writing and the Phd in fine artlent insight to this process through psychoanalytic theory (Chapter 14). it might be
useful to add a proviso, however, that while such theory adds to an understanding of
artists’ experience of research processes, it is also appropriate in our view to be cautious
about the deployment of a theory to explain processes devised to unsettle it. This
does not prevent us from underlining, like Quinn that the processes of art research
are emphatically against standardization and involve what Roy ascott (2008) calls
the ‘unmaking of the subject’, that is, both the subject of enquiry and the researcher
him/herself. Within both Geist and Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts
Enquiry by Barrett and Bolt (2007), there is a proposition that methods appropriate
to the research practice of the arts are ‘immanent’, that is, not fixed, not predictive,
but arising through and from the research itself. in other words, research ‘for’ art is
particular to its author, its contexts and the capacity to reflexively unsettle.
appropriately, in this context John Wood provides a generic understanding of
the limitations of scholastic rigour in ‘The Culture of academic Rigour: does design
research really need it?’ (Wood 2000). he also provides an understanding of more
empathetic models of writing. in Wood’s view, in the context of design, this relates
to designing for a specified client and ‘thinking as, thinking for and thinking into
their nominated reader’. This is useful to understanding artist researchers’ thinking in
relation to interpretation. it is not generally a question in Fine art of the nominated
reader, but it is very definitely a question concerning authorship, subjectivity and
accountability to interpretation. it underlines what our research has revealed about
the many ways in which artists’ doctoral research touches on, refers to and critically
engages with the contexts within which the research is conducted. again, this is an
aspect of the argument put forward by Wood in his analysis of how to develop more
entrepreneurial, reflexive and more socially responsible researchers and to avoid what
he sees as the diminishing incursions of bureaucracy and the developing schism between
the academic library and the design studio. ultimately what Wood and we will propose,
and what we will substantiate, is writing which is empathetic to art(s) research, whose
context is in production and the result of embodied learning which has the potential
to be ‘critically reflective and broadly relational and is above all dependent on human
judgment’ (Wood 2000: 56), that is, how the work might function and be of value.
The development of independent criticality is fostered by new journals such as The
Journal of Writing and Creative Practice in the uK. This journal’s mission is to explore
and demonstrate ‘the deep purpose of the writing task for art and design research
students and to provide a forum for debate’ (lockheart and Wood 2008: 113). it is a
journal which has a substantially relevant history, based in the Writing- pad research
project^2 and the subsequent conferences, symposia and development of its network.
This is an example of the importance of careful networking and publication which
we are now beginning to see in the uK. another timely journal is Art and Research:
A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods which aims to engage in ‘the dynamic and
unresolved relationship between image and text, vision and language and writing and
research’ and determine the ‘constitutive function of text in articulating the research
process’.^3 issues to date have been exemplary in their approaches to defining what
might be research ‘through’ art.^4 schottenkirk’s research article on relativism and
truth in art is simply one of many appropriate papers. The strength of this journal
is its ongoing interviewing of artist researchers and descriptions of research projects,