Wednesday 23 June 2010

A Symposium to discuss practice-led research in art across disciplines at the University of Reading, featuring presentations by PhD researchers in Fine Art, History of Art, and Philosophy, and interventions by Art & Language and Herman Rapaport, Reynolds Professor of English, Wake Forest University.

11.15-11.45 Neil Chapman, ‘The Winter Journey: Vitalism’s Rosetta Stone’

11.45-12.15 Roxana Tohanaeanu-Shields, ‘Conceptual Art and the Aesthetic’

12.15-13.00 Art & Language

14.00-14.30 Andy Hunt, ‘One Curator, Three Dealers: Nicholas Serota, Konrad Fischer, Anthony D’Offay and Larry Gagosian’

14.30-15.00 Claire Drever, ‘Art as the Negation of One’s Ego’

15.00-15.45 Herman Rapaport, ‘Let Freedom Ring! Cutting Loose with Albert Ayler and Carolee Schneemann’

16.00-16.30 Kate Corder, ‘Allotment Plot and its Growing History’

16.30-17.00 David Stent, ‘A Skinned Mule – Portraits of a Research Project’

For directions to the University: http://www.reading.ac.uk/about/find/about-findindex.aspx

These five seminars led by Dr Martine Rouleau, lecturer at Birkbeck College, take place in March, April and May 2010, providing a platform for the discussion of issues arising from the integration of theory and practice in post-graduate research . The outcome of the series will be a conference held at Birkbeck College in June 2010 where the participants to the seminars, other research students and scholars will be invited to discuss their approach.

In media, culture and creative practice, the choice of a research framework is often intertwined with the practice that you will engage with in order to conduct your research, be it media and film, arts management, music, creative writing, screenwriting, journalism, performance or cultural studies. More than an object of study, each comes to existence through a process that can contribute to the direction your questions, reflections and arguments might take. How can the integration of practice and theory provide means to encompass these dimensions in research?

Each seminar will take the form of a brief presentation introducing a reading and/or a particular research. The participants are then encouraged to engage in discussion on the basis of the introduction, the recommended readings and their own research.

24 May – 14 June

A series of three lectures examining the proposition that contemporary art can go beyond transforming our understanding of the political and build new forms of political and social relations.

Monday 24 May, 6.30 – 8.00pm
Alexander Düttmann,
Professor of Philosophy and Visual Culture, Goldsmiths,
University of London

Monday 7 June, 6.30 – 8.00pm
Herman Rapaport,
Reynolds Professor of English, Wake Forest University

Monday 14 June, 6.30 – 8.00pm
Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield,
Reader in Theory and Philosophy of Art, University of Reading

All lectures at Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, LSE
For further information visit www.philosophy-forum.org

With the expansion of creative possibilities for study within University settings, it is increasingly imperative that we question the borders between the creative and critical components of postgraduate study.  How do the different modes of creative practice intersect with the world of traditional academia?  How does a creative practitioner function as a PhD candidate?  What methods can be used for assessment?  What role does the accompanying critical thesis play in the context of the creative work produced?  How does creative practice differ from fieldwork?  What frictions are created by interdisciplinary work?

This one-day seminar aims to provide a space for creative practitioner PhD students to come together and discuss the relationship between their practice and research.

Keynote Speaker: Dr Sharon Kivland, Reader in Contemporary Art, Sheffield Hallam University, Visiting Fellow in the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, and a Research Associate of the Centre for Freudian Research and Analysis, London

 Presentations must discuss both the creative and the critical aspects of your PhD research and should last no longer than 20 minutes maximum.  We are keen to encourage diverse methods of presentation, and exhibition space will be available on the day. For installation based presentations, please e-mail us in the first instance to check we can meet your spatial and technical requirements.

 We invite 300 word abstracts (including up to 10 low res images or up to 2 minutes video where relevant) from those who consider themselves to be creative practitioner PhD students; this includes (but is not limited to) students working within the areas of creative writing, digital media, fine art, music, and the performing arts.

 Please email abstracts to: i.s.streffen@ncl.ac.uk  | Deadline: Friday 25^th February 2010, 10am

Wednesday 17th February 2010 Loughborough University

Mihnea Mircan is an independent curator based in Bucharest, Romania. 2005-06 he was curator of Le Pavillon, Palais de Tokyo, Paris. At the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucharest, Mircan curated exhibitions such as: Sean Snyder (with Florin Tudor), 2007; SUBLIME OBJECTS, 2007; Video Works. Jaan Toomik, 2006; and the Under Destruction series of site-specific interventions. Other curatorial projects include: Since we last spoke about monuments, Stroom Den Haag, 2008; Low-Budget Monuments, Romanian Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennial, 2007; No Significant Incidents To Report, Galeria Noua, Bucharest, 2005. He contributes regularly to international publications of contemporary art and has recently written on the work of Deimantas Narkevicius, Mircea Cantor and Alon Levin. His forthcoming projects are exhibitions ‘History of Art, the’, David Roberts Art Foundation, London, ‘An Image instead of a Title’, Spinnerei Leipzig, and ‘Hans van Houwelingen: Until It Stops Resembling Itself’, Stroom Den Haag.

 
You Can’t be Serious: On the Pre-posterous Encounter With Art

2pm Weds 10 March, Fine Art Lecture Theatre
Garnett, theoretician and art critic, is co-editor of the recent Gest: Laboratory of Synthesis #1 (2008)

Initiated by a series of events and discussions during the exhibition ‘Gest’ — at the Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University, this book Gest: Laboratory of Synthesis, includes a range of essays and interviews bringing together philosophers, artists, theorists and critics to discuss new approaches to art writing. It operates in the widening gap between the mainstream art magazine and the academic journal in order to create new conjunctions and productive disjunctions between theory and practice out of which new voices and new modes of art writing emerge.

Contributors include: Jennifer Allen, Eric Alliez, Devrim Bayar, Dan Fox, Rainer Ganahl, Johnny Golding, Peter Osborne, Anne Pontégnie, Nina Power, Ralph Rugoff, John Russell and Dirk Snauwaert ISBN 978 1 870699 96 9

Table of Contents and Sample Chapters

The last explosive change in art education came nearly a century ago, when the German Bauhaus was formed. Today, dramatic changes in the art world—its increasing professionalization, the pervasive power of the art market, and fundamental shifts in art-making itself in our post-Duchampian era—combined with a revolution in information technology, raise fundamental questions about the education of today’s artists. Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century) brings together more than thirty leading international artists and art educators to reconsider the practices of art education in academic, practical, ethical, and philosophical terms.

The essays in the book range over continents, histories, traditions, experiments, and fantasies of education. Accompanying the essays are conversations with such prominent artist/educators as John Baldessari, Michael Craig-Martin, Hans Haacke, and Marina Abramović, as well as questionnaire responses from a dozen important artists—among them Mike Kelley, Ann Hamilton, Guillermo Kuitca, and Shirin Neshat—about their own experiences as students. A fascinating analysis of the architecture of major historical art schools throughout the world looks at the relationship of the principles of their designs to the principles of the pedagogy practiced within their halls. And throughout the volume, attention is paid to new initiatives and proposals about what an art school can and should be in the twenty-first century—and what it shouldn’t be. No other book on the subject covers more of the questions concerning art education today or offers more insight into the pressures, challenges, risks, and opportunities for artists and art educators in the years ahead.

Contributors: Marina Abramović, Dennis Adams, John Baldessari, Ute Meta Bauer, Daniel Birnbaum, Saskia Bos, Tania Bruguera, Luis Camnitzer, Michael Craig-Martin, Thierry de Duve, Clémentine Deliss, Charles Esche, Liam Gillick, Boris Groys, Hans Haacke, Ann Lauterbach, Ken Lum, Steven Henry Madoff, Brendan D. Moran, Ernesto Pujol, Raqs Media Collective, Charles Renfro, Jeffrey T. Schnapp, Michael Shanks, Robert Storr, Anton Vidokle

Rethinking the Contemporary Art School  (The Artist, the PhD and the Academy) examines the reasons for the art school and its continued existence, its role in society and what should be taught and learned in the context of what is now a globalised art world. The book considers different art school models—innovative graduate programs, independent stand-alone schools and art schools which are departments or schools of major research universities and the problems they face operating in what James Elkins describes as “marginalized in university life.” Rethinking the Contemporary Art School sheds light on the debates surrounding the appropriate terminal degree for university-level teaching in the arts and concludes with essays on new media, examining whether the contemporary art school offers the right context for this discipline. The anthology includes contributions from Su Baker, Bruce Barber, Mikkel Bogh, Juli Carson and Bruce Yonemoto, Edward Colless, Jay Coogan, Luc Courchesne, Sara Diamond, Lauren Ewing, Gary Pearson, Bill Seaman, and Jeremy Welsh.