Transdisciplinarity and Condensed Knowledge: Response to Sabine Maasen

In this paper, Christoph Schenker replies to several aspects addressed by sociologist Sabine Maasen in her paper "Collaborating in and Beyond Science" and relates them to the field of the fine arts. In drawing attention to artists in this context, he is referring specifically to those who conduct research just as scientists do. He concludes that, comparable to the figure of the intellectual, artists move beyond the specific knowledge and competences conventionally assigned to them as artists. Strictly speaking, an artist proves to be an artist through the very act of transgressing the bounds of aesthetics. Although he would not claim that art as a whole is a zone of exchange, a space of transaction among knowledge cultures and lifeforms with the artist as "interactional expert," he would, nonetheless, ventrue to say that art has assimilated transgression.