[-empyre-] Practice in Research & odd methods, rude mechanics

[Cecile Chevalier]

<So now I feel even more confused, as no one has ever yet, here, mentioned an artwork produced in the university and submitted for review (evaluation,
knowledge attesting, confirmation of output, impact?), influence, significance?  meaning?   so where are these practices, and how do they matter? how come this is never addressed"?
what work is generated?> <Johannes>

To amend the balance in a small way.... VIva Viva exhibition in 2008...  where work and thesis were accessible, the exhibition was open and advertise to the general public as well as academics...

http://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/vertigo_magazine/volume-4-issue-2-winter-spring-20091/viva-viva-an-exhibition-at-p3-gallery-london-december-2008/

...The works displayed clearly showed different approaches to practice-based research - some works were clearly dominant in their practice, other seems to use practice as a method to access/present knowledge. This may have reflected their percentage of practice.... can a practice-based PhD be 80% practice? what is the minimum percentage that practice can be in practice-based research? 

I was truly excited by the exhibition (at the time I had not started my PhD), although it had similarities with a traditional art exhibition in its format (allocated/curated space and documentation) the content of the work and documentation was not 'art' but 'research art' (in its dominance of knowledge over aesthetics). But what I valued was its access to the general audience that I was then part of, it made research accessible. Sadly there were no Viva Viva in 2009 or any other year after that, which in some aspect reinforces Johannes's questions as opposed to answer them.

Cécile




________________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of Johannes Birringer [Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk]
Sent: 20 January 2013 06:18
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Practice in Research & odd methods, rude mechanics

dear all

the small post I sent a few days ago was meant to interrupt the conversation, and I am sorry for that.

The messages that appeared before here were quite illuminating, in many respects, and also deeply, very deeply  saddening, when
I felt I read about the experiences described, artists becoming academics, teaching, defending their Phds,
embroiled in bureaucracy of management, pedagogy, teaching studio? teaching academic practice & theory? preparation for teaching,
administering, writing essays and theses, and all this, yes.  And all this "knowledge production."

The practice of the now so-called "practitioners" in the university environment. What
is this, a practitioner? What are we?  what knowledge, Miles?  whose knowledge criteria? what kind of knowledge are you defending?
and what would be the difference between art (non-instrumentalized?) and art (instrumentalized) and "output"?
what is an "output"? what are your key problems?

(I read Sue Hawksley's last post with great interest, as she is describing a dilemma
of space and time to create.....and her work as a " a dance artist ...work[ing] with new media, for example
within  digitally-mediated interactive immersive performance environments".....

>>.
- these grand claims for developing skills of interactivity feel a bit hollow right now. I notice with irony that I'm finding it difficult to complete this thought....
>>

So now I feel even more confused, as no one has ever yet, here, mentioned an artwork produced in the university and submittted for review (evaluation,
knowledge attesting, confirmation of output, impact?), influence, signfiicance?  meaning?   so where are these practices, and how do they matter? how come this is never addressed"?
what work is generated?

(mind you, I have failed completely to understand/appreciate the quotation offered to us about " research bricolage" ...

>>
of multiperspectival research methods...... diverse theoretical traditions are employed in a broader critical theoretical/critical pedagogical context to lay the foundation for a transformative mode of multimethodological inquiry. Using these multiple frameworks and methodologies researchers are empowered to produce more rigorous and praxiological insights into socio-political and educational phenomena. Kincheloe theorizes a critical multilogical epistemology and critical connected ontology to ground the research bricolage......
>>


This multimethodological stuff,  to me this is unintelligible verbage, I guess, academic lingo, probably about uninspiring and unwitnessed art.
 To what audience or reception or knowledge context is this language directed? who would bother to read/see/experience this "critical connected ontology"?

so I am just wondering aloud about the "practices", that's all.


Having just read an article in Art in America [http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/features/sensibility-of-the-times-revisited/]
about artists back then responding to a questionnaire asking to describe the sensibility of the ’60s, and the same questions posed to artists now in 2012-13,
i found Carolee Schneemann's reply about dentists quite interesting:

<<
Current ideological language uses “practice” to define art concepts at the expense of process. Practice implies perfectibility, strategy, products: dentists have a practice, violinists practice, yoga is a practice, elephants practice for the circus. Process invites risk, uncertainty, vision, unpredictability, concentration and blind devotion.

 Yes, the current situation is more academic. >>

But surely Schneemann, and the other artists who responded, had much to say about knowledge production, but their production is not defensible, if I understand Adrian Miles correctly.

That was my whole point. What are you defending, then?


regards

Johannes Birringer


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