Creating, knowing, and caring - with Merel Visse
Episode 21 of Careful Thinking
The twenty-first episode of the Careful Thinking podcast features my conversation with the artist, scholar and educator Merel Visse. Merel holds a faculty position in the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies at Drew University in New Jersey in the United States, where she chairs a master's and doctoral degree programme, and she’s also affiliated with the University of Humanistic Studies, Care Ethics Chair, in the Netherlands. Merel co-founded the Meaningful Artistic Research Program, a collaboration between the University of Humanistic Studies and HKU University of the Arts, and with Elena Cologni, from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, she co-leads the Art and Care Platform Series.
Merel is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on art, care ethics, and research methodology. She's the Visual Arts Section Editor at the International Journal of Education and the Arts, for which she and Elena Cologni recently co-edited a special issue on ‘Art for the Sake of Care’. In 2018, Merel co-edited the book Evaluation for a Caring Society with Tineke Abma, and in 2021 she co-authored A Paradigm of Care with Bob Stake, with whom she also recently submitted the manuscript for Researching Care with Case Studies to Routledge. Merel is currently focusing on the manuscript for Precarious Knowing, a collaborative book project which will be published by Springer.
Merel Visse
The past few years have seen an enormous growth in scholarship on the relationship between art and care. The publication in 2023 of James Thompson's Care Aesthetics, which I discussed with him in Episode 11 of the podcast, was a key moment in this development, while the aesthetic dimension of care was also a focus of my conversation with the dancer and philosopher Christine Leroy in Episode 7. James and Christine were both keynote speakers at the recent Care Ethics Research Consortium conference on ‘Care, Aesthetics and Repair’ in Utrecht, as was Merel, who has been producing fascinating work at the intersection of art and care for some years now, and, I would maintain, is one of the pioneers of the aesthetics of care. More recently, Merel has been instrumental in developing a notion of intellectual inquiry as both a caring and an aesthetic practice.
I’ve followed Merel’s work with interest since I attended a presentation she gave at the inaugural conference of the Care Ethics Research Consortium in Portland, Oregon, a few years ago. Coming from a background in the arts and humanities myself, I continue to be intrigued by the connections between creating, knowing and caring, which are at the heart of Merel’s work. And as someone who spent a good deal of time in my younger days reading about ‘apophatic’ spirituality, I’ve been fascinated by Merel’s more recent writings on the importance of ‘unknowing’ and the ‘unsayable’ in intellectual inquiry – and in care.
Still image from the single-channel video, ‘The Hidden Kernel of Care’ (Merel Visse, 2025)
Merel and I began our conversation on the podcast by tracing the roots of her interest in art and care in her childhood and early experiences, discussing the ways in which creating and caring have always been intertwined in her thinking. We talked about her practice as an artist and how, for Merel, art is primarily a way of knowing and a means of connecting with others. Merel spoke about her artistic residencies in New York and her involvement in the development of the Meaningful Artistic Research programme and of the Art and Care Platform Series, which led us on naturally to the subject of the recent journal special issue on ‘Art for the Sake of Care’ which she and Elena Cologni co-edited. Moving on to Merel’s work on the relationship between intellectual inquiry and care ethics, we discussed her claims for autoethnography and evaluation as caring practices, which in turn opened up the subject of Merel’s intriguing writings about what she terms ‘apophatic-aesthetic’ inquiry.
We touched on Merel’s collaboration with Carlo Leget (my guest on Episode 8 of the podcast) and Finn Thorbjørn Hansen, exploring the role of wonder and the poetic in knowing and caring. Merel also spoke about the influence of the sinologist François Jullien on her thinking, as well as her most recent work linking the apophatic to notions of materiality in care. In the final part of the episode, we discussed Merel’s current and forthcoming collaborative work on ‘precarious knowing’, as well as her work with Bob Stake on case studies as a vehicle for studying care.
Here are some quotes by Merel from our conversation:
For me, the artistic practice is really another way of knowing. I sometimes have a hard time finding the right words and I did not make it easier to move to a country where they don't speak my native language. And for me, the making of art, it's almost like a partner in conversation, the work, the actual work that is unfolding. So it's not about me exhibiting or selling...for me, it's really a necessity. I cannot know the world, I cannot relate and live in the world without it. So that's why I make art. And my primary aim is to understand what I'm experiencing and what I'm living through, and sometimes to create a shared experience with others. But it's not to explain what's happening, but it's more to make sense of what's happening and to learn about other approaches.
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I quite frequently receive messages from researchers and artists who feel excluded from mainstream social science research...and who let me know that they're relieved to know that there are people out there who support other modes of knowing and other epistemologies. And I think that that's what makes these forms of research so fascinating...So inclusivity, interconnectedness, cross-disciplinary collaborations, all those are...my work in general, where I'd really like to stretch the boundaries a little to help us thinking about how can all these different approaches foster care and transform care.
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When I was reflecting...I had to think of John...because that encounter was a rather pivotal moment for me as a young researcher...I was beginning, I was focused on gathering data...following the right steps. But he was experiencing grief and anger because his wife passed away. But when I started to look into the notion of wonder, I realised that I had approached John with a kind of clinical detachment, I would call it, so almost similar as how I felt encountered by doctors in the past. And that was rather eye-opening to me. So I was trying to understand at the time...his experience through a rather analytical approach. But my heart was not involved. And that was rather painful to acknowledge later on...And I wondered, how can I move closer...And I learned gradually that I needed wonder for that. And that is really about reaching lived understandings...and thinking with the heart. So John's anger and grief, which initially felt like a barrier, it was really a manifestation of his yearning to be seen and understood. And I really had to learn how to not be so caught up in my own agenda basically. And so I learned so much from that one simple case. So how could I be more present with his suffering? A very care ethical thing to do...So I learned that later on in my career and, and I also had to not be afraid to be vulnerable myself. I had to allow myself to be moved and to be touched by this loss.
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I started writing about an aesthetic and apophatic approach to inquiry...and I connected it to my own questions again, to what does it mean for me to move between these different places? And I present six phases...and through these I hope that I will encourage researchers to attend to the aesthetic. First of all, paying attention to sensory details...I wrote some poems, I sketched impressions, I took photographs and so forth, so really to connect with my lived experiences. So attending to the aesthetic was important to me...but also to embrace the apophatic again, the limits of my own understanding. I can reflect as much as I want, but sometimes...it's more about the actual doing of it than reaching a clear-cut answer. So embracing the not knowing and being silent too, cultivating wonder.... fostering curiosity, being open to the unexpected...And I just want to highlight that it was not just an intellectual exercise, but I think that notions of wonder, the poetic, and it's really an embodied and aesthetic exercise.
You can listen to the whole episode here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can download a transcript of the episode here:
The header image is the mixed media work ‘Nest’ by Merel Visse (2008). See this page of Merel’s website for details of her studio work.
This is another brilliant interview. So many vital subjects are addressed, from aesthetics to research methods to inquiry. I cannot emphasize enough how valuable this podcast series is. Everyone teaching care ethics should assign careful thinking to listen to. Merel is such an extraordinary scholar.