Marsha Bradfield, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, Scott Schawger
Fig 1. Aaron McPeake, Sam Venn, Ana Laura de la Lopez, Angela Hodgson, Scott Schwager
Fig 2. Aaron McPeake
Fig 3. Angela Hodgson and Scott Schwager
Fig 4. Scott Schwager
Fig 5. Sam Venn, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, Angela Hodgson
Fig 6. Aaron McPeake, Sam Venn
General Introduction:
- This pilot session aims to test the proposed structure of TPE - Presenters share their research through a 20 to 30 min session and this is followed by questions - so we're interested in sharing practice and exploring this sharing as being part of our practice - it's about disseminating practice.
- We wish to know what are peers are doing - it's part of PhD culture - DIY in the face of widespread cuts...
- Grow peer culture - invest in each other
- Ideally, TPE will cut across/sample from the various discussions occurring at different colleges
- Emphasis on practice - does it help us get away from institutional hierarchies? Our supervisors, for instance, may be more experienced researchers, but we we're all practitioners...
Marsha:
- A performative presentation that asked and (re)asked: "What does the practice of dialogic art entail?"
- Composed entirely of questions, this presentation teased at the difference between speaking about practice and doing it.
- The power dynamics that mark the presentation of research - What's shown and not shown...following Bourdieu: developing "a feel for the game" - What does this mean in the case of art research at the UAL, in the UK and beyond?
Ana Laura:
- Cultivating praxis - a good reason to do a PhD - practicing in a way that's more critical and considered - "rigour"
- Tension between "public" and "private" - not binaries so much as overlapping sets of assumptions - contrary to conventional thinking, "the private" may be a sphere that's less "free" - where much (conflict) is repressed...
- Relations between practicing "art" and practicing "research" - anxieties around practicing art too much - How to locate practice of art in research culture? Are they very different?
Scott:
- The boundaries of art research - what does or does not comprise art practice as research - Does this talk "count"?
- Collaboration involves working together - (the tools of) process - multiple dialogues - with other collaborators, with "viewers," with "peers"... Something is collaborative when you can't do it on your own...Flow
- Working in public as distinct from working with the public - also, what aspects of practice get shared - What about emails? Lots of business gets transacted in emails...
Themes and questions to take forward:
- How to narrate one's practice? Should this approach jive with the practice itself or is there a generic approach? Tendencies towards confession as a genre for sharing practice...
- Languaging - speaking to different groups
- What's research? A process of inquiry...perhaps cultivating this is more important than the outcome?
