also exhausting to live without forms of identity that offer the individual something to hold on to. Never mind, experimental is not identical to multiplicity or being plural, but rather about making oneself vulnerable – in some or other way, which can take on different forms of expression – not just in regard to authority or classification, but to oneself.
A structurally rigorous engagement with experimentation of different kinds, in certain ways implies – using a slightly outmoded term – a form of self-precarisation. Not in the sense of forming a hippy community or being forced into a labour market based on gig-economies, but instead in respect of giving up one’s position, letting go of one’s voice, representation or recognisability. Which makes conventional forms of experimentation, perhaps in regard to strategies identified as modernist, a form of privilege. Only an individual who has a voice in society can afford to jeopardize it. Such forms of experimentation are, needless to say, gendered and binary, considering procedure and operation. These are false experiments, or consolidations of power posing as experimental.
It’s contradictory to nourish the idea that an experimental film, dance or poetry festival is presenting experimental art or projects. After all, a festival is a form of institution and as such a manifestation of established values, conventions and elaborations of quality. The moment you receive an invitation to an experimental festival you can be certain your work has turned ex-experimental, as in your ex, last Friday, passé, so not hot and at best, pleasant.
Still, experimental isn’t just some randomly put together stuff that under no circumstances will be invited to anything at all. No, experimental is art that’s almost invited, strongly considered but let down at the last moment. Not because it’s political directness, sensitive choice of topic, radical ideas, not at all, but because the inviting entity – festival, director, curator, programmer, publisher, club etc. – couldn’t give the work or practice a name, an identity or classification. Experimental are those things that at the same time are a statement and withdraw from categorization. That cannot be ignored but to which we have no defences. Then again, it’s also possible that there are things that look like a festival but aren’t, but those are more and more rare.
More or less the same people – curators, programmers etc. – obviously occupying power positions in regard to some context or art “world,” not rarely ask for, or wish to determine an artwork’s political (whatever that means) orientation, concern (recalling Bruno Latour’s lost faith in politics) or even ask for socio-cultural justification. For art to qualify as experimental it must, if not in every aspect, at least partially bypass political capture. Experimental art, simply, cannot be convincing, exactly because convincing needs something to push against, a backdrop, a solid surface, norm or convention.
An experiment has nothing or very little to do with experimental, still an experiment is not always the same or one thing.
In the context of science, an experiment is constructed and used in order to prove an assumption. It is and must be constructed in order to be repeatable and cannot not utilise established methods as a means towards reliability. Experiments are used in order to substantiate that something under no circumstances can be otherwise. Method is key.
In art, an experiment most often operates the other way around. It cannot be entirely without method, rules, instructions or conditions but the point of departure is not proof but instead to break ground, to end up somewhere “unknown,” lost, boundaryless or simply overwhelmed. What the fuck just happened in front of methodological stringency. Obviously, that place or state of mind can’t be reached by methodological accuracy, reliability or strictly defined circumstances. At the same time experiment or experimental can neither be identified as some form or anti-method – since that is still a method, right? – but must insist on its own indetermination. A scientific experiment is constructed through meticulous preparation, using technologies, statistical models etc. that with high probability guarantee the desired outcome. The proposition must be crystal clear. In art and related fields, for example so-called “blue-sky research,” preparations might be equally tenacious, not in respect of a proposal and probability but what is “needed” is a concept, an abstract machine generating indetermination or contingent result. A concept, in this context, is a set of rules or instructions that, if we are lucky and faithful, bring us, metaphorically speaking, to places that certainly don’t exist on no maps.
Indeed, some crucial things are mixed up when a residency or art council both favour experimental and ask you to describe your artistic methodology. Well, except if hope-for-the-best is method enough.
The notions of experiment in the arts have over the last ten to twenty years blurred with science approaches, one important reason being art’s intensified relation to research, in particular in academic environments. In short, the research an artist and an academic conduct are diametrically different, and the position or necessity of comprehensible methodology is central. Practice must not be mixed up with methodology.
There is however something that connects the two approaches. They both make something come to an end. Actually, it’s not, as one might think, that an experiment is the future in the making, that it is a symptom of what is to come, similar to how a light cough often is a sign of an arriving flu. When you prove something through a scientific experiment, the proof can certainly consolidate what is already known, but equally often proves that what we thought was true, in fact was bogus, illusion or useful although wrong. A scientific experiment brings something that we’ve taken for a fact, true or accurate, into a state of imbalance, reconsideration, and even collapse. Experiment in art follows the same trajectory although through different means, because to experience a successful experiment, being at least to a degree indeterminate, shakes what we until that moment regarded as art, practice or expression. An experiment is not creating the future, but by making something come to an end it creates a clean slate for any future to emerge. After all, as we know, the future that we can project, the future – that next week probably will start with a Monday or something similarly determinable – is an altogether different story than future without a definite article, that is whatever or contingent future. The beauty of a proper experiment, which is also why experiments can generate anxiety, is that it cannot determine what it will cause, what future it will generate. An experiment implies losing one’s perspective and for a moment coincides with being horizon.
Sometimes experimental comes across as having nothing to do with experiments or experimentation but simply to be the opposite of mainstream, as if the degree of experimental had do to with audience numbers, which, when argued by the popular right, is easily translated into experimental equals elitist. Evidently, there is no causal relation between mainstream and experimental, but small formats and tiny budgets can make it easier to experiment, as much as belonging to a small experimental art community without further issues can develop fetish-like relationships to small formats, budgets, audience numbers and, worst case scenario, itself. It’s kind of comical to overhear somebody exclaim, “Oh yeah, he totally sold out and went commercial.” In our times it’s a bit too hasty to hold on to a binary opposition between experimental and commerce, which never mind seems to propose that experimental is anti-capitalist, which as we all know is synonymous with communistic (LOL). But as we also all know, capitalism, with its relentless drive towards expansion, is foundationally and performatively experimental regarding how it constantly generates contingently new markets, implicitly proposing that if you want to do anti-capitalist art stay away from experimentation and keep clear of the mainstream. This is perhaps precisely what phenomena like experimental cinema or festivals specialised in symphonic rock are all about. By the way, I love not just experimental cinema and symphonic rock but especially small-scale festivals in towns whose names it’s difficult to remember. Today those festivals in many ways, possibly because nobody cares particularly, or because in times of decentralised management they cannot not be upheld by national funding or even cultural programs initiated from EU, are the only contexts where actual, real-deal experimentation can be supported. Or why not turn the argument around – it’s a mystery why so many festivals in smaller cities so often insist on presenting the same work at powerhouse festivals in Brussels, Vienna, Paris etc. Why not seize the opportunity to do your thing, not giving a damn about what the informal central committee of festival programmes consider accurate? Especially since those mainstream productions tend to be hugely expensive and we can anyway watch the trailers on YouTube. Moreover, we know that those festivals to a large extent compose their programs in regard to audience numbers, policy documents, co-productions deals, good behaviour and fear of missing out. Today being marginal is where experimentation still has a fair chance.
Although it can seem semiotic, there is a big difference between art that’s called experimental, art that looks experimental and art that is experimental. Art that’s called experimental, fair enough, that’s for tabloid reviews, The Guardian, New York Times and similar, but nothing to take seriously. Art that looks experimental is a different story and something in regard to which we need to keep up our defences, and there’s a lot of it around. How it looks obviously changes over time, not explosively but slowly like cheap fashion. Not rarely does it take pride in a slight degree of trashiness, off-handed attitude, seeming imperfection and a familial tone between participants, or in another context exceptional seriousness and way too loud volume and oversized sub-woofers. Perhaps the worst is art that looks experimental and identifies as conceptual. Anyway, it’s art that changes the looks but remains static in regard to structures, strategies applied and modes of performance. Interestingly, because the work comes across as experimental it can without further questions detach itself from political, social, ecological etc. responsibility. It’s experimental, you know, and that’s kind of self-referential (Lol again).
For the audience member, it feels so good to identify with, because it makes the individual feel equally experimental, free and adventurous but without any form of risk or, so to say, danger to the subject. Art that looks experimental is like an iPhone 12 wrapped in a self-expressive case.
Perhaps there is also art that is experimental but neither is called or looks like it. This is art that experiments with structures, organisation, form and not rarely modes of production or conditions of representation, instead of on levels of appearance. This is art that is too occupied with what and how it is to be occupied with looks, but because it isn’t, at the end of the day might just look different. Actively different, in the sense of not being an alternative or reaction. This is art that makes a difference but is not rarely overlooked, that makes something come to an end and changes the game. But remember, not because it wants to but because of a kind of conviction, that simultaneously is irreversible, intuitive and wild. Not like a crazy party, that we all know how it will end, but because it’s not like a party at all and we have no idea, whatsoever, where and how it will end.