[-empyre-] Practice in Research defenders

[Johannes Birringer]

dear soft-skinned space


cross-reading comments here, across time zones, has been very fruitful, such a wealth of inside knowledge and thoughtful commentaries, thanks to all here, so enjoyable, at such an intractable subject, i especially liked Kirk's and Keith's lucid writing here, and the various contributions recently by Adrian, Miguel, Shu, Cécile, Mike, Simon and others, and Keith is right, not everyone has been responded to, i think of Sally Jane's forceful interventions there too...... but probably the discussion has touched on many serious problems, about how you defend practice, and why you would need to, or want to, and this surely has helped to sketch the landscape (the institutional gate keeping functions Keith mentions below,  and I was so intrigued by Simon's statistics –  these many many hundreds of  works created and theses written that we may never see or read. Thus for me the question of the (necessary) contributions to communal or societal knowledge (succinctly stated by SJN) are still relatively abstract and powerfully so. Who benefits from all this knowledge that is not read (or even accessible, readable?) and have we spoken about the writing yet?  

The group discussing the theme here is a diverse one, geographically and probably also in age (having completed a Phd, beginning one, not yet finished, or further along as surely SLN and Simon Biggs are; those outside? and those of us who examine what you have laid out as creative practices, the documentations thereof, the writing and critical/theoretical reflections.......  Not sure whether most here are 'academics' or work, partly or fully, within institutions, or whether we also heard from artists (say, painters, sculptors, composers, designers) who work in non hybrid fields of art or, well, as Simon suggests, are nevertheless involved within the default hybridity of the  "conservative folds" of the university where, as Cécile correctly reminds us, "unfortunately Practice-Led or Practice-Based research are themselves lost in translation from one field/institution/individual/reference to another, which in my opinion is one of the problem art practice has as research - if basic terminologies and definitions  such as 'Practice-Led' or 'Practice-Based' could be agreed or constant - we would get a clearer impressions of "how we [as research practitioner]manifest in the world" of art practice as research......". yes, we might, but then again, we won't. 


I have only two small questions now, one in response to Keith:  

>> what we're defending is our right to be considered professionals in our discipline, and to be considered to have the same level of professionalism as our colleagues in other disciplines>>

But surely you don't mean to argue that you needed to defend, say, your "Intimate Transactions," a complex & superb work, in order to be considered a professional. Neither in the performance art world, nor in academia??
We heard about scores here (music), one could also mention plays, poems, novels, and choreographies, costume designs. 
So I wonder whether you can comment on the writing, and how writing (Phd thesis) translates a choreography? [yes, do mention the exciting experiences walking through practice-led-Viva defenses..] I want to know
about the excitement.

I remember artists we examined for Phd who found it incredibly difficult to write theoretical contextualizing reflective theses, not because they could not articulate the work's concepts, processes, methods and so on, but because they may have found the impositions of a certain theoretical frameworks/languages more stifling than we might tend to admit, or maybe they abhorred the implications of what many of you have stated here ("the production and dissemination of discourses regarding the artistic practice")...and then again, you might answer, well, why did they want a Phd in painting or performance directing or design or interactive installation, it wouldn't make much sense anyway, would it, if you are working in the 'industry" as one theatre colleague of mine ( a director) called it, and if you want your play produced & seen by audiences who buy tickets to see it as they would for your music  (writing/directing is surely practice-led-based or whatever, and it can be examined and will be, in the industry, and creative writers do research as they write, don;t they? and may submit a novel and a thesis, and thus what matters [knowledge] is the thesis?).

now the second comment regards Phi Shu's oblique rebuttal, it interested me a great deal:

>>Of course, Kathryn Bigelow needed to defend Zero Dark Thirty.">>

>I'm not so sure this is a good example, it's almost like saying Leni Riefenstahl needed to defend Triumph of the Will ; )
>

Could you expand on that?  
Yes, i was trying to be ironic, sorry.
But I do remember, in fact, a midnight debate in Dresden some years ago, between filmmaker Hans-Jürgen Syberberg and theatre director George Tabori, and Mr Syberberg defended Riefenstahl's film saying it was so sublime it did not need a defense, nor the ideological questions they tried her to respond to in the Canadian documentary by Ray Müller ("Die Macht der Bilder").....  Riefenstahl (or Bigelow) were not trying to get a Phd, of course, why would they. My question was meant to ask why so much Phd thesis writing is relatively good at defending (or better at defending, than the creative work itself was which perhaps would not have been produced /exhibited by the industry?).  If such creative practice only lives for a moment in an academic world, then is shelved as a thesis, with documentation, in the library, without impact or manifestation as "production and dissemination of discourses regarding the artistic practice" - then what is being disseminated and aids the communal knowledge base Sally Jane evoked?  

has anyone ever felt that the work produced in the university might be useless?  and thus "pure research" as was argued here, thus perfectly acceptable? 


with regards

Johannes Birringer 





Kirk Woolford schreibt:
>>
I've just caught up with Johannes comments about defending practice. Initially, as I suspected, he did intend the comments as a provocation. Of course, Kathryn Bigelow needed to defend Zero Dark Thirty. She would have defended it against the studios, critics, financiers, producers, writers, etc. As creative professionals, we are continuously defending our work as well as arguing its value. In the "private sector" we defend against, or even toward, curators, funding bodies, and critics. In academia, we defend against, and toward, our colleagues in "higher" positions than us. As PhD students, we prostrate ourselves and defend our work before esteemed peers in the hope of valorisation through titles. In the academic process, nobody taps us on the shoulder with a sword, but it often feels as through we've been hit with one.

As far as Johanne's questions about " whose knowledge criteria? what kind of knowledge are you defending?" the current criteria for the UK are agreed by each REF working panel ( http://www.ref.ac.uk/pubs/2012-01/ ). As others have commented, we used to have an awkward situation in the UK where the AHRC and RAE had different definitions of knowledge dissemination, i.e., research. The RAE accepted creative practice *as* research whereas the AHRC only accepted practice accompanied by critical, reflective text as research. The AHRC has since shut down its Practice Led and Applied research grant scheme, but still requires applicants for existing schemes to, "provide an account of methodology that suggests a self-conscious, systematic and reflective practitioner." ( http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funding-Opportunities/Documents/How%20to%20write%20a%20good%20proposal.pdf )

As far as defending ones practice in later stages of ones career, I'd be more than happy to regale you with exciting experiences of walking through practice-led CVs with Deputy and Pro-Vice Chancellors and explaining why 10 exhibitions should be given the same respect as 10 co-authored papers or discussing the value of a performance in a small academic theatre with professors of Medicine and Engineering.

In answer to Johannes, what we're defending is our right to be considered professionals in our discipline, and to be considered to have the same level of professionalism as our colleagues in other disciplines. Amongst ourselves, we may argue the relative merit of a piece of work, or the most helpful method of carrying a piece of work forward, but this is done in our own tribes, and this practice is normally referred to as criticism or critique. Whether-or-not critique can be considered research is a question for another post.
>>>