This project attempts to emphasize the importance of the critical philosophical dictionary in an age of wikis, looking to Pierre Bayle's dictionary and Diderot and d'Alembert's encyclopedia as inspiration for a critical approach to erudition still relevant today. It writes in French both as a gesture of solidarity to the non-English web / non-English culture and in order to more closely and performatively shadow the historical intellectual practice of encyclopedism.
Work metadata
- Year Created: 2015
- Submitted to ArtBase: Tuesday Mar 10th, 2015
- Original Url: http://www.gregorybringman.net/non-wikipedia/index.html
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Work Credits:
- gregorybringman, primary creator
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Artist Statement
This project began as a way to practice French composition and to reflect on the different conditions under which critical dictionaries or encyclopedias are produced in contrast to contemporary wikis. The latter must assume objective reporting due to the collaborative nature of redaction and article-writing, and wikis are not often information repositories for "original work", a function that is not part of their stated purpose.
Whereas the contemporary wiki needs to arc towards less "bias", there is a way in which Pierre Bayle, in his "Historical and Critical Dictionary" and Diderot and D'Alembert, in their "Encyclopédie" in not resisting the introduction of bias or critique into a work of public information, have elucidated their subjects even more, challenging readers and articulating the social and cultural complexities of subjects that come to us under the guise of "pure" information.
Non-Wikipedia exists at this moment when information is taken for granted as irrevocably true and offers a model in which information utilizers and readers enter a dialogue with authors willing to contest received ideas, and willing to articulate knowledge mutability through complex argument as much as through overwriting of previous texts.