Thinking Through Practice explores manifestions of philosophical thinking beyond the academic argument-based text. Can aesthetic practice successfully address philosophical issues or successfully deliver a mode of philosophical investigation? Thinking Through Practice sets out to identify and investigate practices where the aesthetic and the philosophical are symbiotically related. The project takes the form of a series of public events, with invited speakers, film screenings, workshops or discussions. The format of the events is dictated by the nature of the practice being presented.
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The project is organised by Isobel Bodwich and Andrew Chesher.
Isobel Bowditch is currently a research fellow in Fine Art at Chelsea school of art, University of the Arts. She is also a visiting lecturer in art theory at Chelsea and Wimbledon (BA and MA), UAL. In 2007 she was awarded a practice-based PhD from UAL. Her thesis was entitled 'The First Cut: The locus of decision at the limits of subjectivity'. Over the last five years, she has been developing an art practice that is also a form of philosophical inquiry and trying to develop new spaces for such an investigation. Her recent work occupies this art-philosophy hybrid ground and includes a performance for two actors called Onlookers and a video work called Reading Michel Henry. She is currently working with the question of empathy, in particular in relation to the work of Edith Stein.
Andrew Chesher is a lecturer in art theory at Chelsea school of art, University of the Arts London. As a documentary filmmaker, Andrew's work is informed by a conception of philosophical enquiry as description, questioning and dialogue. The relation of documentary to 'dialogic' was also the subject of his PhD completed at UAL earlier in 2007. His latest film Changing the System, which follows the rehearsals of an open-scored composition by Christian Wolff, was shown as part of the conference 'Between Categories: Music and the Moving Image' at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, at which he was also speaking, in December 2007.
Since the projects inception many people have been involved in the working group. Some constitute a 'core' group and some have been involved in particular projects.
The working group includes BA or MA students as well as other researchers (PhD, teaching staff etc):
Sophie Arditti, Marsha Bradfield, Teresa Carpenter, Cinzia Cremona, Neil Cummings, Mary-Anne Francis, Trevor Giles, Katrine Hjelde, Bethan Lewis, Carlos Monleon, Amy O Neill, Rory Pilgrim, Mette Gravlev Poulsen, Mali Purkayastha, Matthew Robinson, Beatrice Schultz, Lawrence Sullivan, Damian Taylor, Manuela Zechner
Cressida Kocienski has worked on editing and uploading media (podcasts and videos) to the site.
Chelsea staff in the Research Office and Estates have also been integral to the success of the events.