WOOFISM and beyond
Presentation for MA students. A slightly odd experience. Especially when introduced as a ‘graduate’.
Back to studio and more subconscious un-directed drawing.
Hidden messages….crazy thoughts…mad equations..exploded peanuts characters…back to paul klee…taking the line for a walk..Bauhaus….
Found this fantastic image by Paul Klee of structure of the Bauhaus not unlike my plan for M.A. drawings ha ha ha….it all connects.
Simplistic but this rough outline of new directions is kind of accurate.
Path One: Traditional practice-led craft orientated production – drawings not theoretical more instinctive. Crossing into surrealist/automatic and subconscious areas.
Path Two: Literary/Historical..orientated toward factual and historical research linked to a wide gamut of technology in early stages affecting a specific area of the Thames Valley – possible PhD subject area? Relating developments in 1850s to present day impact of ubiquitous media. Possible crossover with poetry/cultural geography. e.g. Charles Tomlinson’s borders thesis.
Path Three: Criticism as Research/Graphic Research. Cartoons as investigative art criticism. James Elkins and Mark Staff Brandl connection. Political edge.
Continuing the ‘automatic’ drawings which I have started doing in studio when waiting for software to fall over or repair itself..or machinery to work…or when I not reading up about impressionist painting and photography I do these small ‘doodles’…..
I not thinking about them just letting them fall as they might and will analyse later.
Starting to look like graphic designer’s maps:-)
As part of re-planning my M.A. by registered project I was asked to ‘draw’ out my ideas. By chance I had already done it a few weeks ago as part of process of seeking ‘re-alignment’.
The image is complex but for me the most interesting outcome was the realisation that the ‘four-leaf clover’ actually boiled down to two distinct and separate ‘pathways’ going in different directions but both could equally be followed and examined as an M.A.
PRACTICE AS RESEARCH?
The first pathway is practice-led and focusses on drawing and painting as both studio-based and like most fine art PhD’s one that can interrogate itself during ‘process’. i.e. self-reflection on practice within M.A. and an analytical tool to examine the process of submitting for M.A from an institutional point of view. This amalgamates the ‘graphic research’ and ‘painting’ threads of my work in one. I will attempt to analyse the studio practice through cartoon diagrams and reflective analysis.
Possible output: Paintings and drawings and conference presentations/research papers.
‘MULTIMEDIA’
The word that has no meaning again applied to a very diverse range of ‘praxis’ that includes poetry, film, photography, oral history, social intervention, music and sound.
The mopping up of ‘everything else that I do’.
Possible output: Book, Cd, exhibition, graphic design, ‘deep mapping’, live performance.
What will win …..or maybe do both and make this the most disjointed M.A. ever?
The four-leaf clover below now has two leaves….
maybe should listen to Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
As part of an interview for course leader of M.A. Fine Art at Nottingham Trent ( the proverbial snowball in hell chance as they say). I prepared the following course structure ‘plans’. The reaction was a little bemused but the thinking embedded within has already been corroborated by information on trends developing at other M.A. courses.
The traditional M.A. is now an expensive additional outlay on top of three years and approximately £100K of debt for a home student so unless there a viable and necessary reason for having one the market doomed to collapse. That reason could be academic progression (the traditional bridge between B.A. and PhD) or it could be cheapness (the international student who chooses a course because not as expensive as London based institutions).
Either way the outlook is for a radically different postgraduate landscape sometime soon.
The first document explores viability for both an M.A. and M.F.A. which matched courses to expectations of consumers geared to ‘practice’ or ‘research’ outcomes. The others map ‘student expectations’ (a core mantra of the institution) and possible reorganisation of the whole structure from a new foundation through to PhD.
Needless to say I over-pitched the whole thing and should have kept this all back until the head of M.A. post becomes available…..and as usual I am too quick to spot trends…By the time thie institutional supertanker starts to change course I will probaby be long gone. I am posting so I can have the limited satisfaction of looking back in due course and saying ‘I told you so’….
It also interesting as a part of my investigations into course structures and could be seen as ‘action research’ even if as I expect I do not get the job ….
“It would be wonderful to have some conferences, and then some books, on which practices are best served by self-awareness. (And another set of conferences and books on the practices most amenable to research, as in point number 2.) From a philosophic standpoint, two more even more difficult problems would then follow: Who can measure self-awareness? Who is trained in teaching it?”
From James Elkins – Reasons to mistrust the phd ( Updates for a second edition of ‘Artists with Phd: On the new doctoral degree in art’
Source: http://jimandmargaret.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/reasons-to-mistrust-the-phd-numbers-5-7/
This seems to me to go to the heart of the problem. I am mid-way through a M.A. by registered project which a more flexible version of a standard M.A. where the student sets own parameters. I am going to suggest to my supervisors that the second year consists of two distinct self-set pathways.
One studio practice in painting ignoring ‘research’ and secondly an analysis of this from a very ‘research-orientated’ perspective via my cartoons. Not sure how that will go down but it does attempt to wrestle with the problem. Can one have two heads? Probably not. I will keep a reflective journal of my practice day by day that purely practice driven.
The cartoons/research will comment separately on where I think practice does cross-over naturally with ‘research’ or not as the case may be. This then begs the question ‘where is the research located’?
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