Contextsshould be approached; it is part of what we would hope, is a precise formulation of a
research project which might take many different forms and employ many different
methods in pursuit of its ideas. That is its essential and critical strength.
it is perhaps appropriate that our last phd example will again approach the question
of decision, this time from the point of view of the performance writer (greenwood,
Kingston university). in this last example, a performance artist is considering ideas of
mediation, re- reading, re- contextualization and notions of self- surveillance in pursuit
of what a decision might be within performance and through performative writings.
Research methods involve the construction of poetic texts, manifestos, both textual
and performance work and sustained ‘endurance’ demonstrations of la durée, that
is both a compression and extension of time within a performance (cf. Bergson). it
involves an ontology of performance which is recorded, documented and participates
in a circulation of representations. it is not intended to present labour as distinct
from any other, but proposes and examines the nature and economy of labour itself,
that is, the labour of the performer, who might play out scenarios of gambling, for
instance. it is again a question of the artist attempting to resist ideas where capitalist
modes of thought are always and already embodied within the systems within which he
operates. in relation to this, the individual artist’s performative texts enter into a series
of mediations and reproductions of art as performed in time and those spaces where it
happens to be, also in response to what is common to social relationships. The study is
socially responsive and active in that sense.
We might suggest that even through this brief insight into two phds which are still
in progress, the self- critiquing, the ‘unmaking’ or critiquing of the subject of enquiry,
runs through each study like the lettering through seaside rock. it is a reflexive gaze
which is at the heart of the profession and practices of art and although it might owe
much to the enquiries of sources such as donald schön and its various proponents, it
is not a question of professionalization so much as a working at its limits, because this
is what phds in Fine art can offer the profession. They also take the discipline of Fine
art to its furthest limits and begin to form a gap between researching artists, what
they produce, and the cultures of contemporary art. of course, they will draw on their
contemporary cultures, but just as a scientist, a mathematician or an anthropologist
will hope to inhabit a framed space in order to conduct their disinterested research
enquiries, it is also necessary for artists to feel confident that they can take their
practices to spaces which may not exist because they are not already predicted within
the art world. Barrett and Bolt (2007) has made the case very forcibly to see art
research as a resistant and creative force for change. Future possibilities are legion but
only with the proviso that we take seriously the question of research environments, the
development of cultures and appropriate research training. This is primarily because
the reflexive critiquing involved in these phds is endlessly demanding and in ways
which are difficult to predict and thus to manage.
Building research culturesCentral to an appropriate development of substantial research cultures is the active
presentation and dissemination of phds. our research has found that where this
is the case, research groups have together developed the requisite confidence to