[-empyre-] January at empyre - Research in Practice

[Kirk Woolford]

Dear Empyrecists, 

As somebody who is making/has made the transition from professional Artist (i.e., feeding myself and paying the rent through my work) to tenured academia (as much as tenure exists in the UK), I'd like to pop my head up and add some comments to the discussion. 

The issue of text or writing has popped up a number of times in this discussion. In my experience, this a crucial element dividing artists/scholars. My first attempt at a practice-led PhD fell apart back in 1995 when the university and the art school involved were unable to reach an agreement on the constitution of the work to be submitted. The well established, old-skool university demanded a 200-page formal written thesis with documentation of practical works attached as an appendix illustrating the themes and theories pursued in the text. There was no acceptance that the body of the text could explore the process behind the work or reflect on the practice. As I mention, this terminated my first attempt at a PhD, but I've since learned this form of writing is very common in the Humanities where the scholar is analysing and contextualising another's work. The author is expected to remain objective and comment at a distance. This is, of course, at odds with the current practice of reflective writing favoured, or even required by creative practitioners.

Personally, I find reflective writing useful for a number of reasons. It helps me clarify and direct my work as well as allowing others to understand and build upon my processes. Within the current, aggressive climate, it also provides a useful manner of articulating research questions which are frequently not understood or accepted by more scholarly colleagues. Unfortunately, outlets for this creative discourse are limited. A handful of journals will publish artist statements, works-in-progress, or short transactions, but these are seldom considered acceptable by promotions committees or research assessment panels. Peer-reviewed journals are the currency of research universities -- some will make exceptions for monographs in Humanities fields, but we're increasingly expected to provide information on citation rates. As a result of this, practitioners seldom progress to the most senior levels in research universities. The exceptions, as Simon has pointed out, are in Music where  scores are accepted as publications, or, when creative practitioners cross into  other disciplines and attempt to learn their publication practices. 

Simon also gave a very useful overview of the role of practice in the 2008 UK Research Assessment Exercise. As he points out, most of the practice-based research was submitted to the panel on Art and Design. I left a Fine Art dept in 2008 to join a Media Practice program here at Sussex, and have been rather taken aback at how practice is received an assessed within media fields. As interactive media is still considered "New" media in these parts, we have to contend with processes set in place for dealing with traditional film and television. In this case, practitioners are requested to submit the actual work to the review panel for assessment. This is straight forward if submitting a documentary video, but how does one submit an interactive installation? Or even a video game which requires specific hardware and/or drivers to function? We have run into numerous difficulties where practitioners have written about their work -- either reflectively or otherwise, and the review panels have reviewed the documentation of the work rather than the piece of practice the work refers to. In these cases, the result is almost always a review bemoaning the focus on process and lack of critical engagement. For the upcoming Research Excellence Framework (REF2014), there are no practitioners on the corresponding media panel and practitioners have been given specific advice *not* to submit our writings about practice because they are inevitably rated as "making a useful contribution of minor influence to the field". Interestingly, "the field" which these reviewers refer to is almost always that of the reviewer,  i.e., Media Studies, Film Studies, Cultural Studies, and seldom any of the fields or communities of practice. John Adams (not the American Patriot), has written a very well informed essay about the difference between practice-as-research and research-through-practice, as well as pointing out some of the uniquely British intricacies of presenting practice-based-research outputs. 

Unfortunately, we, as creative practitioners, will continue to be outsiders in the academy for the foreseeable future. We're not alone. Engineers, Medics, Lawyers, etc are all practitioners functioning within universities. Unfortunately, these other forms of practice tend to be more valued by academic colleagues. However, we all struggle with the balance between publication and practice, and even practitioners in these fields tend to only rise to senior positions once they have stopped their practices. 

Best regards, 
Kirk 


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Kirk Woolford

Sr Lecturer in Media Practice
School of Media, Film and Music, 
Silverstone 334 (fomerly EDB)
University of Sussex
Falmer, Brighton  BN1 9RG

+44 (0)1273 87 6589
k.woolford at sussex.ac.uk