ECOLOGIES IN ACTION: an emergent framework for thinking aesthetic thinking through aesthetic research practices

thinking aesthetic thinking through aesthetic research practices is a research project by Alex Arteaga, Emma Cocker, and Nicole Wendel (and Sabine Zahn during the first phase). Over a period of two years (2020–22), we came together within a series of intensive online encounters, to explore how aesthetic research practices might enable and realise a specific form of thinking: aesthetic thinking. Our shared enquiry has unfolded through exploration of the following questions:

* PRACTICES: How do specific aesthetic research practices enable or enhance aesthetic thinking? What kinds of practices can be developed, tested, and shared?

* ECOLOGIES: How might we bring different practices into relation? How does the coexistence, coinciding, and mutual conditioning of different practices enable or enhance aesthetic thinking?

* CONDITIONS: What are the conditions for aesthetic thinking, and how might these conditions be nurtured? 

During this project, we developed a novel framework called Ecologies in Action conceived as a dispositive (a way of organising relationships) that, mobilised as an emerging method (from methodos — a course or way of travelling), allows us to share our practice. The novel form of the Ecologies in Action has enabled us to share our live enquiry with others directly, by witnessing a live Ecology in Action, or indirectly, through the recordings of the realised Ecologies and the artefacts generated therein (as we do within this exposition). This exposition is conceived to facilitate access to the practices, methods, and conceptual framework of this project.