[iDC] Re: Praxis= Ph.D=criteria
R Labossiere
admin at klooj.net
Mon Jan 15 23:53:02 EST 2007
I love this thread and kudos to everyone who is contributing... truly, it's
very meaningful to me, personally and professionally....
my post is too long, sorry... but if you can, skim this first...
http://www.webheaven.co.yu/spiritart/beuys_social.htm
for me,the penny drops here: where do "results" figure into the discussion?
for surely the
point of all this is not, like religion, to pepetuate 'the church,' but to
promote results. What are the practical results of a PhD that cannot be
achieved otherwise, elsewhere and better?
Indeed, my underlying misgiving here is that the institutional framework is
so laboured that it cannot produce the results it professes to desire?
WHO: I hold an MFA from NSCAD (1985) and a law degree (a misadventure if
there ever was one) ((1989)) and have worked in and out of the artist-run
centres in Canada for several decades. Notwithstanding damage suffered
during my MFA, am a practicing artist; I cling, however vaguely, to what
inspired me in the first place, a certain disposition to
anti-institutionalization, creativity, integrity, ingenuity and compassion.
To cut my particular chase... I would argue that the BFA should be the
"terminal" (what a dreadful term!!!) degree. It should be all students need:
exposure and an opportunity to work in a 'protected' environment for a
relatively brief period, their most formative years.. during which, if
properly mentored by faculty, they will sort out who they are, where they
are and what to do... beyond that, academe is a refuge not a force of
development... and you (meaning "we" really) are a bunch of 'placeholders',
not that I begrudge you your much deserved salaries (you are all certainly
more disciplined and more knowledgeable than a guff like me who flies by the
seat of his pants, fueled by mostly illicit substances), but, in terms of
culture and movement or even what's just interesting, ha ha, you are kidding
yourselves if you think you are moving the culture one way or the other, or
even more than a blip in the course of history.
The wheels of institutionalization, within which many of you (and me) seem
to be caught up, i.e. the movement towards the "research' model is
problematic. I confess to having been part of that movement, early 90s when
funding agencies were desperate for arguments to legitimize funding... I was
among a few who said, "fine, whatever... consider fine art as a kind of
research..." I knew at the time that this was wrong fundamentally, but also
believed, 70's flower child (optimist, idealisti) that I am, that it didn't
matter how you legitimize it, the point was to keep the money flowing so
that art could at least have a chance to "win out in the end." WRONG WRONG
WRONG (it turns out)
Margaret wrote:
>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.
Margaret's starting point is right... we are changing, and some of you (us)
are embracing change more than others.. not that it matters, it all works
out in the end, but for the sake of argument, if you want to "know" what's
going on, either you are a luddite or you are a champion of change... really
is there an option other than the latter?
Mary Anne wrote:
>But, as I said previously, the degree context can provide studio resources;
exactly! The issues with 'praxis' are, um, hello? practical... If you are
not connecting your students to the backstory of art and the people they
need to know then you are failing. Anything else belongs to a different
discourse, not art, but art history, theory, philosophy, all very
interesting, I'm not saying otherwise, but not, in the end, art, after all.
Kevin wrote:
>I'll humbly confess to applying to
>college out of high school based on colleges I knew of from watching
>Basketball on television.
Kevin, dude! you rock! the confessional always work for me (ex-Catholic
don't you know!) (btw your post is WAY too long! geez, get practical here
please, this is not a discourse like in the journals where one gets
published and the retort four years later in another university journal...
we need bite sized chunks to debate:)
So, Danny's point that the decline of the dissertation (defended) as the
authenticating benchmark of achievement is right. Either it is about
endorsement, or it isn't... and if you want to go down the road of it isn't,
then why stop at "sort of."... you folks, I take, are mostly academics...
it's up to you to rock the firggin' boat!
I offer the following:
a) university must be free.. we have to lose the debate that education is
related to 'bums in seats', how most universities justify their programs;
more students = more salaries = more institution = good.
b) students need to be 'delimited'... we cannot continue to support the
power relationship of "I have the degree, and you don't"; and that is up to
you, front line workers.
c) expect that the best will exhaust the university before you have a chance
to 'qualify' them.... I know this invokes the myth of genius, but really, is
it so hard? when you get that really remarkable student, give your class
over to them! send them to your faculty meetings! I'm not kidding. Otherwise
you lose them, and every single bit of your credibility.
d) creativity in management: it is very ironic that there is this whole buzz
in business management circles around creativity, Daniel Pink being the
best/worst offender. I emailed him. He knows nothing about art! Isnt' that
amazing?
You, me, this whole group, imho, needs to seriously mount an approach/attach
on what the corporate world thinks creativity is. That said, if it isn't
going on at Apple, then it probably isn't happening at all...
Robert Labossiere
www.robertlabossiere.com
www.yyzartistsoutlet.org
www.klooj.net/never
www.klooj.net/hmv
I should say that I strongly believe the "big bad world out there" is worth
avoiding and if PhDs, praxis-based or otherwise, provide some refuge, good
on them, but isn't the reason we think of that world out there as "bad" that
it is so inadequate... it's not just that money drives almost everything,
but that the institutional/heirarchical framework of the workplace does not
well support creativity, with it's often long "down" times, false starts,
diversions, or the flashes of insight that come without a legacy of
stepped, steady progress.
There are concurrent streams of thinking on this issue, e.g. creativity in
business management;
----- Original Message -----
From: "Danny Butt" <db at dannybutt.net>
To: "IDC list" <idc at bbs.thing.net>
Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2007 7:43 PM
Subject: Subject: Re: [iDC] Praxis-based Ph.D.s
Thanks Margaret for the summary and leading the discussion. There are
many insightful points made by all here and I wish I had time to
acknowledge each of them/you in more detail within the temporal
constraints of the mailing list format.
Ultimately I share the view put forward by Simon and Margaret that
creative practice makes a contribution to a field of knowledge/
experience and should ideally be recognised as such within
institutional hierarchies. But I think Simon makes a very important
point about the ultimately conservative nature of academic
institutions and the very idea of authenticating contributions to
knowledge, and that this is in tension with the creative
practitioner's approach to knowledge, particularly the artist, for
whom (to quote NZ critic Jon Bywater) "eccentric and catachrestic
readings of work... are not only common but arguably productive".
Here I value Pamela's excellent distinctions between the PhD/MFA
educational genres.
This tension is constitutive of the artist/museum relationship as
well of course, but I think there is a different kind of political
problematic at work for people such as Margaret and Mary Anne when
initiating creative-practice PhD programmes. From my point of view,
the practice-based PhD will inevitably contribute to the corrosion of
various mechanisms of disciplinary authority embodied in the
dissertation. We would then expect a push-back effect from
disciplines that are threatened by these developments and I think it
would be good if, collectively, we were able to speculate on some of
the effects of this political struggle on the institutional power of
art departments located within research universities. To bring
practice into the research game will bring with it certain levels of
managerial oversight and accountabilities to institutional bodies
outside the art environment, and I have to remain agnostic about the
overall benefits from such risky moves, even as I suggest that some
experimentation with these is necessary. Perhaps we will eventually
look back with fondness to the idea of the MFA as the terminal degree
for the artist/educator?
In that last paragraph I'm thinking through a potential homology with
Spivak's account in "Death of a Discipline" of the institutional
trajectory of cultural studies in relation to comparative literature
and area studies. It's an account I find compelling in its
articulation of how difficult the baby/bathwater dynamics are with
interdisciplinary work, and how full of unintended consequences the
short-term pressures for institutional change can be.
Warm regards,
Danny
On 14/01/2007, at 1:38 PM, Margaret Morse wrote:
> Dear IDCs,
> We need more models of the practice-based Ph.D., including more from
> myself. Thanks to Mary Anne and the on the art-practice Ph.D. degree
> within a polytechnical institute and Simon on the British Ph.D. model,
> plus more summary approaches to other programs by Chris and Mark.
> Danny raised the professional school model; I wonder myself whether the
> profession of artist is akin enough to the guilds of engineers, lawyers,
> doctors, public health officials, academic administrators, etc. to make
> the professional degree an option. The art market plays out more
> selectively and differently than the market for the services above. In
> the US, professional school students often owe significantly higher
> tuition, paid by their corporation or through loans recouped through
> later earnings. On the other hand, would the Plymouth model, CiAA and
> other instantiations be an example of an existing, successful
> professional model of the practice-based Ph.D.?
> I am wondering why it is taking me so long--other than my health--
> to get down to business and describe my department's Ph.D. proposal. On
> one hand, I am worrying about how much to reveal of what is a 107 page
> formulaic (format mandated for Ph.D. proposals in the California system)
> and not entirely processed proposal. I am not sure how truly a public
> document it is yet. Furthermore, the emails keep coming (thank deity)
> and I don't want to get behind in something I am (very light- handedly)
> moderating.
> So, I will share my take on the posts. Then I need to prepare highlights
> of the proposed UCSC Film and Digital Media Ph.D.--
> obviously another day's work. Two things are different about it than
> what has been discussed so far below: 1-rather than having to choose one
> possibility in the mix of academic and creative research offered by Danny
> Butt, we have allowed for all three. One option is indeed an art project
> itself as creative research without an additional thesis. Furthermore,
> academic research itself may be expressed in media format. I will copy
> the section on this and our rationale in the Ph.D. description. 2- We
> envision the MFA as one possible gateway to the Ph.D. Would this satisfy
> Tom or Mark? I believe Mary Anne's Ph.D. also envisions this possibility.
> (Our MA would be the default degree for those who do not qualify to
> proceed to the dissertation project.)
>
> In the meantime, provocative questions have been posed and positions
> taken. I'll identify and compile three of the areas of discussion raised
> so far below:
>
> 1. The MFA versus the Ph.D.
>
> Tom Sherman: "While the boundaries between roles in a digital culture are
> fast
> disappearing, the gap between the street and the university is certainly
> getting wider. My question is are these PhD studio programs closing more
> doors than they are opening?"
> Mary Anne answered with positive contributions a practice-based Ph.D.
> can make.
> Chris raised the problem of the devaluation of the MFA again fairly
> vehemently in a later post, posing a barrage of questions around:
> --careerism and the "professionally sanctioned digital artists" who seek
> academic and corporate positions
> --whether the practice-based Ph.D is a model of academic art akin to 19th
> institutions?
> --is this a mean of differentiating art in the research university from
> art schools? (marketing?)
> --How will this PHD be operative within the art market system - is it
> necessary?
> --"Is this move a more accurate reflection of larger cultural and
> socio-economic values?"
>
> The issue of 2 year/3 year MFA came up earlier (Mary Anne)-the 2 year
> inadequate for anything but a breathless learning project but mandated
> economically by both institution and students, the 3 year preferred as
> providing a more adequate creative/academic foundation. Should the MFA--
> never accepted at equivalent value to the Ph.D. in academia-- be enhanced
> in value or abolished in favor of the MA-Ph.D. system? Chris: "But, of
> course, with a PHD, a much wider range of employment options seems
> probable, no?" Mark's suggestion, a Ph.D.-M.F.A. dual degree.
>
> Both Tom and Simon question the motives and necessity for most Ph.Ds.:
> --Simon: "If the [Ph.D. applicant] candidate answers that they wish to
> establish a new approach to
> creativity, where academic research becomes a central element in their
> working practice and they wish to contextualise significant aspects of
> what they do in that environment then I assume they appreciate what a PhD
> is for."
>
> 2.What body of knowledge does this practice-based Ph.D. signify or draw
> on? Is there a contradiction between academic and creative practices?
>
> --David raises a question about knowledge claims of a practice- based
> Ph.D.
> --Danny's first question brought up the research/practice relationship
> with a degree program, reiterated in Chris's question "institutionalized
> bifurcation of research and practice - how will that be actualized within
> the PHD?" Danny posed three options:
> "1) The PhD is fundamentally a research training qualification, and in
> different countries and institutions the research/creative practice
> homologies are more or less developed. Is the practice component seen as
> i) research in itself, ii) somehow equivalent to research but not exactly
> the same, or iii) not research but a reflexive form of practice which
> requires academic writing to secure its contribution to knowledge (or
> transferability)? In my view, there are no right answers to these
> questions but they are more or less determined by the institutions
> responsible for the money, with governments taking a much stronger role
> in the Commonwealth countries than in the US, and a range of different
> approaches among the non-English speaking countries which others will
> know more about than me. The point is that one needs to have a viable
> definition of research, and be prepared to make a strong case for the
> role that practice plays in the research qualification.
> --Danny's subsequent question on how practice should be evaluated and
> the url of a Ph.D. design list. Simon notes the importance of
> benchmarks.
> --Chris: Further discussions is necessary as to what practices these
> programs may embody and, subsequently, produce Š or continue to reproduce
> in terms of academic legacies and the self-replication of research
> trajectories. How does one reconcile this with the implicit
> underpinnings of creative practices - how does one redefine such a
> discipline via the mechanisms of an institutionalized infrastructure and
> ideologies?
> --Mark: Beyond the sociopolitical effects of devaluing an MFA, Mark
> questions "imposing inherently wrong academic models, which effectively
> snuff out what is in fact, not just a series of courses and academic
> thresholds, but a culture of knowledge making practices that as with all
> cultures, are constituted by informal modes of producing themselves."
> Furthermore, he is constructing "a genealogy for a specific
> epistemological practice that has emerged since then, but has not yet
> been recognized as a coherent discourse network ( roughly in Foucault's
> sense)... Artists, traditionally, have objects but not knowledge." He,
> like Chris, sees this as 19th c as the epistemological model. Meanwhile,
> " The post-1840 discourse network for which my work establishes a
> genealogy, constitutes a counter-tradition. It does indeed exist, but has
> not been recognized as a coherent discourse, in part because its elements
> lie scattered about and have never been collected.
> historical contexts that need to be addressed, and on which to build and
> make the case for constituting structures, curricula, and evaluative
> strategies for praxis-based knowledges, at a theoretical -
> epistemological - level. I think this would be pragmatically useful for
> program proposals, along the lines of including a "history" section. And
> I think it is imperative to do so. My point is that there is a need to
> historicize these projects of curricula/ structure design, that the
> genealogy i've extracted is but one among many, and i would like to see a
> taxonomy of such genealogies developed." I welcome Mark's project and
> await news of more of his findings in his book or when he is ready to
> share them. Note that both Danny and Simon could be cross-referenced
> here.
>
> 3. This area of question that is more diffuse and harder to formulate
> having to with whether the world and /or media art have changed in a way
> that makes the practice-based Ph.D. more plausible and useful
> Mark notes "The higher status that literary knowledge has, is a
> historical problem." Does print and literature indeed still possess
> higher status? Have more styles of learning and modes of communication
> become part of the ground of everyday life and academia?
> --Robert suggests that there is something different about studying new
> media--mentioned in my previous post. Digital arts certainly elide the
> legitimacy of borders based on medium.
> --Tom: Digital technologies and networks have knocked down so many doors.
> Interdiscipinary studies continue to try to break down disciplinary
> segregation in universities.
> --Simon: In the case of practice based PhD's this process is still in
> development. It will probably never stop if such PhD's are of value, but
> as a new approach to formal research this PhD model is in an intense
> period of discovery and uncertainty. Evaluative methodologies are in flux
> and debate over what is
> and isn't appropriate rages (as well as any academic debate can rage?).
>
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--
Danny Butt
db at dannybutt.net | http://www.dannybutt.net
Suma Media Consulting | http://www.sumamedia.com
Private Bag MBE P145, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand
Ph: +64 21 456 379 | Fx: +64 21 291 0200
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