[-empyre-] open questions - art and the university as (still, in spite of it all...) a knowledge commons

[sally jane norman]

Dear Simon et al,

Thanks for fascinating exchange; a few haphazard, subjective comments
- with apologies if update skim of postings glosses over related
points already made -

- doctoral qualifications are awarded in principle for research
knowledge and insights communicated in ways that allow others to
dialogue and build with them. This means attempting to forge terms and
conceptual scaffolds that help make one's work understandable -
whatever the field - and setting it in context, in keeping with
notions of the commons (that used to be and for me still are)
underpinning the university's traditional remit as an academy geared
towards the public good. So maybe it IS a kind of instrumentalisation,
insofar as the university's role is to constitute shareable, usable
work for the community. Dropping the more specific and questionable
kinds of instrumentalisation where businesses engage students in
"confidential" application-driven projects by paying symbolic
contributions to tax-payer backed research environments.

- in the arts, articulation of context and processes doesn't mean
killing work through systematic and ultimately futile dissection
(ambiguity and potential for open-ended interpretation often being key
to artistic practice and works), but formulating reflection on ways of
making and thinking through making, and on ways these might relate to
other artefacts (of knowledge, of practice).

- some work lends itself to this process, and some artists derive real
value from honing their visions thus (reflective, intellectual value,
and socio-economic/ professional value related to academy status), as
indicated by several contributors here; some clearly doesn't/ don't.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a widely held assumption that any
artistic work can be pulled out of a magically transformational PhD
mortar board - this undermines both art and the academic institution.

- questions of instrumentalisation/ instrumentality loom over any
"free thinking", in different ways and degrees, in the institution or
"ek-stitution" (Florian Schneider's term). There are countless
scholars, as well as artists, wrestling with original PhD projects
receiving zero support from the academy, even if they've managed to
get enrolled to benefit from supervision and dialogue, who self-fund
through irrelevant drudgery, often without any future possibilities of
institutional integration. This is frequently overlooked by some
artists who see themselves as the hardest hit in a hard world.

- many academics, including artists, are prevented from developing
original research projects by having to focus on tedious institutional
tasks and politics. These can totally disrupt creative thinking of all
kinds. In fact, this is probably the most generalised gripe amongst
academics but it's inherent to institutions. How to have your cake and
eat it too.

- art has a unique contribution to make in the (constant) reframing of
research practices and concepts within and outside the academy. It can
make this contribution all the more incisively through awareness of
the wider scene in which it operates, and of the constraints facing
others engaged in research, in order to better identify and defend its
own specificities.

- growth of PhD gravy trains in universities keen to boost research
profiles and resources (eg UK bean counting for higher education
funding bodies), unhelpfully aggravates the confusion, if not
"mystique", surrounding creative practice doctorates. Another "star
academy": you're an artist, make the leap and become an academic? Job,
security, institutional recognition?

- in some places creative portfolios stitched together for submission
as research are devoid of accompanying critical reflection; in others
superficial text collations are validated by institutions wishing to
confer respectable doctoral titles on potentially "impact-strong"
individuals who can boost strategic links to "real world activity".

- such situations are problematic because they undermine the
painstaking, sometimes inspiring work being undertaken by deeply
engaged creative practitioners and free thinkers, like many on this
list, working inside and beyond the academy walls.

OK, I'll stop there. Hopefully these points don't come across as
dogmatic because in my mind they're a bunch of open questions.


best
sj