Dr Dean Kenning

I have developed a diagram-based pedagogy in the areas of art practice, critical theory and philosophy. 

'Exploratory diagramming' allows anyone to work through problems and construct new objects in real time by means of manual inscription: drawing analogies and plotting relations (across fields, states, etc.). These methods are used in workshops including 'Social Body Mind Mapping' and diagramming workshops for close reading of philosophical texts (e.g. ‘Plato's Caves' workshops), and 'Inside the Black Box of Generative AI.

These diagramming workshops have been run with students and lecturers at various levels (from A-level to PhD) and across institutions and disciplines, including Kingston University, London School of Economics, Institute of Education (UCL), Central St Martins (MRes Moving Image; MRes Art & Philosophy; MA BioDesign), University of Worcester and Goldsmiths College.

My research activity consists of art practice, practical pedagogy and art theoretical writing.

The art is produced through hands-on material and process-based experimentation, and in the spirit of DIY problem solving. It often engages directly with political, philosophical and scientific ideas and theories, for example in the areas of cybernetics, biosemiotics, political philosophy and Marxist economics.

My kinetic and animatronic sculptures and sound works are focussed not on technology for its own sake but on an experiential ‘vital aesthetics' of movement, particularly nervous or compulsive movement which is instinctively suggestive of 'life'. Pathos and alertness are introduced to moving objects through abject materiality and the non-slick manual nature of construction; through 'liveness' and non-predictability with regard to e.g. speeds and movement (floppy, juddering); and through the ways visitors trigger effects in non-obvious ways via sensors. If the possibility for emergence is one motivation for this – the allowance for contingencies to effect the way the work looks or sounds at any moment, then another motivation is to counter 'seriousness' and the gallery's authority through humour and B-movie special effects.

I have used the term 'exploratory diagramming' to describe a transdisciplinary method of abductive and figural-gestural thinking-through-drawing – as evident in artworks such as Metallurgy of the Subject; Making Sense, and images and animations for Capital Drawing Group (see Teaching for pedagogical use). I have written on ‘diagrammatology', drawing particularly on the theories of Peirce, Chatelet and Deleuze.

As First Supervisor I have overseen five successful PhD completions (all with no amendments): Rachel Cattle, Bill Leslie, Maryam Tafakory, John Hughes and Lucy Coggle.

I am interested in supervising practice-based doctoral candidates in the areas of kinetic/robotic and sensor based sculpture, art education, biosemiotics/cybernetics/emergence-informed practice, art and politics (political economy and class), AI and diagramming/diagrammatology.

Specialisms

• Contemporary Art
• Kinetic Sculpture
• Diagrammatics
• Art Education
• Politics of Art

Scholarly affiliations

• Diagram Research Group
• Ways of (Machine) Seeing