#practice-led

My proposed research investigates a timely change in contemporary art practice: from a solo studio endeavour to a post‐studio group model, and inspects the social and phenomenological conditions that paved the way for this paradigm shift. What are the socio‐economic and cultural‐geographic reasons for the recent boom in group‐studio phenomenon within contemporary art practice, as specific to residencies, and how can that analysis better equip us as cultural producers to tailor this phenomenon to meet the current needs of artists? As part of my practice‐led research, I will create a set of three-week residencies that take place in Edinburgh and Minneapolis, which responds to the cultural, architectural and creative topography of each city, and further examine the value of phenomenological experience to the working artist.

I plan to engage a practice‐led research PhD at ECA/University of Edinburgh to further advance the discourse in the field of contemporary art practice using a mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Through surveys, observation, and implementation of research through practice (Frayling, 1995), I will explore the conditions giving rise to residential group‐studio phenomenon. My own creative practice is lifted to a state of practical research in that it inherently includes an explicit understanding of how it contributes to the inquiry (Rust, Mottram, and Till 2008); the process of conducting a residency itself propagates further critical investigation of the inquiry.

I've started an ATN-Research online module which is great because it allows you to articulate things about your research, well actually it forces me to articulate things in writing about my research. I feel a little like I'm moving in slow-motion at the moment, but I think this module will really help to think through some things Adrian and I were talking about in terms of using my Marker film as a prompt for further thinking, and I think this module will help me think through some of those ideas.

One of the preliminary readings was Marshall and Newton's "Scholarly Design as a Paradigm for Practice-Based Research." The quote that we are asked to respond to from this reading links heavily to a lot of the discussions Romana, Benjamin, Adrian and I have had in our Monday group meetings regarding art and research:

A tension has developed: those representing conventional research practices insisting that scientific inquiry hold sway, and those representing practice looking for ways in which their activities might be recognised and valued (as an equal to conventional research) more directly by the academy. (Marshall and Newton, 2002)

In response to this quote I do not think there is any need to favour either scientific enquiry or practice in terms of a PhD, apart from considering that practice in the context of a PhD must be research. My position is that artistic practice cannot be an academic output as the artefact itself, within itself, does not articulate research. However, when accompanied by a written exegetical piece it can articulate itself as research because the exegesis ties the artefact into the realm of what is to be explored. The artefact hence is research but to be understood as such it needs to accompanied by some type of writing which places it into the context of what the academic is exploring. I don't think a artistic practice should be valued in itself by the academy as research.

When Marshall and Newton state that:

The substantive part of the research program (the practice-based work) remains as a piece of practice and not as a piece of research.