Artistic research PhD

Sep 162011
 

A question (of limited interest, I know) concerning the title conferred for an artistic research PhD:

In the US they have a Doctor of Arts, but it is not a truly corresponding term for what in Swedish would be called konstnärlig doktor (“artistic doctor”):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Arts

Doctor of Fine Arts seems to get closer (“Recognition with a D.F.A. degree in film, music, drama, literature, poetry, dance, theatre and plastic art by a university usually means the artist has made a contribution to the field and to human knowledge.”):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Fine_Arts

There has been some debate as to whether a DA ‘Doctor of Art’ qualification may be more suited to art practice, see:

Elinor, Gillian (1996) “Professional doctorates in creative practice.” In: Gray, C. (ed.) RADical: International research conference ’94. [CD-ROM]. Aberdeen: Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University. 16.

Friedman, Ken (2 Jun 2000) “PhD and DA compared.” DRS discussion list [Online]. Available from: drs@jiscmail.ac.uk [Accessed 20 July 2000].

It is being debated in Sweden right now and I wonder if other JAR members had views… I would be inclined to favour the Doctor of Fine Arts (but then what about design?!) – as it’s a thorny question, I’m grateful for any thoughts or examples of existing practice.

All best,

Rolf (Hughes)

 

Re: How to title an artistic research Ph.D?
Michael Schwab
PostPosted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 9:33 pm
Dear Rolf,

I tried to find the Friedman reference without success – do you have a better link?

In general – and I don’t know if this helps – I tend to favor the PhD. The reason for this is that it is the same title than in the sciences, which in a way claims that the knowledge both fields are working on is comparable. DA in whatever flavor repeats a certain sidelining of art when it comes to the more philosophical or political questions.

‘Doctor of Fine Arts’ sounds to me like an attempt add some value (via the ‘fine’), which to me as you suggest does not work, since it is really much too restrictive.

Hope this helps,
Michael

 

Re: How to title an artistic research Ph.D?
tom_fisher
PostPosted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 2:27 pm
Hello,
This may be a rather theological subject, but important too as these titles ‘mark’ the qualifications with associations. I would benefit from going to the references you cite Rolf, but without doing so my view is that the PhD has value for the reasons Michael gives; parity the main one. However, at my university we are developing Doctoral qualifications that engage with professional practice, growing out of our longstanding DBA. We are currently adding three new qualifications to the ones we have already in Social Science, Education and Law. These will be in Digital Media (DDM), Fine Art (DFA) and Fashion Industry (DFI). In each case the titles are intended to be sympathetic to conditions in the respective professional areas. Artists in the UK tend to go on degree courses called ‘Fine Art’ – so the ‘fine’ here, rather than being special pleading just matches what other qualifications are called.

Best wishes

Tom

 

Re: How to title an artistic research Ph.D?
john_seth
PostPosted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 9:59 pm
Hi
I’m a touch late coming to this discussion topic. So my apologies if the matter has been deemed closed or at least over with. In institutional terms (in the UK), the matter seems–after a flurry of discussion and publications–to have been left unresolved, with Universities following their own path. There has been very little further discussion, at least in the open. By ‘open’ I merely mean in the ‘open’ – as public. Of course it is possible that I simply may be unaware of the forums in which this discussion has been taking place. Nevertheless, where we appear to be, or where we appear to have left things, feels to me to be pretty unsatisfactory.

I do think that there is a critical point here that needs much further elaboration. My own view is that there are serious incompatibilities between disciplines and in the awarding of PhDs. This of course need not be a problem (it need not be serious). But, Michael, I don’t think that the naming of the award makes the claim “that the knowledge [in] both fields [arts and sciences, I assume] are [...] comparable.” The issue within the arts is problematic enough! I have heard the argument, from a Professor of Design, that the object produced through a PhD in Design is not important; rather it is the methodology that is under examination. The issue then, for me, is not one of comparability, but appropriateness to the mode or process that the research being undertaken engages. In this sense, it is possible to think of Doctoral qualifications that are relevant to the kind of research being undertaken and not necessarily a qualification that determines the discipline. Why not allow for the possibility that one can do Doctoral research in Fine Art that is either awarded a PhD or a DFA or DA? (Thank you, Tom, for the info about the DFA.) The issue then is what constitutes these different processes (methods) of research and what kinds of results or outcomes (sorry, I dislike this term) are to be generated/produced and what is to be examined.

Best wishes

John
Re: How to title an artistic research Ph.D?
Michael Schwab
PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2010 9:47 am
Hi John,

I am not disagreeing with you or the Professor of Design – it is certainly more methodologies than artefacts. The reason why I have been arguing for the ‘PhD’ is the fact that it is by no means clear where to draw the line. Are border-methodologies in the sciences also potentially not PhDs and do we tend to idealise particular seemingly ‘theoretical’ methods, which hardly exist as such? It is surely not about naming, but about what is implied by that name.

To approach this from a slightly different angle: Why would somebody in, say, biology, receive a ‘Doctor of PHILOSOPHY’? Either it has to be that they should receive a ‘Doctor of Biology’ or, alternatively, ‘philosophy’ here means a more ‘abstract’ engagement with registers of knowledge that potentially change those. If a ‘Doctor of Art’ is introduced, what is ‘art’ supposed to mean in this context? A discipline (as if we knew what was art and what wasn’t)?

I don’t think that ‘philosophy’ is the greatest word here either, but for historical reasons it is here and for me it is at least as wide as possible.

Michael

 

[Reposted by admin]

Producing art versus producing research

Sep 162011
 

Erik Andersson in Art&Research 2/2

A third and interesting issue is the tension between copyright (important for artists) and the free sharing of research data and results (important for scientific transparency). If artistic research shall develop and get respected within the academy (which seem to be what PhDs in art are about) artists’ relations to their data and research findings cannot be of the same copyright nature as the one they have to individual artworks, but need to approach the freeware culture within scientific research (where, for example, getting referred to and built
on brings status). Thus a researching artist becomes a different economic and social creature than an art producing artist.

 

Re: producing art versus producing research
FDombois
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 10:37 am
good point!

 

Re: producing art versus producing research
Michael Schwab
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 12:33 pm
Adding to this is an article about Open Access (which I cannot find right now) that talks about how Open Access is dangerous for scholars themselves in so far as it may be more difficult to build up ‘academic capital’. In other words, there is already a cultural pressure transforming the sciences as well, which we will have to keep in mind. It’s not that artistic researchers become like scientists (in a certain economic respect), it is that both scientists and artistic researchers are under the same pressure of adapting to a new economic model of knowledge.

[I am not an expert on this and wished I could find the article - maybe somebody else can?]

Michael

 

Re: producing art versus producing research
Johan Verbeke
PostPosted: Mon Feb 15, 2010 9:57 am
This is a very important issue for the field of artistic research. Moreover, there will be artistic outcomes which will be fully funded by research money and are the result of this funding. Who is going to benefit if these art-works will be sold for a lot of money? Can models of patents and the university rules applied here inspire us? In different countries different (legal and university) rules will be applicable, further complicating this discussion.

On the other hand, is this an issue for a starting Journal to tackle?

PS In Belgium, as far as I know, it is impossible to include images of art work (during the first 70 years of its existance) without paying the copyright companies. The only exceptions are publications for educational purposes.

 

Re: producing art versus producing research
Johan Verbeke
PostPosted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 1:23 pm
Coming back from the wonderful JAR meeting in Bern, I’m wondering what law applies for the following case:
a German artist uses an image of a Belgian art object in her/his contribution, which is published in JAR (under Swiss law) and is through the internet internationally available.

[Reposted by admin]

The term ‘standard’

Sep 162011
 

At various points in the draft document for JAR (http://www.jar-online.net/call/JAR_Draft_Proposal.pdf) I mention the word ‘standard’, which has provoked quite a few comments and discussions.

What I meant was, that a ‘standard’ is required in the field, whilst I didn’t want to say that such a ‘standard’ would consist of a set of criteria, which I don’t think can exist as such. Now, can we manage a ‘standard’ without applying a norm. For example, I think that there is a ‘standard’ when it comes art in general; art very often identifies itself or is identified as art (frame, plinth, museum etc.) but we would all agree that there are no criteria – at least I hope we would. This is one of the insights artistic research can take from art. At the same time, if art never started to identify itself as art, we wouldn’t even know how to start a discussion. (This, again, does not mean that I don’t appreciate practice that is not art.)

In any case, does it make sense to use the term ‘standard’ in this context?

 

Re: Regarding ‘Standards’
george_petelin
Enter ‘No criteria’ into a database and you will get either everything or nothing. So it is important, I think, to at least have some provisional criteria. In a sense, we already have two criteria: the contribution has to be to be considered art and it has to be considered research.

Art, as we know, tends to defy definition but has a set of traditions in respect to which that defiance can operate. These traditions are embodied in media and genres of practice we in arts acadaemia are all familiar with and against which an art work is necessarily understood. All the definitions of research I have come across talk about ‘contribution to knowledge’ – which usually means entering into a dialogue with existing research and adding something relevant to it. So here is my suggestion for some broad criteria that can nonetheless be considered in relation to specific practices:

1. Evidence of innovation in the content, form, or technique of the work in relation to a respected genre of practice.
2. Relevance of the work to its social context and/or to discourses within its genre of practice.
3. Thoroughness of research, analysis, and experiment evident in its accomplishment or of work leading to its accomplishment.
4. A potential effectiveness (as judged by expert peer reviewers) to intellectually engage or to aesthetically affect an intended audience.

The work and its contextualisation together would help the reviewers to rank submissions and to decide whether they are indeed ‘artistic research’ and not just art or research. And, of course, all criteria can have exceptions for which a special case may need to be made.

 

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Metrics into the assessment of research

Sep 162011
 

In the UK, the RAE is replaced by the REF, which introduces metrics into the assessment of research. Naturally, this is a difficult issue for artistic research, but it is nevertheless important to be aware of the political tendencies.

http://artsresearch.brighton.ac.uk/resources/funding-workshops/Notes%20from%20the%20Peer%20Review%20-%20Metrics%20workshop.pdf is a document by Bruce Brown (Brighton) that introduces some of the main questions.

Interesting points for JAR:

‘Art & Design subjects have been telling national bodies what does not work, but what does work has not been communicated nor perhaps established.’
-> We can look at JAR as a way to work out ‘what works’, so as not be given unworkable models from the sciences

‘However, we need a system that has developed a quality of judgment. We need to develop the culture of peer review and may wish to consider that peer review become a criteria for promotion.’
-> JAR as well as other publications needs to work on how to ensure the quality of peer reviewing.

‘A portfolio can be useful in identifying the journey and evolution of ideas leading to the production of a piece of artwork; this can parallel text-based research and could be useful in peer-review. The sketchbook can also be used as a tool to conceptualise research.’
-> An entry in the RC has to have such a quality

‘There is a move towards providing a national e-infrastructure for research which would also include “negative” research, or research that does not work, both of
which are more rarely published. However, no one has worked out which electronic resource is the best way of representing research.’
-> Indeed, this is the question we have to work on as we develop the RC

‘Part of academic research culture includes having access to other people who have the same ideas (there is no lone scholar, nor lone practice). ‘
-> The RC allows to reference research

 

Re: REF and RAE in the UK
roomforthoughts
PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2010 11:55 am
Michael Schwab wrote:
However, we need a system that has developed a quality of judgment. We need to develop the culture of peer review and may wish to consider that peer review become a criteria for promotion.’
-> JAR as well as other publications needs to work on how to ensure the quality of peer reviewing.

Dear All,

Was just referred to the following Peer review/Preview system:

http://www.thenextlayer.org/AboutPage

Might be interesting to consider:

“The term “Peer Preview” refers to a new concept which is a work-in-progress on TNL. Traditional academic journals are based on the notion of peer review, where finished papers are submitted for review by academic peers. In “peer preview”, the non-finished character of research papers is emphasised. Closed working groups allow members to review each others work at an early stage and discuss it openly and frankly. Work that is advanced that way can later be opened for public viewing.

[...]

TNL is a tool which in particular supports the work of researchers involved in practice based PhDs yet is open to everyone with an interest in collaborative research practices.”

Jennifer Kanary
roomforthoughts
artistic research

 

Re: REF and RAE in the UK
Michael Schwab
PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2010 12:37 pm
There are perhaps two aspects we could look at at TNL:

(1) The pre-viewing structure, which seems to be some form of collaborative workspace. The question here I would say is, does the RC need to offer a space to discuss the research between authors/artists or is it sufficient to publish work once they know what they want.
The idea, however, is that there is some kind of discursive space that might replace traditional peer-reviewing processes, without being ‘unchecked’ to some degree.

(2) The structure of a ‘book’ which is a more or less complex assembly of pages. Here’s it is interesting to look at how we might deal with more complex texts and how the reader is guided through the material.

The TNL site confuses me a lot. Can it be that with ‘journals’ they mean ‘diaries’ – this would explan the ‘blog’ element.

In general, would people like to see material that is not peer-reviewed, but attended to in other ways?

 

Re: REF and RAE in the UK
roomforthoughts
PostPosted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 5:07 pm

@Michael,

yes, TNL has good idea’s but it’s like it’s missing an extra layer. But the hypertextual and blog potential aspects of e-journals are interesting. If not only for the possibility of Commentaries. Which allows for video and image uploads, and video and image reactions.

Perhaps this is a good example, you might well know, Leonardo is the most successful peer reviewed journal related to artistic research practice in the field of Art, Technology and Science. It might be an idea to exchange idea’s.

http://www.leonardo.info/leainfo.html

http://www.leoalmanac.org/

Guidelines described here: http://www.leonardo.info/isast/journal/ … uides.html

Example:
“The review process involves peer review of all submitted articles longer than 2,500 words, including those solicited by the editors. Generally each manuscript is reviewed by one member of the Leonardo editorial board, one technical peer reviewer and an in-house editor. A request by an editor for a manuscript is not a guarantee that it will be published.

Authors are notified of acceptance, rejection or the need for revision within four months. Texts are judged on the basis of relevance to the aims and scope of the journal, originality, rigor of thought and the use of straightforward and precise prose. Texts should be condensed as much as possible and written to be accessible to the interested lay reader. Papers may include statements of belief and speculations, which should be denoted as such.

Most manuscripts require revision by the author before final acceptance. Revised manuscripts accepted for publication must be submitted as unformatted word-processed text without embedded illustrations or auto-formatted references. Each illustration should be submitted as a separate high-resolution file (see the following section on Illustrations). Texts longer than 2,500 words must be accompanied by a 100-word abstract. After a manuscript is accepted, it is edited at the editorial office and returned to the author for approval prior to publication.”

Jennifer

 

Re: REF and RAE in the UK
george_petelin
PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 2:49 am
Dear All,
To me the Peer Reviewing process for artistic research suggests the following components:

1. Electronic submission of a work or a set of works or an adequate documentation of art produced by the submitter.
It would be desirable that, as far as possible, this work could be mediated effectively on the JAR website. Two problems attend this. It advantages the already electronic media and could be misleading about the actual physical character of non-electronic works. The ‘documentation’ of a non-electronic work
will always be a challenge and sometimes may constitute a work in its own right.
It may be necessary to formalise a briefer form of preliminary submission at the stage of looking for an expression of interest.

2. Contextualisation
On the one hand, a contextualisation of the art work by its author would help to demonstrate the throughness of their research, on the other hand it would provide an entry point for reviewers who may be experts in the medium but unfamiliar with the context within which this artist researcher operates. This is particularly crucial due to the breadth of scope and internationality that JAR aspires to. And in many cases the above documentation may be the only access these peer reviewers have to the submitted work. This contextualisation could include a discussion of social and theoretical issues that the work responds to, a discussion of a range of positions taken by other artists to which this work contributes a particular perspective, and some documentation of work by the artist that led to the present work. A standard length should be decided for this so that it does not eclipse the creative work which should remain primary. On the webpage these sections could be linked by hypertext to the main artwork.

3. A feedback process
Peer feedback might best consist of a brief reading of the work rather than an evaluation, although the same peers would vote on its inclusion. This would inform the artist how an international audience interprets and responds to their work and help to guide future work, or, in the case of a set of works submitted as say an exhibition or suite, could result in some editing or culling. It is less likely to lead to extensive alteration of a single submitted work as happens in the standard academic paper. With the permission of reviewers, excerpts of their responses to successful submissions could be used on the webpage.

[Reposted by admin]

How does JAR relate to other debate and publication platforms in the art world?

Sep 162011
 

borgdorff
PostPosted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 6:27 pm

One of the things we have to discuss is: how does JAR relate to other debate and publication platforms in the art world, e.g. e-flux, frieze, art forum…
Some of the issues pertinent to JAR are also debated there. Think about Tom Holert’s essay ‘Art in the Knowledge-based Polis (e-flux), or ‘Whatever happened to theory’ (frieze 125).
Should JAR be added to the list of platforms dedicated to discuss contemporary art and culture? In that case it needs to profile strongly in this wide arena.
Or should JAR be focussed more specifically only on the ‘research agenda’? But is it then not in danger of isolating itself from other current debates in the art world?

Henk Borgdorff

Re: Relationship to other platforms in the art world
sdela
PostPosted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 12:24 pm

Henk’s question about the relationship of JAR to other publications like e-flux led me to re-visit part of JAR’s own description: “JAR is unique; it is the only journal worldwide that systematically features artistic research output in close proximity to academic articles and methodological discussions”. This special characteristic of JAR (partly constituted in the concept of the Research Catalogue) is that it brings artwork through its ‘documentation/ exposition’ into the foreground to ‘speak for itself’. The remants, captures and traces of practice (process and/ or production) are seen to constitute objects for reflection, discursive or otherwise. It seems that part of what JAR will contribute to current discussions and debates will be the RC itself a database (archive) available for further study (I am reminded of http://ubu.com/ somehow). If the RC reaches the critical mass it will need…

Re: Relationship to other platforms in the art world
sdoruff
PostPosted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 12:28 pm

Henk’s question regarding JAR’s profile in a larger art world context is provocative as it targets the tricky reciprocity between the ‘art market’ of the emerging and established artifact, and the processual documentation (as Scott has pointed out) of the research object. JAR’s strength lies in the continual discovery of new ways and means to facilitate and disseminate these processes. That said, the art market journals often generate discursive vectors that stimulate artistic research and recount processual methods. For example, Jörg Heiser’s paper “Sight Reading” in the frieze issue ‘What Ever Happened to Theory?’ and artist Jill Magid’s ‘Becoming Tarden- Prologue’ in e-flux #9, offer valuable perspectives on theory and practice respectively. I recently introduced these texts in the Masters of Artistic Research reading seminar at the UvA and I feel they helped to balance a more scholarly, ontological approach to art and artmaking in a timely way.
So, in response to Henk’s question: the JAR focus on a ‘research agenda’ seems to me to not be a question of isolation from art world discourse but rather a dynamic ontogenetic process immanent to it. The danger of this in-formed reciprocity lies in the viral encroachment of commodity and ‘exchange value’ sensibilities that can infect research trajectories. This in itself is another contentious arena for debate in terms of research agendas.

Sher Doruff

Re: Relationship to other platforms in the art world
Michael Schwab
PostPosted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 2:18 pm

I do agree by and large, but would like to add that what Sher calls ‘a dynamic ontogenetic process immanent to [the art world]‘ is in question. Strictly speaking there are 2 positions at the end of a spectrum:
(1) The Artworld rejects ‘Research’ because it limits what is otherwise radically open
(2) The Research Agenda claims that art that is worth while is always research anyway
Sher’s position sounds a bit like the latter of the two, which in my opinion is dangerous since (1) has to be upheld. As a consequence I propose to suspend a speculation of what might or might not be immanent to the art world, whilst offering the art world one more way of thinking about art amongst others (money most importantly, but also ideologies that feed into remainders of art criticism etc.) Research just happens to be the one I am interested in right now. Would that not be sufficient?

Michael Schwab

Re: Relationship to other platforms in the art world
sdoruff
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 5:53 pm

Actually, I agree with you Michael. Positioning research as ‘immanent’ to art practice effects the autonomy of the research activity. I was alluding to the field or let’s say Umwelt of the art world in which autonomous modes of practice structurally couple, compete, estrange, co-exist, network. The term ‘immanent’ is indeed too loaded. And yes, suspending speculation on what may be of interest to the art world is healthy and necessary for any artist and/or researcher. But the word ‘dangerous’ jumps out at me in your comment and I wonder exactly what or whom is endangered and how? Are you referring to the academic discourse of artistic research?

Sher Doruff

Re: Relationship to other platforms in the art world
Michael Schwab
PostPosted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 11:03 am

Dear Sher,

indeed, a very good question and a good point. As an aside, the word ‘dangerous’ might have been as loosely used as ‘immanent’ – funny what one recognises.

Concerning danger, it would perhaps take a little long to sufficiently make the case, but I have recently argued that in the present discussion around artistic research and Bologna two elements are being conflated. (1) The ‘inner structure’ of research (forms of exposition, translation, reflection, unfolding etc.) (2) Artistic Research as 3rd tier of art education creating a new form of trajectory. I don’t think there are any intellectual/artistic reasons for this conflation, only political ones (i.e. mainly financial). In other words, politics want research to be ‘productive’ (research becomes the technology of history if you want aligning art to science) which only works if it leads. Artists, however, at least since the 1970s have understood the problem of productivity and I would dare to say that this is what the research paradigm really targets (not consciously, though) and – very much in the UK – excludes.

Non-UK debates are to me like giving artistic research a second chance, but the danger is of re-producing the same system that institutionally works, but intellectually fails. For JAR I am hoping that the latter might be avoided and the former re-invented. Very difficult, naturally.

Thanks for pointing this out and opening the question up.

Michael

Re: Relationship to other platforms in the art world
sdoruff
PostPosted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 8:45 pm

Hi Michael,

Thanks for articulating this.

I would agree that the doing of artistic research and the policy that enables it are distinct. The conflation you speak of that confuses these issues brings to mind a certain 21C Foucauldian move from a disciplinary to a transdisciplinary society that finds a kind of focal point in the institutionalizing of artistic research. For me, this is the political/financial element/condition (2) you speak of which also has traction outside academia in the creative industries economy that impacts on funding and resources towards a specific kind of productivity.

The ‘problem of productivity’ as the backbone of the research paradigm is an interesting proposition worth bringing to a conscious level.

Sher

[Reposted by admin]

Where does JAR stand?

Sep 162011
 

One of the issues pertinent to the position of JAR in relation to academia is whether or not the artistic research projects in the Research Catalogue, and their discursive expositions in JAR, have to conform to standards of (the assessment of) quality which obtain in humanities, social science or scientific research, and if so, to what extent. And if not, what criteria JAR will then use to discriminate good research from bad research (if ‘criteria’ is what we need).

The easy way out is ‘intersubjectivity’ – the peer group evaluation. But who is to assess the assessors, and on what grounds? This has also some relevance for the constitution of the referee board of JAR. Do we recruit mainly artist-researchers or do we also want art scholars (e.g. from art history, cultural studies etc.) and other academics to have a say.
Here is a short quote from the 2001 UKCGE rapport on Research Training in the Creative & Performing Art & Design (p. 43):
“The key to a successful relationship with other disciplines lies in finding the right collaborators. People who are open to, and interested in, the possibilities of practice-based research and can see opportunities to apply its principles in their own field will be likely to look for the differences as well as the similarities and want to make a contribution to thinking across the disciplines.”

Some people/institutes take a so called ‘non-dualistic’ position; i.e. the research has to comply with what is valued in both academia and the art world. Others take what is valued in the art world as the main point of reference.
Michael Biggs and Daniela Büchler – in a forthcoming article – have labelled this dual dependency as ‘connectivity’ and ‘selectivity’:
‘Meaningful [artistic] research (…) has to have certain properties in order to be recognized as research by the academic community, hence connectivity, and it needs to address certain values in order that the outcome is significant to the [art world] (…), hence selectivity.’
I have the impression that academic connectivity has dominated in the British discourse thus far, whilst on the European continent the emphasis has lain more on artistic selectivity.
The question is: where does JAR stand?

Henk Borgdorff

Discussion Forum Structure

Sep 152011
 

Dear Michael, dear Henk,

Concerning the themes: I would like to have the two topics “Assessment & Refereeing” and “Copyright” priorised. And I think formulating it as questions might be more clear. Here a proposal – what do you think?:

1) Assessment and Refereeing: What are in your opinion the quality criteria for artistic research? How should artistic research results be assessed?

2) Copyright: If you contribute to JAR, do you see any copyright problems with your material? Would you hesitate to publish your material (texts, pictures, sounds, films) in the research catalogue? Is there any material, that you would like to publish, but where copyright problems might arise?

3) JAR-Community: Issues on the formation of the Journal for Artistic Research

4) Higher Arts Education: What kind of Artistic Research Degrees would you want to see in the future? Do you know good examples of study programs and assessments in today’s education?

5) Digital Repositories: What kind of problems do you see in digital repositories for artistic research? Do you know good examples of repositories (including sound, moving images)? What are the advantages and disadvantages of indices in scientific and artistic research including the humanities?

6) Art World: What should be the relation between artistic research and the general art world? What are the influences?

All the best!

Florian

Regionalism & JAR: a polemic

Sep 152011
 
The following polemic is part of an on-going dialogue with the Editors and Executive Board of the Journal For Artistic Research (Society for Artistic Research). Following my visit to the new website, I suggested that the apparent European homogeneity of the board, could be a “stumbling block” for writers in Asia, the Middle-East, Africa and South America. The stated “Mission” of the journal includes the following under “Identity”:The Journal for Artistic Research (JAR) is an international, online, open-access and peer-reviewed journal for the identification, publication, dissemination and discussion of artistic research.[emphasis mine]

with further articulation in “Strategic Aim” #2: “Strengthening the international community and environment for artistic research”. [emphasis mine]

In response to my note, Florian Dombois responded that Board heterogeneity was indeed important and had been discussed in the organisation’s formative period. He pointed out that one board member was from Australia and invited suggestions for the next election cycle. The JAR editors then kindly invited me to expand my five-line email into a longer intervention, leading to this polemic. My comments below are intended to support JAR’s stated aim to develop an international readership and community of researchers.

I begin with a caveat. Regionalist loyalties and biases exist everywhere. Hardwired into homo sapiens or not, they are certainly a global social phenomenon, and are very strong here in Southeast Asia and in my country of origin, the United States. JAR, and the field of Artistic Research represented in its pages, is by no means alone facing this issue. The ubiquity of regionalism simply underscores our very human preference for creating communities with those we know and live near. And there remain many productive reasons why such preferences continue, which I won’t go into here. The relevant question here is much more specific: whether regionalism is a productive or unproductive ideological stance for JAR and for the field of Artistic Research.

Here is an example of the problem. The 2008 Sensuous Knowledge conference in Bergen, as I recall, was almost a complete white-out. And looking back, virtually all of the Artistic Research conferences I have attended in the last few years in Europe, Scandinavia and the Balkans were populated by pan-Europeans, with a smattering of others. (As I have no conference statistics on hand [1] , this contestation represents shameless ethnic profiling on my part.) So, when the Board was announced, I engaged in a bit of anthroponymic profiling of the names and institutions, and thought I should again raise the issue I had raised in Bergen: the field of Artistic Research is in danger of being swallowed by its own cultural and regional homogeneity…an indigestible meal at best.

Apocalyptic prophesies aside, my concerns have emerged against a background of the recent reactionary turn by European electorates against earlier immigration policies, the on-going ethnic cleansing of Roma people in France, and the recent resurgence of conservative movements across Europe –recently including Sweden. This turn to the “right” could osmotically seep into the vital organs of the cultural establishment and fringe without much notice. Such seepage would most likely be accompanied by the reemergence of the historic European tendency (including Haussmanisation in the urban environment and the history of colonialism) to organise culture, information, industry and class on a centre-periphery model. Spatialisations of ideology subliminally embedded in fields of knowledge are extraordinarily persistent, remaining as mnemonic remnants long after the motivating ideological constructs have vacated the space. Such remnants emerge as abstractions, presumptions, predispositions, and may underlie what I perceive to be the regionalist bias of JAR and so many other Euro-American cultural initiatives. Not intentionally exclusionary, such predispositions nevertheless do exclude.

Another example. A very different type of organisation, established in 1995 at New York University, Performance Studies international (PSi) [2] , is facing a similar problem with its annual conferences. Since 2004 when PSi#10 was held in Singapore, the following eight years (through 2012) have been comfortably nestled within just six time zones of a 24 timezone world, all between approximately 43º and 55º latitude: Providence, London, New York, Copenhagen, Zagreb, Toronto, Utrecht, Leeds). I suggest that this is also a function of centre-periphery predisposition. The majority of those who come to the conferences tend to be from the same or adjacent regions. And since the membership is determined in PSi only by conference registration, those who propose conferences tend to be among those attending previous conferences. In this way, a centre-periphery model is promulgated subliminally through the structural processes of the organisation. Certainly no one intended that to happen, but the challenge now is for such international cultural organisations to ferret out the subliminal presumptions embedded in our respective constitutions and constituencies.

The homogeneity of the JAR Board opens a gap between its inclusive constitutional rhetoric and an exclusive organisational composition, that I am suggesting may be subliminally predisposed to a centre-periphery template. This raises questions concerning the journal’s ability to represent a rapidly globalising academic field. But beyond this, as one of the first such journals representing the new field, it impacts the credibility of the field itself. Any perceived regional or ethnic bias (whether accurate or not) has the potential of negatively impacting the field of Artistic Research at its incipiency.

One final issue. While it is often argued that Artistic Research has been with us in process if not in name as long as there has been art –an argument I fundamentally agree with– it is as an institutional form, not in the studio but in the matrix of the tertiary academy or university where AR is having its most significant cultural impact. It offers a means for the storming of Plato’s gated-republic by its exiles, and for the reclamation of haptic, manual and corporeal intellectualism and research in the Academy. But this is a double-edged sword, for AR also adds a new storey to the “higher” education of artists, and attracts students from developing countries to take the “highest”[3] possible degrees in various combinations of practice and theory. So what are the implications for JAR of this ambitious scaling of new institutional heights to which it is intimately connected? How is such an ambitious ‘building plan’ related to the rampant global commodification of the education industry? And following the points made above, what are the implications of this commodification for the field of Artistic Research?

It goes without saying that in addressing AR we are not just discussing courses and topics; we are modeling information and financial economies. I would argue that AR is a symptom of the recent pedagogical globalisation at the intersection of cultural economies and capital markets. The centre-periphery model has always been at root an economic model. And it is one that interferes with other more complex, sustainable, and humane circulations of information and wealth. Basically it promulgates the transfer of capital from the periphery (for example, Asia, Africa et al) to a currently more powerful centre (Europe, North America, Australia), in exchange for information, methodology, bona fides and authorisation. Here in Southeast Asia this centre-periphery pattern of capital and information exchange is everywhere apparent. More western universities set up shop here everyday through local proxies, and millions of Asian students still travel to the US, Europe and Australia for their higher degrees. We will know the tide has truly turned when European, North American and Australian students seek admittance to Artistic Research programmes in former third world universities, not because they are cheaper, but because they have become more innovative and more relevant.

As Lenin rhetorically asked (in the words of Nikolai Chernyshevsky) when calling for a Soviet vanguard: “What is to be done?” Possibilities include inviting intellectuals from target regions to serve on the Executive Board, publicising JAR in region-specific publications and institutions, or inviting guest editors for specifically themed issues of relevance to other regions. There are many other possible strategies that the Board could dream up over beers or better, which would nicely segue with the already stated “strategic aims” of the journal.

Thank you.

Ray Langenbach

[1] I wrote to the Sensuous Knowledge organisers, asking if such a census is available, but have not received a reply to date.
[2] I sit on the Board of Directors of PSi and have raised the following issues there.
[3] A developmental term that disregard’s Buckminster Fuller’s reminder that there is no “up and down” in the universe; only “in and out”

 

Attachments: JAR POLEMIC 27.09.10.pdf [90.73 KiB]