Thinking through practice : art as research in the academy

106 Pages·2008·1.99 MB·English

by  Duxbury

Think ing
Thr ough
Pr ac T i c e
Thinking Through Practice
First published by RMIT Publishing on Informit e-Library, November 2007
© Copyright in the individual chapters is invested in the individual authors, and copyright in the
collection is held by the School of Art, RMIT University, 2007
Edited by Lesley Duxbury, Elizabeth Grierson and Dianne Waite
Designed and typeset by Adrian Saunders
Index by Virginia Grierson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted, in any form or by any means electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be made to the
publisher.
ISBN 978-1-921166-67-9
Published on Informit e-Library, http://search.informit.com.au
RMIT Publishing
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T hi nk i n g
T hr o ugh
Pr a c T i c e
Art
As reseArch
In the
AcAdemy
Edited by Lesley Duxbury, Elizabeth M. Grierson and Dianne Waite

Contents
Introduction: Thinking in a Creative Field 6
LESLEy DUxBURy AND ELIzABETh M GRIERSON
RESEARCh ESSAyS
The Eye (and Mind) of the Beholder 17
LESLEy DUxBURy
Framed by Architecture 28
RUTh JOhNSTONE
The Space of Sound 42
PhILIP SAMARTzIS
Distraction or Destruction or Just Uncovering the Cover-up 54
ROBERT BAINES
Audio CD Production in a Contemporary Art Practice 68
PhIL EDWARDS
Composites, Multiplicities, Complexities And Duration 79
DAVID ThOMAS
Thinking in a
Creative Field
L ESL E y DU x BU Ry A N D EL Iz A BET h M. GR I ER SON
We come to know what it means to think when we ourselves are thinking.1
h
EIDEGGER’S STATEMENT ON “ThINkING” DRAWS US
towards the theme of this collection, Thinking Through Practice.
In many respects this collection is a way for us to “come to know”
what thinking means through the practices of artists and their research.
But, we might ask, what is it that we are coming to know through this
process?
Through the work of these artist-writers we can confront and contemplate
what it means to think, and what it means to work through practice for the
process of this thinking and coming to know the world through sustained
enquiry. In specific contexts of the academy we are coming to know what
is deemed to be “research” in creative practice within the institutional
setting. In many respects we are brought into alignment with knowledge
and appearance, and with the way working through practice “works” as a
knowledge field. Just as Martin heidegger saw thinking as “a way”, a way
of revealing, when not closed by heightened, teleological, means-end
instrumentalism, so the work of these artists, and the work of art, opens the
possibilities of revealing as a way of thinking, knowing and being.
Each of the writers in this collection is an artist and fine art educator
at the School of Art, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT
University), Australia. Each holds a Doctor of Philosophy in the fields
discussed in this collection, and each one move us into closer proximity with
I
n
what it means to think through making and all that is involved in sustained T
r
o
forms of creative practice – questioning, reviewing, reflecting, analysing, D
U
performing, speculating, relating, remembering, critiquing, constructing C
T
I
and ultimately further questioning. These are sustainable forms of o
n
:
scholarship and enquiry in the academy; they are ways of legitimating T
h
affective understandings and perceptions, ways of exposing not only In
k
aesthetic but also epistemological and ontological understandings. We are In
g
talking here about the process of creating in a way that reveals something I
n

more than self-perpetuation. It is a process of bringing forth awareness or A

C
appearances through the work of art. r
E
A
T
I
v
E

F
Cre ativit y I
E
l
D
The field of art as a field of knowledge has long been aligned with creativity.
At different times and places questions of aesthetics have arisen to prominence,

but essentially art’s one constant characteristic is that it comes from a creative
process in the maker.2
L
E
Creativity is a word that suggests different meanings in different S
L
contexts. It has become apparent that in the creative knowledge economies E
y
of a globalised world “creativity” has been politicised as a form of capital D
U
in the knowledge economies, and is a term that is used loosely and is x
B
often interchangeable with innovation, digitisation, informationalisation, U
R
technologisation and other modes of fast transmission and exchange. Thus y

A
it has been reduced to a means-end relationship of economic transfer,
N
D
consumption and agency. however in the academy where creative projects

E
are undertaken and postgraduate degrees awarded in creative fields of L
I
z
knowledge, what then does creativity mean and where does its value lie? A
B
To create is to bring (something) into existence; from Latin, creare. E
T
Following heidegger’s notion that the work of art is the working through h

M
of truth in the materiality of practice or making, something is brought
.

into existence and appearance through the process of creating that was G
R
not otherwise available to our sight. In this way art and its enquiry acts as IE
R
a bridge whereby conditions of time, being and materiality are exposed S
O
to those who engage with the embedded knowledge conditions of its N
existence. This way of thinking through practice interrupts the insistent
means-end relations of the creative knowledge economy with its focus on
fast capital – financial, informational, social, cultural et al. It is also a way
N of slowing down or exposing the pace of informational innovation and its
O
S demands in the so-called progressive economies and social complexities
R
E within which we live, work and function on a daily basis.
I
R
G What role does art have in such a world? If means-end thinking and

M. means-end agency is somehow interrupted by the process of art itself what

h role does the artist have in the knowledge economies of hyper-information
T
E and fast capital? In this collection, such questions are best answered by
B
A the writers themselves, through the way they engage with their respective
z
I
L conditions of practice. Each artist-researcher is writing on their projects in
E
retrospect and thereby calling on the power of memory to “think through”
D
N
their research questions, analyses and conclusions. Their accounts are
A

y drawn from successful Doctor of Philosophy projects undertaken in the
R
U last seven years in the professional fields of art practice and art theory. In
B
x this act of remembering there is a “gathering of thought”3 into a present
U
D horizon that opens art to other possibilities of knowledge formulation,

y
E other constellations of experience. One of the marks of creative practice
L
S is the way it opens the possibilities of knowledge to further implications
E
L
and applications. When the gathering of thought is sustained, rigorous and
methodological then something original will emerge moving knowledge

to a new place and opening the field of enquiry to further speculative or
propositional questioning. This collection engages with the creative and
critical edges of these research projects, and in the processes of engagement
D
l
E we come to know what research means for creative practitioners and how it
I
F
E can be evaluated and legitimated in the academy.
v
I
T
A
E
r
C rese arCh in the aCademy
A

n
I
g It is through the systematic and sustained engagement with ideas that new
n
kI realities are made. It is through the interpretations made by creative individuals
n
hI that new “discoveries”, new fictions, emerge.4
T

:
n
o Currently, Australia is one of only a handful of countries in the world
I
CT that validates the making of artworks as research by offering postgraduate
U
D research degrees such as the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and the
o
r
T Doctor of Fine Art (DFA). however, what has been produced as the
n
I result of undertaking a research programme in art practice – paintings,
constructions, photographs, sound productions and objects, for example
– has not readily been recognised as research according to the Australian
Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) criteria, nor is it
well understood within the academy itself.
In Australian Universities there are as many variations of requirements
for the completion and examination of a PhD or DFA by creative project
as there are institutions, but generally most specify some kind of creative
presentation such as an exhibition accompanied by a thesis or exegesis.
Some universities privilege the textual document over the project, while
some apportion a percentage of the total marks to the project and a
I
n
percentage to the text, sometimes requiring the candidate to nominate T
r
o
the percentage ratio in advance. In the School of Art at RMIT University, D
U
the study for a PhD or DFA culminates in an exhibition or performance C
T
I
of a comprehensive body of artworks accompanied by a visual record of o
n
:
the research – the Appropriate Durable Record (ADR) – and an exegesis, T
h
a document that sheds light on the history, concepts and technological In
k
issues, among others that underpin the creative work and lead to new In
g
thinking, making and theories. In the School of Art it is understood that the I
n

processes of undertaking the creative project – the experimental works and A

C
the testing of ideas right through to the finished artwork – is the research r
E
A
itself. It is recognised that the manipulation of materials and the creation T
I
v
of artefacts encourages particular and novel ways of thinking, which lead to E

F
the generation of new knowledge and understanding. The consideration IE
l
that the creative practice of the researcher can lead to new ways of thinking D
is at the heart of the pedagogy of postgraduate research in the School of

Art at RMIT University.
This way of thinking about research is not without its dissenters
however. According to the principles that determine what research is,
L
E
artist-researchers are not counted as “legitimate” researchers because they S
L
have not produced, according to the DEST criteria, justifiable research E
y
outcomes. To date, the only measurable outcomes of research are textual D
U
publications such as books, book chapters, refereed journal articles and x
B
conference papers although this is slowly changing due to both internal U
R
and external pressures. Even within the academy, it has only recently been y

A
acknowledged that what is produced for the outcomes of a PhD by creative
N
D
project does indeed fulfill the definitions of research according to DEST,

E
especially the point that states: L
I
z
A
Any activity classified as research, which is characterised by originality; it B
E
should have investigation as a primary objective and should have the potential T
h
to produce results that are sufficiently general for humanity’s stock of knowledge
M
(theoretical and/or practical) to be recognisably increased.5 .
G
R
Art has always been synonymous with originality and a sustained creative IE
R
practice embodies investigation. When artist-researchers manipulate their S
O
chosen media, be they oil paint, precious metals, printmaking techniques, N
wood and plaster, sound recordings or photographs, they work through
series of actions or processes that are tested against self-determined
criteria in the process of an investigation to achieve an envisaged outcome.
N All artists have reasons for the ways that they go about their practice but
O
S the artist-researcher is a conscious practitioner who sets out to realise an
R
E objective that has been defined in accordance with the question to be
I
R
G answered, for as with all research, the research question is central to the

M. creative project.

h
T A research question may enquire into a problem to be solved; a creative
E
B opportunity to be explored or exploited; or an issue to be examined, whether any
A
z of these be technical, procedural, philosophical, theoretical, or historical.6
I
L
E
So, Timothy Emlyn Jones sets out some of the ways a research question
D
N
might be addressed and it is no different for the creative artist. The artist-
A

y researchers in the School of Art answer their research questions through
R
U the making of artwork and reveal the processes leading to the formation of
B
x an answer in both visual and textual formats – in the ADR and the exegesis
U
D respectively. What the essays in this publication attempt to do is to reflect

y
E on the germination of ideas and the processes involved, the experimental
L
S works, the making of finished works and their evaluation to reveal some
E
L
of the thinking that transpired, intuitively or purposefully, logically or
spontaneously, in the undertaking of the research project.
10
thinking about art
D
l
E In spite of advances in the field in Australia and Britain in particular, many
I
F
E people, when faced with the justification of art as a site of knowledge in
v
TI the academy, continue to look perplexed and feel the need to ask that
A
E fundamental question: “But what is art?” Attempting to address this
r
C
A question fully would take more space than is available here; however it

n
I is worth making a few brief comments. There is no norm for art, no easy

g
n answer to the quest for definitions. The question of “what is art?” has
I
k
n occupied philosophers and viewers, artists and critics for centuries, and
I
h
T many will recall this question informing the successful long-running play

:
n
o in London, Art by Jazmina Reza. Three characters spent some hours in the
I
CT quandary of confronting a white painting and even after much in-depth
U
D and at times tense interchange, they could not agree on an answer to the
o
r
T question of what makes it a work of art. There was a prevailing disruption
n
I to the weight of responsibility that is cast upon the work of art by the public
domain – a demand for easily understood representations of meaning.
Social relationships fell into disarray as a result. We might say that if art has
the power to cause argument, and the history of art and public opinion
shows that it does, then surely art must be more than meets the eye. We
might turn to heidegger’s seminal essay “The Origin of the Work of Art”