Caveat Reading Room: Slow Science

Postponed Collective reading and discussion of excerpts of Isabelle Stengers' : Another Science is Possible. A Manifesto for Slow Science (2017).

Postponed
Caveat reads excerpts from Isabelle Stengers' Another Science is Possible (2017), a book that inspired Caveat's bottom-up and transversal approach. In this work, subtitled A Manifesto for Slow Science, she claims that scientific practices have been enclosed by industrial interests. Focus is on the prevailing model of progress, one that is being vigorously implemented by the so-called 'knowledge economy,' of which also art is part. Stengers' concept of slowing down does not aim to destroy the relations that give scientific practice its power and autonomy. Rather, it recognizes that these privileges are being attacked. She argues for a 'public intelligence', an intelligently distributed ranking of roles, defined by the concerns of the agents themselves, as new sources of interest, coordination and validation. Another Science is Possible attempts to propose new ways of being related and of being situated that would lead scientific practices not back to the path of "conquest" but to that of "adventure."

Caveat took Stengers' challenge to heart, be it in the field of art. Caveat pursues a process of collective learning “through the test of an encounter with dissenting voices around issues of common interest.” With disempowering processes at work everywhere, “a proliferation of similar cuts, amputations of our capacity to envisage, feel, think and imagine,” together reading Stengers' Manifesto seems urgent.

You knew. What did you do?

Copies are provided.

Reading Room #14 takes place at Hacktiris, 6th floor, rue Paul Devauxstraat 3 - 1000 Brussels
Time: 18-20h
Street access: 17:45-18h