Interview with Art Vidrine & Hakan Topal
Interview with Art Vidrine & Hakan Topal as final project.
MFA Graduate Seminars IV, Spring 2014Art: How do you balance the different expectations of academia and the art world in your artistic work? Research, knowledge production, and dissemination in academia value objective, rational analysis that can be verified, built upon, or contradicted in further academic studies. Art often pursues ambiguity, complexity, room for subjective responses that may not hold up to scientific scrutiny. How do you approach the two sides in your work?
Hakan: I see my academic studies as an extension to my art practice. I can say that I am interested in in-situ knowledge production and my work is usually based on some sort of social research. While I would certainly not consider my scholarly work as my art, over time, they became increasingly interconnected. For instance reading, writing, teaching, discussing provides me a space where I can develop new ideas and concepts, in return I apply them to my artistic research.