following this discussion with interest, I would like to ask, given this
"non-instrumentality" or the contingency of research to art, why does
art need research?
a secondary question would be does the obverse really pertain, is
research also contingent or in the same way contingent?
the word contingency I would like to suggest recalls Oscar Wilde's "All
art is quite useless," made into a great little song by A House, able to
viewed in wobbly low-res here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmEvTa7Npk0
is all research quite useless in endless research? - this would get at
the true meaning and reason for the word academic having a pejorative sense.
I tried to become an practitioner-researcher five years ago. The academy
were all for my T-Cell theatre group idea and were prepared to back a
scholarship application. However, when I approached Creative New
Zealand, the Government's arts funding organisation, the preeminent arts
institution left standing in NZ, I was told any work with an academic
component would not be funded.
Creative New Zealand is all about instrumentalising art practice. This
is, giving it and having an ideological function. Best expressed in the
still often repeated slogan: Telling our own stories in our own words.
These words apparently do not have an academic component.
Best,
Simon Taylor
www.squarewhiteworld.com
On 19/01/13 04:08, Simon Biggs wrote:
... and to respond to my own email (probably bad etiquette) one can
observe the obverse to be the case - just as plenty of research is not
necessarily instrumental so too is much art instrumental, whether
responding to a commission brief, applying for thematised funding,
completing a work destined to be sold in an art gallery or making
adjustments to a performance in response to audience feedback.
Adrian's argument has value but is too black and white...
best
Simon
Sent from a mobile device, thus the brevity.
Simon Biggs
si...@littlepig.org.uk <mailto:si...@littlepig.org.uk>
s.bi...@ed.ac.uk <mailto:s.bi...@ed.ac.uk>
http://www.littlepig.org.uk
On 18 Jan 2013, at 14:49, Simon Biggs <si...@littlepig.org.uk
<mailto:si...@littlepig.org.uk>> wrote:
I agree with everything Adrian says except the statement that in an
academic context all research is instrumentalised. It is true that
there is more and more pressure for this to be the case but there
remain numerous threads of non-instrumental research, whether in
theoretical physics, astronomy, pure maths, anthropology, philosophy
or creative practice. Happily it is still possible to spend tax payers
money on useless inquiry.
best
Simon
Sent from a mobile device, thus the brevity.
Simon Biggs
si...@littlepig.org.uk <mailto:si...@littlepig.org.uk>
s.bi...@ed.ac.uk <mailto:s.bi...@ed.ac.uk>
http://www.littlepig.org.uk
On 18 Jan 2013, at 10:53, Adrian Miles <adrian.mi...@rmit.edu.au
<mailto:adrian.mi...@rmit.edu.au>> wrote:
hi all
On Friday, 18 January 2013 at 4:53 PM, Johannes Birringer wrote:
And would Kathryn Bigelow need to defend Zero Dark Thirty? how would
you (or Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D, for that matter)? or defend
Stifters Dinge? or Lexia to Perplexia (Digital Rhetoric and Poetics:
Signifying Strategies in Electronic Literature)? or, say, the
fabulous video, 'Shadow Sites II' (Jananne Al-Ani), shown at the
recent exhibition "Light from the Middle East" at the V&A in London?
I am not sure how to defend these works.
Such things only need 'defending' when they want to be offered up as
research. Art is, to keep this rudely crudely simple, non instrumental
to the extent that it can quite happily be only about itself. Whether
that is formalism, or via Deleuzean intensities, or what ever terms
you like. If you want to call it it knowledge then you need to
recognise that it is non instrumental knowledge while it is art. (It
doesn't have to serve or answer to any purpose outside of that which
it proposes.)
Research on the other hand, particularly in the university context, is
instrumentalised knowledge. It has to make contestable, evidenced
based claims about something. (In these sorts of debates people seem
to think that these claims must all be highly instrumental in a dumb
sense, but this is a straw man argument. Just as a pure mathematician
can do research into "Knot theory: different aspects of the topic."
(http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/about/our-research/postgraduate-research-topics/postgraduate-research-topics-in-pure-mathematics)
so practice and project based research can investigate highly specific
and possibly arcane topics only relevant to a very particular problem
within a narrow field.)
So any of the items listed by Johannes only need to be defended if
presented as research objects and/or outcomes in themselves, in which
case you need to demonstrate and make contestable, evidence based
claims. You can do this using evidence from the work, or as the work,
or the work might provide a demonstration and proof of these claims,
but leaving the work by itself is not research, it is art.
In Talan's comments about project based teaching, for example, I would
imagine the role of the project is not just to be creative, or make
art, or a project, but for the project to embody and explore key
problems. I'd also think that how these are explored or realised in
the project probably get documented outside of the project, whether
that is through studio conversations, presentations, critiques, a
brief accompanying essay, or some other device. These things are not
supplements outside of the project but are what shifts the project (or
the art thing) into a research practice.
And before I get treated as a troll or this as flame bait, art is and
should be just as it is, and is under no obligation to do anything
else apart from be. But if anyone then wants to also claim it as
research, then more is needed. Finally, research here is not the same
as the sorts of professional research anyone does to learn about
something to then use that knowledge in a work. For instance a
journalist researching a story, a writer researching some history to
write a novel, or an artist researching biology to make bioart.
Research in the sense intended by the university is a contribution to
knowledge, but the examples just cited are merely the application of
existing knowledge.
--
an appropriate closing
Adrian Miles
Program Director Bachelor of Media and Communication (Honours)
RMIT University - www.rmit.edu.au <http://www.rmit.edu.au>
http://vogmae.net.au/
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au <mailto:empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
http://www.subtle.net/empyre
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre
