Practice as research

Week 68: 30th December – 5th January
Even though I’m enrolled on a Practice-led PhD, it is easy to fall into the trap of focusing on the reading and writing aspect of problem-solving as a way of producing art, rather than utilising doing and making activities to think through new ideas and concepts.

Facing a block in my creative process, I remembered to return to my sketchbook to explore how I might resolve some of these issues. After a short amount of time spent drawing (and making notes) in the local museum and library, I had generated lots of new sketches and ideas to produce a new body of work.

Drawing as looking
The thing that struck me most however, was how the act of drawing (specifically from an object) equated to the act of looking.Through drawing, a focused study necessarily slows down the encounter with object, affording the viewer more time to notice details that they may have previously overlooked. Artists including Claude Heath and Jochem Hendricks have explored the relationship between looking and drawing in their practice, as Ann Jones describes in her art blog, Image Object Text.

This act of drawing as looking also seems to facilitate an increase in looking inwards, creating new connections between the works and new possibilities for contextualisation. In Artist Scholar: Reflections on Writing and Research, G. James Daichendt describes this with the statement “art-making at the most basic level is thinking made visible”. (Daichendt, 2011, p.47)

Making as thinking
Despite the fact that the book ‘Artist Scholar’ is primarily focused on inspiring artists to become better writers in the pursuit of articulating their research to a wider audience, it does offer interesting insights into the relationship between making and thinking. As Daichendt explains “Rather than understanding art as a cultural phenomenon and aesthetic product… art production [is] a type of inquiry, reflection, interpretation, commentary, and thinking process that has transformed the way we understand the world and ourselves.” (Daichendt, 2011, p.5)

It also considers the methods that artists use in the production of their work are also valuable research data and that “the drawings, mind-maps, sketchbooks, photographs, old napkins, notes, inspirational quotes, pictures, books, conversations, critiques, and anything used to brainstorm or think about subject matter are important. These bits of information represent aspects of our thinking and can be analyzed with qualitative tools.” (Daichendt, 2011, p.52)

Other kinds of writing
Although certain kinds of problems are better solved through doing/making, this does not automatically equate to an argument against intellectualisation, and in fact can even help facilitate this process. Therefore, within this thinking practice, doing and making can also apply to writing, particularly forms of self-reflexive writing such as essays and blog articles which the artist uses to analyse their own work.

Writing practice seems like an anathema to making art, and arguments have been raised regarding the question of why artworks should be translated into a textual form. However, Daichendt cites Cupchik, Shereck, and Speigel (1994) who “found that artworks were thought to be more powerful and personally meaningful after the subjects wrote interpretations” and that rather than closing down audience interaction “the interpretative exercise through writing opens up more avenues for inquiry and thought.” (Daichendt, 2011, p.63)

Reflexive writing, that is, writing that takes place after the art making process can also be useful in organising and consolidating thoughts about the work, and in a similar way to drawing, can slow down thinking around the work of art in order to trace threads of inquiry throughout and between works.

What is practice?
These influences have started me thinking about how my blogging practice is intertwined with my art practice, not only as a research tool, but as a cultural artefact in its own right. Thinking about writing in this way subsequently also helps me to understand how I can think about objects and images I make as data in a practice-led academic context:

“Research is based upon using primary data in all fields and the following categories are examples of appropriate types of sources: Observations and self-reflections… Sketchbooks, notebooks and letters… Writing, publications, papers, and statements… Emails… Lectures… Exhibitions, performances and advertisements… Mind maps… Art and objects… Documentary photos” (Daichendt, 2011, pp. 95-98)

Further reading:
https://www.academia.edu/6597179/Louis_Althusser_What_is_Practice_translation_

Week 67: 23rd – 29th December
After last week’s exploration into artistic forms of research mixed with concepts of quantum physics and philosophy, I thought it might be time to consider again the nature of interdisciplinary practice, particularly in relation to the PhD and academia in general.

Interdisciplinarity and the Practice-led PhD
Interdisciplinarity is defined as a process of integration ‘by which ideas, data and information, methods, tools, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines are synthesized, connected or blended.’ However, before considering the nature of interdisciplinarity in practical terms, it is necessary to recognise the time required to develop a clear understanding of even a single discipline, which is one of the fundamental elements of achieving doctoral status (discussed in week 19).

This, unfortunately, runs counter to artistic practice which may, by its nature, stray into other disciplines. When producing a PhD in Fine Art, in addition to investigating a particular question (and the disciplines within which it falls), you are also expected to contextualise your work within contemporary art practice, as well as art (and cultural) history. Such a wide scope of research, particularly within the timescale of a postgraduate degree, is viewed by some scholars as “risky” as it potentially doesn’t allow time to gain a complete understanding of all the related fields.

Benefits and challenges
This necessity to draw from and connect disparate disciplines has led some scholars to believe that this can result in reduced standards in the quality of research, a view that it has been suggested is upheld by the submission process of the Research Excellence Framework. However, others believe that interdisciplinary practice challenges traditional disciplines by creating new forms of cultural knowledge.

In Ten Cheers for Interdisciplinarity: The Case for Interdisciplinarity Knowledge and Research, Moti Nissani discusses the need for increasing interdisciplinary research in tackling creative and real world challenges. His points include: the necessity of a “clashing” of disparate ideas to develop new creative solutions; the ability of people who are familiar with two or more disciplines to spot errors that may not be perceptible to strict disciplinarians; and the understanding that the knowledge that people create doesn’t always adhere to the boundaries of academic disciplines.

Practice vs theory
Even in the case of theoretical interdisciplinary subjects such as Cultural Studies, the field is widened by its nature, in that it ‘represents the field of culture itself and the field of methodologies for interpreting that culture’. Each project is defined by locating a cultural phenomenon or object of study and then reading it. However, in the case of the practice-led approach, the object of study is simultaneously created alongside its interpretation, further problematising this process.

However, it appears that despite these discrepancies, both sides of the argument for and against interdisciplinarity, appear to reach a similar conclusion. Hal Foster sums this up in his interview in ‘The Anxiety of Interdisciplinarity’, where he declares “The status of interdisciplinary has changed over the last decade. Although I remain committed to it in principle there are clearly problems… Today so much work that purports to be interdisciplinary seems to be non-disciplinary to me. To be interdisciplinary you need to be disciplinary first – to be grounded in one discipline, preferably two, to know the historicity of these discourses before you test them against each other… Art needs structure, it needs constraint – enough resistance to articulate complicated thoughts and feelings”.

Further reading:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/10/01/rafols-interdisciplinary-research-ref/
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/feb/19/interdisciplinary-research-universities-academic-careers
https://www.academia.edu/1491885/The_Future_of_Interdisciplinary_Studies_in_the_Humanities
http://www.alan-shapiro.com/inter-disciplinary-or-trans-disciplinary-by-nolan-bazinet
Simon O’Sullivan, Cultural Studies as Rhizome – Rhizome as Cultural Studies in Cultural Studies, Interdisciplinarity and Translation

Week 66: 16th – 22nd December
My return to a focus on material was timely, as this week was the first in a series of Leverhulme institutes by visiting professor Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, which was all about matter. Professor Christov-Bakargiev was named the most influential person in the artworld in 2012 by Art Review’s Power Top 100, and has held prestigious posts including Artistic Director of the 16th Biennale of Sydney in 2008, as well as working as a Senior Curator at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York from 1991-2001.

The focus of the Leverhulme seminars and institutes centred on themes which emerged as part of her most recent appointment, that of Director of documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany. The topics addressed included: art as research, ethics of curatorial studies and practice, and the relations between temporality, space and embodiment.

The history of documenta
The documenta festival takes place every 5 years, with a 4 year research and preparation period culminating in a 100 day arts festival. Beginning in 1955, after a period of post-War re-evaluation, Kassel staged the festival in an attempt to “reconcile German public life with international modernity and also confront it with its own failed Enlightenment”. Since the fifth documenta in (1972), each festival has been directed by a different curator to produce a whole new idea of how international art links can be developed.

The first exhibitions in 1955 were an attempt to re-present and redress previous claims made by the Nazis about Modernist art as ‘degenerate’. Led by Arnold Bode and Werner Haftmann, the festival was dubbed the ‘Museum of 100 days’ which still serves as inspiration for curators to this day. Throughout the history of documenta, themes have included the questioning of reality through images, the ‘Neuen Wilden’ and the historical and social dimensions of art.

The Leverhulme Institute
The Leverhulme series began with an evening lecture exploring a virtual journey through the psychological map of curatorial practice behind documenta 13. In an article on the Walker Art Center website, Christov-Bakargiev is quoted as stating that “documenta (13) is dedicated to artistic research and forms of imagination that explore commitment, matter, things, embodiment, and active living in connection with, yet not subordinated to, theory”, leading to her exploration of such diverse practices as quantum physics, activism, and philosophy, in the context of art research.

Christov-Bakargiev’s vision was to create a festival that was intentionally unharmonic. Despite the fact that the 2012 documenta was spread across 4 different countries simultaneously, participants were not encouraged to feel in sync with other venues and cities, to add to their sense of displacedness.* Exploring both physical and psychological geography, the themes of Siege, Hope, Retreat, and Stage metaphorically represented the four physical locations of the festival: Afghanistan (Kabul and Bamiyan), Egypt (Cairo), Canada (Banff) and Germany (Kassel), respectively. However, the connections between these places and states were intended to continually shift throughout the exhibition, disrupting audiences perceptions of each location.

A look into the Brain of documenta (13)
documenta (13) was categorised by its constant deferring (différance) of the meanings between locations and objects. Through reference materials such as the 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts that underpinned the making of the exhibition, audiences were passed between thought and process. Central to this was the hub of the Kassel exhibition, entitled the ‘Brain’. Consisting of an archive of objects, artworks and documents, presented with equal value, each artefact referenced another work in the city, acting as a sort of key and creating further complex meanings and associations.

This complexity was highlighted in the guide book for the ‘Brain’, the specially commissioned artwork ‘For when all that was read… so as not to be unknown’ created by Judith Barry. Consisting of a printed poster that could be folded and constructed into a 3D modular origami model by the reader, the work existed as a both a document of the exhibition and an artist book. Producing the guide in this non-linear fashion also aimed to convey the central theme of the festival, one of shifting hierarchies and perspectives.

*Paradoxically, this could also be a factor in increasing site-specific-responsiveness, not only by practitioners but also audiences.

Further reading:
A brief history of documenta: http://www.universes-in-universe.de/car/documenta/e-hist.htm
Fionn Meade, Reenchanted, Object-oriented essay

Week 65: 9th – 15th December
After my work with flexagons I decided to focus a bit more on paper based structures that I could incorporate into my book objects. I began by conducting a library search for related terms, which included paper folding, paper craft, origami, etc, fully expecting them to turn up within the art section of the library. However, my discoveries actually revealed much more about the way that I was approaching my work than I’d realised. In fact, most of the books related to paper were classified under textiles, with a few veering into mathematics. This realisation of paper as material rather than concept or conduit for ideas, highlighted my previous neglect of paper as prima materia in my work.

Although the conceptual elements are important to me and to the work, they in fact stem from the associations created by and through the material and it was a good reminder to work out from the material rather than merely applying theories and concepts to it, or using it as a support for the image/text. Ideas about paper as material and concept are the subject of a number of artists work and these thoughts reminded me of an exhibition I’d seen at Manchester Art Gallery back in 2012.

The First Cut
The First Cut exhibition took the medium of paper and its associations as a point of departure, in order to explore the ways in which artists create works from this traditionally ephemeral material. Mixing big name artists such as Kara Walker, Peter Callesen and Rob Ryan, with local talent, Andrew Singleton and Nicola Dale, the show explored themes relating to the different uses of paper in art and society.

As the introduction to the exhibition explains: ‘31 international artists who cut, sculpt and manipulate paper, transform this humble material into fantastical works of art for our stunning new exhibition. Wonder at giant sculptures inspired by far-away galaxies that spiral from the wall, explore a walk-through forest of paper trees and marvel at miniature worlds that explode from vintage staple boxes or emerge from the page of a book. Flocks of birds and butterflies cut from maps appear alongside artworks that feature dark fairytale imagery. Guns and grenades fashioned from paper currency and sinister silhouettes comment on social, political and economic issues.’

Exhibition themes
Beginning with the theme Imaginary Worlds, artists created works that explored the architecture of the gallery space as well as creating new environments through the use of installation. Exploring concepts of time, motion, engineering, consumerism, environmentalism, nature and artifice, artists produced a range of works including papercuts, sculpture and kinetic art. Following this, the Off the Page section referenced both the book as source material for the found paper used in the works, as well as the possibilities for books to be increasingly usurped by digital technologies.* Artists transformed books such as encyclopaedias, pulp fiction, classic literature, artist’s monographs, and pornographic magazines in order to create new works of art.

Finally, Mapping new Territories explored not only geographical boundaries, but also the histories and currencies associated with those places. As well as re-using and creating maps of real and imagined places, the works also depicted the violence of colonialism and global politics through the use of cut paper silhouettes of slavers and origami guns made from dollar bills. The use of paper in artworks, particularly large-scale installation, often seems to create genuine wonder for the dexterity and patience of the artist. It is also a possibility that this sort of reaction is exacerbated by the fragility or (lack of) longevity of the material. Could this be something that I could build into my books or would it make people too nervous about damaging them?

*This issue seems to come up a lot in debates around books and book art. However, I feel that the relationship between the use of books and the use of the internet and digital is usually only connected through written content, (and even then creates a different user experience). Therefore, each medium has unique abilities with which to supplement the other.

Further reading: http://www.creativetourist.com/articles/art/manchester/the-first-cut-paper-cutting-artists-at-manchester-art-gallery/
Histories of reading in relation to digital: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3340/2985

Week 64: 2nd – 8th December
After my initial attempts at creating alchemical flexagons (in week 24), I decided to create a hard backed version. This would not only give the object greater longevity, but would also allow audiences to manipulate it much more easily. Having realised that the flexibility of the structure was completely dependant on the hinge, this would therefore potentially allow me to create structures out of any material providing that the hinge flexed fully both ways.

Creating a hard backed flexagon
My first attempts at producing a more sturdy version were reliant on understanding how I might attach the structure together. Creating the paper version had made this much easier as the paper could be folded and fastened together in such a way as to hide the join. I also realised that I would have to fold the card flexagon before securing it, which was slightly tricky, but I finally managed it. The process of creating a larger hinge to aIlow for the thickness of the card also highlighted how the space between each of the pages allowed them to turn much more fluidly, an effect which I might be able to apply to any further paper versions. I now had a working prototype. The next stage was to consider how I might cover these hard flexagons.

As the content on the paper versions had been produced through printing on the paper before folding it, I realised that I would have to reconsider how I might include any potential content on the hard version. Firstly however, I needed to work out the template for the covering material. After a few failed attempts, I managed to create a covered version, using a bookbinding paper known as linson. Linson is a strong type of paper which is treated to resemble cloth. It is often used in book covering and creates a hardwearing finish with the qualities of an old hard backed book casing, which was exactly the kind of aesthetic I’d hoped for.

Foil Blocking
However, I still had the problem of how I might transfer images and / or text onto this object. After considering the potential of letraset, screen printing or digital copy, I decided to try out foil blocking, a technique that I’d recently been introduced to through my bookbinding class. Foil blocking uses a typesetting process similar to letterpress but instead of using the type to transfer ink, the letters are heated and then pressed into foil on the surface of the book.

I set my type to print all the text on each side at once , but as my prototype had already been folded, the card created raised levels in different areas of the book, meaning that only two words at a time could be printed. I decided not to let this deter me and instead folded the flexagon out bit by bit so that eventually all of the sections had words printed on them. I’d originally set my type so that all of the text was running the same way, but working within the constraints of my object under the foil blocking press meant that the text now ran in a square, which I found more aesthetically interesting and seemed to echo the cyclical nature of the work.

Future developments
Although the foil blocking produces interesting and aesthetically pleasing results, unfortunately it is limited to the brass type that is available. Therefore, I want to consider the potential for printing on covering material first, using either digital or screen print. There is also the option to use relief printing such as lino or collograph after assembling the work, although this has more potential for error.

I’m also interested in the possibility of creating flexagons using wood and metal hinges, although I haven’t found a suitable hinge that could allow this as yet. The use of more robust materials would also allow the potential to upscale the work to make game-style boards and large sculptural works. Although this seems to be moving further away from artist books, it is predicated on the work of artists such as Anselm Kiefer, whose large lead books became ‘immovable fixtures in the museums and galleries that owned them’.