The methodology of intuition

Building bridges between things, actions, and language

The American philosopher John Dewey (1859–1952) is behind the theory of learning by doing. This theory of pragmatism mirrors my artistic practice and my linguistic and communicative approach. Pragmatism is not only about doing or connecting practice with theory but also about connecting things with the idea of ​​things. Dewey developed a kind of systematic theory of knowledge, that thinking is instrumental to action. The automatic writing, thoughts and spoken language merge into an action. Together with the process of visual art they can interact with each other and transform themselves into a meta-language. 

The connection between tacit knowledge and learning by doing is that they are both inarticulable. Other inarticulable tacit knowledge is, for example, intuition, skills, and experience. We can present it in different ways, for example:
-  As long as I work, I'll move forward in my process
- I don't know what I am doing until I have done it…

We talk about this experiential way of relating to work and process in different ways, but the essence is the same, you have to do things for things to become something. It can also be expressed as a trial-and-error way of working. The artist Susan Rothenberg describes this so astutely when she explains the importance of keeping busy, even in the absence of concrete ideas. In this clip from ART21's "Memory" episode, the artist says: "If you're not in your studio physically almost every day, you've denied the possibility of anything happening.”