Daniela Zyman: Counter-research and the Arts: A Thousand Other Ways of Knowing

Curated by School for Transformation and in collaboration with AIL

What kinds of research and questioning do we need in times of transition—amid the planetary fault lines of profound upheaval? What forms of inquiry could lead the way beyond the model of social life that has become dominant over the past few centuries? From within spaces of pain and unrest, something different from mere resistance is emerging: an invitation to new modes of inquiry, practices of researching otherwise, a counter-research. Guided by feminist counter-writings, Sylvia Wynter’s counter-humanism, and the powerful counter-histories offered by Black and Indigenous thinkers, among others, counter-research asks us to work with and through the prefix “counter.” It is an invitation to repurpose, displace, and amplify the reach of research itself—adding direction, depth, and ethical commitment. Counter-research is critical, but primarily generative and transformative. Its epistemic and aesthetic counter-propositions actively hold space for the un-foreclosure of the future—a future still open to being shaped otherwise. Here, counter-research in the arts is understood not as an intellectual pursuit but as an “ecology of practices”—both experimental and reparative, speculative, yet grounded.