Disruptive agents: Transdisciplinary and posthumous manifestations of the studio

In the wake of the post-studio era that took place during the latter half of the twentieth century, new (and renewed) possibilities for studio discourse have emerged. Alex Coles contends, ‘We have entered a post-poststudio age, and find ourselves with a new studio model: the transdisciplinary’. How are we to understand the nature of the transdisciplinary in relation to the contemporary studio? This article adopts the concept of transdisciplinarity as a provocation for contextualizing contemporary manifestations of the studio, following Edward Colless’ interpretation of the transdisciplinary as ‘an irregularity within academic discipline’, expressed as a form of indiscipline or disruption. Does the historical concept of the studio haunt the present, and how might earlier manifestations of the studio productively inform current and future prospects for studio practice? Moreover, how might present practices disrupt conventional understandings of the studio? The phenomenon of the reconstructed modernist studio as museum artefact demonstrates a broader reframing of the studio, shifting its context from a historical archetype on the one hand, to a future-oriented prototype on the other. Transdisciplinarity forms a strategic (and sometimes inadvertent) disruption within contemporary manifestations of the studio, providing a catalyst to move outside of studio conventions. Instrumental in the age of the post-post-studio is the shift that has occurred through the ubiquity of technologies and the increasing interest in the nexus between the sciences and art. A democratization and dislocation of the studio has taken place, expanding and blurring its boundaries. Its various (re)incarnations now encompass the home, the warehouse, the office, the university, the laboratory, the museum, the cloud and beyond, enabling an ever increasing potential for disruptive agents to play a role in realigning the intentionality for, within, and of the studio.