Participants: artist Boris Oicherman, scientist Prof. David Avnir and designer Ido Bruno.

Invoking multiple histories of conversation, which have taken place around kitchen tables the world over, the residents at Artport invite you to join us for an evening of drinks, soup and focused discussion about the meaning of an experiment as an artwork.

The idea of “research” as artistic practice is not new, but recently it seems to undergo a revival: “PhD by practice” programs in art academies proliferate, interdisciplinary research projects are encouraged by funding organisations, the description of artistic process as a knowledge-production appears in writings, words such as “knowledge” and “experiment” appear more in the artistic jargon. And yet, when applied to arts, the term “research” is extremely elusive and ambiguous, and the reactions of artists to it can be polar – from complete unacceptance, to declaring it to be an essential base of any meaningful practice.

Martin A. Schwartz, in the essay (http://goo.gl/MhJmBm) from which this Kitchenette borrows its title, talks about the “emotional need to discover” as the driving force of scientific practice. Is it essentially different from the one that drives artists in their practice? What would it mean for an artist to be “productively ignorant”? What kind of knowledge can be generated in arts – and what do we mean by knowledge in arts at all? How do we pose a question...