[-empyre-] practice as a means towards academic self-criticism / research as a curatorial enterprise

[magnus lawrie]

Hi Johannes and all,

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 08:03:00PM +0000, Johannes Birringer wrote:
> 
> The following seems to point to the heart of your thesis and philosophy, yes?
> 
> >>
> The research  is about investigating the conditions (social,
> technological, institutional, political) in which curating takes place
> versus a desire (yes, utopian most likely) to on one hand not to be
> subjugated to those conditions and at the same time not to subjugate others
> to them.  Linking curating with the concept of the commons is probably not a
>  tactic in this case, but a strategy, or methodology  if we want to stick to
> the research language, to investigate biopolitics of 'curatorial'.
> >>
> 
> If this would be extrapolated, i think the political question at large, as I heard
> it raised here in debate, is:   whether artistic practices (and there are different ones
> of course and not all are intended with a political or politicized agenda) within
> the humanities/universities can become or are practices investigating the conditions
> or frameworks in which the practices can take place and be understood as research
> and legitimated (via Viva and degree and the writing up)?  If self-critical, then
> the practice would include writing itself as a questionable research action?  perhaps
> based on weak data or weak theories or even lacking empirical evidence or too much
> empirical evidence and undecided experiential values or affects or a dubious form of 
> theoretical self aggrandization or justification? and so on.   I would like to see
> such a self-critical phd thesis....

Here is something I am working on at the moment, which may be
pertinent:

"...This reflective method shall be tested throughout the remainder of the
PhD, with results being continually fed back into the study. Doing
this, I anticipate, will expose and magnify any invalidities in the
theoretical model described, so that inconsistencies revealed become
the material for analysis and production of a mutating, self-reflexive
object of research. " 

Best wishes,

Magnus