Boston

MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, or MIT for short, has as its ringing mission "to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the twenty-first century, [...] for the betterment of humankind." MIT is also referred to as Military Institute of Technology because of its close relationship with the military and the Department of Defense. Insiders sometimes call it Military Industrial Complex of Technology, because the concrete results of the researches conducted by this university have a great influence on all kinds of things that we have come to regard as perfectly normal in everyday life.
Founded in 1861 as a response to the industrialization of American society, MIT is primarily focused on practical and laboratory education. Results of research have been instrumental in the discovery and development of radar, space travel, bio- and nanotechnology, the computer, medical applications, and much more for more than a century, and have had and continue to have enormous and direct practical application in "the field," which has meant researchers' and students' inventions being deployed and tested in wars. Many Nobel Prize winners come from MIT, and there are close relationships with industry which increases the chances of getting (good) jobs.

workshop with NODE and Bengler, February 18, 2016

Center for Advanced Visual Studies
Yet something was missing in this success story, thought the institute's leadership after the Second World War was decided partly with the help of the results of its innovative research, for where in this rational technological world was the humanistic and humanitarian component located? In 1949, a research committee warned against placing too much emphasis on 'engineering' (in every conceivable facet) and on government-sponsored research, not only because it would detract from the sciences and humanities, but because, they foresaw, more and more decisions would no longer be taken with an eye to human and social aspects, and would therefore lose its connection with society. A direct result of this warning was the creation of faculties that had to be able to compete with the strong positions of the Schools of Science and Engineering. Previously marginalized programs such as economics, political science, management, architecture, and linguistics strengthened their positions and attracted respected professors to bolster the launch of those much-needed programs.
In 1967, the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) started under Hungarian Professor György Kepes based on the conviction that the arts, technology and science viewed in conjunction can better produce new and interesting perspectives, than separately and in isolation. One of the success stories of CAVS is the hologram, invented in the late 1960s by Steve Benton (former director of CAVS) in close cooperation with other faculties. Every day, without really thinking about it, we encounter such a hologram on our credit cards and passports: in that hologram all information, necessary for security and identification, is stored. Without the hologram no CT or MRI scan, no three-dimensional reconstructions of what is going on in our bodies.

Four months in Boston
Curious, we accepted the invitation to spend a semester exploring through the inside of this institute, working with two groups of master's students on what is now called ACT (Arts Culture and Technology), as an opportunity to understand more about this institute and its ambiguous reputation of brilliant students ánd shadowy kongsi, and how the arts and humanitarian sciences are embedded in this ultra-technological environment, for the arts are still an oddity within this institute, despite its nearly 50-year existence in this context.

Four months....that's the time we spend in Boston. We teach two classes: Art and Public Sphere, and Experimental Publishing and Archival Research of which we give an impression here: we focused with the students on investigating forms in which engagement with dialogue with context takes shape and is presented publicly. If we conceive of art practice as a tool or a place for generating forms of knowledge and experience, what forms can be thought, researched and produced in relation to 'making public'?

Editing board
From the start of the semester we made a small change in the hierarchy: we decided, in dialogue with the group, to no longer call the class "class" but editing board, newsroom. Engagement and input was expected from the students, necessary to bring their own problems and interests to the table but with a great openness to other perspectives. We wanted to work as a team, in which roles were interchangeable and everyone would take equal responsibility for content, production, and outcome, and be alert to activities on and off the MIT campus that we could tap into or "hitch a ride" on. The small changeover aimed to activate other forms of collaboration and had a huge effect: from the beginning there was a high level of commitment to the whole project. The weekly editorial meetings consisted of 'fieldwork', study of theoretical backgrounds, discussions, location research, and exploring 'analogue platforms' such as the Bauhaus exhibition at the Harvard Art Museum curated by Robert Weisenburger, the Bow & Arrow Press, the Consumer Research Center/bookshop at the Carpenter Center. All this should eventually lead to the production and public presentation in the spirit of a form of performative theatrical magazine.

As a concrete focus and source of inspiration, we chose the CAVS archive, which happened to be further down the hallway. An archive of nearly 45 years of history of collaborations and time-based productions by over 200 internationally recognized artists who were associated with CAVS as fellows. The collection consists of photographs, books, posters, documents, portfolios, films, videos and audio tapes, which provide a special insight into the concrete projects where art, technology and science operated in conjunction.
It was also a happy coincidence that the architecture faculty organized workshops and lectures focused on the public aspects of research. Designers NODE and Bengler had been asked to give a workshop based on 'publication as experimentation with the CAVS archive', in preparation for their publication for ACT; joining them was only natural and an extraordinary opportunity to play with the archival material, and over the course of a day some 15 participants made various connections, cutting across history, media, projects and individual affinities.

Beyond the archive
Sketching, exploring and understanding the world as a dynamic living archive 'in the making', using the material from the archive, was the goal. We are interested in questions such as: what forms of artistic strategies can be developed as a position? How can we, using the material, understand, revise and relate current situations in the world to a space where knowledge/experience is shared and produced? How can time-based (art) projects contribute to a new understanding of information through cross-fertilization and collaboration with other fields? We were all imbued with the need for an ethical and aesthetic discussion about the role, position and potential of art in relation to 'public' to be revised and 'made public'. Because also within this group there was the discussion that art practices seem to have become disconnected from other domains in society. After all, what does an archive have to do with what is happening in Greece or Lebanon or Syria? With the effects of climate change in the Bay of Jakarta? There was an explicit will and ambition in the group to parry the current amnesia and blindness, to use imagination as a strategy for emancipation, and to embed working with the archive in social developments that are happening now, today. The backgrounds of the individual participants played a major role in the sometimes heated discussions. Whether it was the recent occupations of public squares worldwide, conflicts over common property-such as knowledge and culture, the privatization of resources and information, or MIT's position as a sometimes dubious major player in these developments, now and in the past, ... everyone was imbued with the urgency of thinking beyond the archive, beyond the now, but also beyond the moment, because the temporary bundles of energy - in Zuccotti Park, and in the squares of Madrid, Cairo, Istanbul, the streets of Sao Paulo - also show how easily the collective is repeatedly fragmented and rendered powerless. Experimental Publishing and Archival Research was deployed as a critical "lens" to speculate on this potential; not only did we look at what "archive" is or can be, how and by whom its contents are formed and made accessible, how information is disseminated, but also how we might communicate our speculations and concrete findings.

'Publishing' was deployed as an experiment and strategy to 'make public', and open up what would otherwise remain unseen. The result was the choice of the title Don't Erase Until Monday and the collective production of forms of making public: the printing and distribution of silk-screened posters on old CAVS posters, the online blog Don't Erase Until Monday (http://donterasetillmonday.tumblr.com), and a theatrical live evening as a joining of forces on May 5 at the Consumer Research Center in the Carpenter Center...a live magazine and a sequence of carefully orchestrated events, organized and carried with verve by the entire group.

MIT students
It is possible in the short time of 4 months to develop a project really well, create a coherent form and stand for it. MIT students are indeed brilliant at times and it was great working with them, but the brilliance is not significantly more or better than elsewhere. Big difference with the Netherlands is the time pressure under which they have to perform, and especially the financial pressure. MIT students pay a high price: 45,000 USD they have to pay annually for tuition, which including other costs amounts to about 80,000 USD per year. That's a huge burden in the rest of their lives. Yet they do it: MIT on your resume is seen as a ticket to good jobs and therefore pays for itself quickly, is the idea. Those are high expectations. Whether they will be met is the question. Whether that is the future of education in the Netherlands is another question...

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