Week 35: 13th – 19th May
This week was all about forums and reading groups, beginning with a group discussion about EARN (the European Art Research Network) and the projects that we might produce as part of an international collaboration with other research centres within the network. EARN is a group which ‘was established to share and exchange knowledge and experience in artistic research; foster mobility, exchange and dialogue among art researchers; promote wider dissemination of artistic research; and enable global connectivity and exchange for artistic research’, and is made up of 10 partner universities across Europe.
Participating research centres include Kuvataideakatemia (Helsinki), MaHKU, Graduate School of Visual Art and Design (Utrecht), Akademie der bildenden Künste (Vienna), Art Academy, Lund University (Malmö), Slade School of Art, UCL (London), Università Iuav di Venezia (Venice), Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, UG (Gothenburg), Hogeschool Sint-Lukas (Brussels), Centre for Practice-Led Research in the Arts, University of Leeds (Leeds), Graduate School of Creative Arts & Media (GradCAM) (Dublin).
Discussion forum
The forum was a great opportunity to find out about the EARN project and to discuss our individual research and how it overlapped with the work of other practitioners in the faculty. Each researcher showed a short presentation of an aspect of their work, before opening the floor to questions. Presentations ranged from ‘Digital ways of seeing’ to ‘Walking as a political act’, ‘Visual investigations of nuclear bunkers and ‘Funerary traditions of dress’.
Needless to say, despite our disparate practices, conceptual threads began to emerge, along with an understanding of how thinking through making programmes could be implemented throughout the academy and the nature of artistic research: what the AHRC describes as research in which the professional and/or creative practices of art can play an instrumental part in an inquiry.
Thought/Process reading group
Next up was the Thought/Process reading group. Similar to other book groups, academic reading groups involve researchers coming together to respond to a shared text in a group discussion. The main difference is that usually university groups revolve around specific texts that deal with a particular theme, and are often non-fictional, except in the case of literary studies. Their aim is to introduce readers to new ideas and unfamiliar texts, with a view to developing critical thinking faculties. Group discussions also give each of the participants the chance to engage in peer learning, as many other texts are referred to throughout the course of the discussion.
The Thought/Process group refers to texts which deal with the intersections of concept and making, or how each might relate to the other. This week’s discussion focused on the ‘Hacking, Work, and Free Time’ section of Nicolas Bourriard’s book ‘Post Production’, a text written as an analysis of today’s art in relation to social changes, including an exploration of what the work is and how it is made and received. Although not written as a sequel to his 1998 book ‘Relational Aesthetics’, he addresses the same issues and artistic scene, as well as some of the criticisms of his previous work, most notably by Claire Bishop in ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’.
Post Production
Any art practice that attempts to conceptualise the idea of consumption, production and appropriation in a globalised world will always be problematic, and questions raised within the session addressed issues of originality, marginalised voices, corporate culture, and aestheticization. However, despite these issues of attempting to reflect and resolve social issues as an art project within the global art market, I find Bourriard’s way of thinking interesting in relation to my own practice and the way that objects can be activated within the gallery setting. Similarly, where art practices might be considered to be replications of social practice which are almost indistinguishable from life, the art gallery can then act like a mirror to reflect social inequalities and political affiliations.
