Techniques as Modes of Relating: Thinking with a Transdisciplinary Experiment

Abstract

This text explores techniques as a mode of relating between participants with heterogeneous disciplinary backgrounds and addresses questions such as: What are the theoretical and historical necessities and constraints to re-think our modes of knowledge production today? What are the potentials, the gains and losses of considering these modes, and knowledge in general, as techniques? The text intersects theoretical and historical reflection, f.ex. on the history of specialization of knowledge production or on the notion of technique(s), with experiences of the transversal working group FORMATIONS that Melanie Sehgal co-leads with the artist Alex Martinis Roe. Since 2015 FORMATIONS has been experimenting with practical responses to the insufficiencies of modern categories of thought and their disciplinary and institutional sedimentations in view of creating techniques of transdisciplinary encounter.