Kate Love (exert)

Kate Love's current research is concerned with questions posed by the concept of experience, as it is interpreted in the context of the production and the reception of art in general and art education in particular. The research takes the form of examining particular experiences of art, specific examples of the representation of personal experience in art, the construction of the meaning of experience through art, and what it is to experience art (ie. What it is to have an actual experience in the sense of what does 'having an experience' actually mean in terms of gaining knowledge and/of evidence for the understanding of subjectivity). The major outcome of this research is to further an understanding of experience in the context of both art and subjectivity, which does not reduce the interpretation of experience entirely to one of discursivity or self-presence as in 'an immediacy of sensation and affect'. The current research attempts to think through some of the questions posed by the category of experience, as it is interpreted in the context of the production and the reception of art. The research investigates particular experiences of art, specific examples of the representation of personal experience in art, the construction of the meaning of experience through art, and what it is to experience art. The major outcome if this project is to further an understanding of experience entirely to one of discursivity or self-presence as in 'an immediacy of sensation and affect.' Rather the aim here is to locate and project a reading of experience, "which has its fulfilment, not, in definitive knowledge, but in the openness to experience that is made possible by experience itself."