Experimenting with institutions in a 21st century age of “post‐truth”

Abstract

This paper contributes to experimental geographies in the context of scientific, research‐based institutions. This focus is under‐explored but increasingly under siege in a “post‐truth”, “alternative facts” and “fake news” era in the US and UK. I respond to the current cultural, political and social challenges presented to institutions against this backdrop, arguing for a solution to these challenges: experimenting with institutions. The paper first outlines how experiments have recently become used in experimental geographies. The paper then applies these understandings of experiments to the context of institutions, arguing for engaging with new, key situations rather than necessarily with key “experts”. The paper lastly explores one example of such experiments, termed “artist‐led institutions”, and their merits for addressing the challenges outlined. I argue these artist‐led institutions demonstrate potential solutions to current institutional difficulties through expanding engagements to include more practitioners and groups rather than just “experts”, as part of a turn towards recognising more forms of expertise, and their value for wider conversations. By engaging with wider groups assembled around key situations rather than “experts”, artist‐led institutions open up the value of conversations as part of the process of knowledge‐making, rather than solely focusing on the production of outputs in pursuit of certified expertise characteristic of scientific, research‐based institutions. In doing so, the paper contributes to a discussion involving experimental geographies and institutions which may yet become increasingly audible in an age of uncertainty, as 21st Century challenges unfold.