[iDC] Praxis-based Ph.D.s

[Margaret Morse]

Dear Simon,
of course an artist is a calling as well as a profession.  I used to 
wish I thought I was an artist, which I didn't, irrespective of the 
fact I drew well.  Then came conceptual, performance and other forms 
of art that might have opened the "art" to my creative proclivities 
if I had felt called.  Christine Tamblyn, for instance, made her 
entire life into art, including writing comments on students' papers, 
syllabi and teaching itself.  I am into life/art and art/life from a 
different perspective, articulating the experience of art.  I 
apparently learn by writing or drawing symbols.

It is also possible to teach without a degree--you are a living 
example.  It is especially possible at the cusp of a cultural change 
in what is needed and shifts in qualifications or after one is 
well-known.  May such "loopholes" never end.   When I changed my area 
of academic expertise, I lost a decade to gypsy teaching--but that 
was a learning experience for me to treasure.  It was then that I was 
exposed to art school students and a very different mind set and way 
of processing information.  Every now and then I get a brilliant 
student at the university who reminds of what the art school brain at 
its best can be like.

There is an area of study of types of learning and sensory channels 
which would be relevant to bring up here if I personally knew 
anything about it.  My friend Sierra, a Cherokee, is doing research 
on such "learning styles".  I think they must be individual as well 
as cultural.  She learned to cook (a Cherokee way?) by standing on a 
table watching her aunt work in the kitchen from ages 3-4 (no 
narrative), she was given tasks at age 5 and knew how to cook on her 
own at age 6.  I learned how to cook from books in my early 
twenties--but you can't learn baking that way!  If anyone has perused 
or is familiar with this body of study (including those experiments 
where various parts of the brain light up when you are thinking), 
please offer some place to begin.  I think knowledge of learning and 
expressive styles has some relevance to finding appropriate models 
for the practice-based Ph.D. as well as for justifying it.

At 8:35 AM +0000 1/15/07, Simon Biggs wrote:
>It might be that it is more and more difficult to succeed as an artist
>without the official stamp of approval a degree or other qualification
>allows you. I can see how hegemonic these things are and accept the
>arguments that it could all be more open and transparent. I also accept the
>arguments that people place too much value upon formal qualifications.
>
>However, I can think of a number of artists doing really interesting (and
>recognised) work who do not have art degrees (they may have degrees in quite
>different subjects or no degrees at all).
>
>In my own case I left school at 15, had my first solo gallery show at 21,
>continue to be an active practitioner (within both the digital art and
>general fine arts communities) and have also been active as an arts educator
>since I was 29 (including in the US). As an autodidact I have accrued no
>qualifications. I take this to indicate that the system (both the art system
>and the academic system) is open enough to accept diverse routes through it.
>I have found that both communities can be highly responsive to, indeed
>hungry for, different perspectives on things and that when you offer this
>then things become possible.
>
>As I mentioned in an earlier email, although I sometimes struggle to
>comprehend things from the point of view of a student (because I never was
>one) I find personally having no qualifications is useful as I can argue
>that formal education need not be the only way. I think it is healthy for
>art students to recognise that being an artist is not a function of going to
>art school. Most people with art degrees never practice as professional
>artists but, as Beuys (perhaps cheaply) pointed out, anybody can be an
>artist if they choose (although no career is guaranteed).
>
>I don't think my position is utopian.
>
>Regards
>
>Simon
>
>
>On 14/1/07 20:15, "Christiane Robbins" <cpr at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>>  But in looking at the second paragraph of your text, I do not share
>>  the certainty of your statement - "Of course you need none of these,
>>  or any other qualifications, to be an artist, and we should try to
>>  remember that."
>>
>>  While I applaud that notion of thinking, unfortunately, I believe it
>>  may be more of a nostalgic, utopian yearning. Please understand that
>>  I believe that one can be self-identified as an artist and not engage
>>  with the external educational realm.  Certainly, that is an option -
>>  an honorable one - and perhaps a more incisive one at that.
>
>
>Simon Biggs
>
>simon at littlepig.org.uk
>http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>AIM: simonbiggsuk
>
>Research Professor, Edinburgh College of Art
>
>s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
>http://www.eca.ac.uk/
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Margaret Morse
Chair of the Digital Arts and New Media MFA Program
Professor of Film and Digital Media

I am best reached by email at morse at ucsc.edu 

Mail: Porter Faculty Services
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