Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

We are looking for new ontological, ethical, and epistemological entanglements through practice and theory. Models become a way of pointing to futures including critical, utopic, feminist, decolonial, and ethical futures. This practice-led research began with the ‘container gallery’, a scale 1:1 recreation of an actual gallery. The ‘container gallery’ was our guide and anchor as we passed through various categorizations of models. Our preliminary literature review uses the Artistic Model (miniature, maquette, recreation), Surveillance Models (military, panoptic, scientific), Educational Models (toys, data visualization, exemplary), Convenience/Status Models (prefab, souvenir) and Temporal Models (past, future & the alternate now). We consider models as conceptual “machines” to explore theoretical, material, poetic and political aspects and tease out areas of intersection and creative resonance. Our theorizing goes beyond any particular model, this is to be inclusive and cross disciplinary. We can easily transport physical objects into a digital point cloud to further complicate the concept - where the “model” then enters current dialogues about the virtual, the digital as material and as spatial. We see the model (as simultaneously object and action) as a framework for both making theory and practicing theory. This paper discusses the model as a generative prompting space. The abstract model will help us generate and imagine new models of sociality, spatiality, and new futures by allowing playfulness and a generative production of the unmaking of existing paradigms.