PGPD research paper
Research Question: How can we distinguish an artist’s practice as research?
David MacWilliam, MAC07221216
MA_DA Year Two (part-time)
Abstract:
This essay outlines and examines the defining qualities and characteristics that distinguish an artist’s practice as university research. It clarifies the difference between the art practices of artists creating works of art in their studios and artists making art as research within publicly funded university environments. This paper also distinguishes art research from other traditions of academic research and considers how the process of making art advances knowledge in that field.
This paper examines the language used to describe both Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Research/Creation Grants in Fine Arts and the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) practice-led research grants, and discusses how these descriptors are instructive for a better understanding of artists research and considers how these characteristics are driving current art research within universities. Finally, the author considers how we assess practice-based research, and considers whether there are determining characteristics beyond originality, quality and impact that measure the greater significance of any research.
A. INTRODUCTION
In this essay, I will present the qualities and characteristics that distinguish an artist’s practice as university research, and then consider how this research contributes to a field of knowledge. As a visual artist with an active professional practice who works within a university, I am trying to understand the issues related to art practice as research as they affect me on a personal level. I will examine the language used by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to describe their Research/Creation Grants in Fine Arts along with the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) practice-led research grants.
These descriptors help clarify and distinguish the differences, as seen by these granting agencies, between the art practices of artists creating works of art in their studio and practice based research made by artists within publicly funded university environments. With granting agencies and universities relying on these characteristics and qualities as a basis for assessing and funding artists’ research, I am curious to what extent these characteristics are determining the kind of artworks that then gets made by artists within the university environment? I will also distinguish between the issues related to practice based art research from other traditions of academic research and consider the different types of knowledge important to the process of making of art.
How do we assess successful practice-based art research? This essay focuses on contemporary visual arts and will not include the larger categories of the fine and performing arts. While I think we can agree that impact is a good measure of the importance of all research, I will discuss the necessity and importance of assessing this research within the larger art world.
B. DEFINING RESEARCH
I believe artists make objects, artifacts or ‘works of art’ in an attempt to make sense of and to understand the world. I would describe serious artmaking as a reflective, recursive process, and artworks produced are the discursive product of this reflection. We learn and gain knowledge through the process of realizing our ideas through making art. We then think about what we have made and based on that reflection, we then make more art. There is knowledge embodied in the act of making artworks, as well as in the artworks themselves. Later in this essay I will clarify the differences between the process of making and what is made and how this practice and these objects advance knowledge.
How and when is an artist’s practice research? If we look at the historical definitions of research, we find its roots are from the French verb rechercher (1529) ‘to seek out, search closely’, and in 1577, research is defined in the OED as an ‘act of searching closely’. Contemporary dictionaries define research as a ‘diligent and systematic inquiry or investigation into a subject and to investigate carefully and extensively’.
These definitions of research mesh closely with what many artists do in their studios: typically a systematic approach to making works of art based on interests, ideas and materials, tempered by technical skills and abilities, in relation to particular aesthetic values. This is what the AHRC have described as ‘purely a development of an individual’s professional practice’ (AHRC Research Funding Guide, 2008: p.27) which unfortunately does not qualify as research or for research funding. For an art practice to be considered as research, there needs to be some distinct differences between a studio art practice, and the requirement for documented questions, objectives, contexts, reflections, methods and outcomes that would distinguish the artwork as an artist/researcher within a publicly funded university environment.
Here the AHRC definition of research and criteria are instructive:
The AHRC’s definition of research is primarily concerned with the definition of research processes, rather than outputs. This definition is built around three key features and your application must fully address all of these in order to be considered eligible for support:
• it must define a series of research questions, issues or problems that will be addressed in the course of the research. It must also define its aims and objectives in terms of seeking to enhance knowledge and understanding relating to the questions, issues or problems to be addressed
• it must specify a research context for the questions, issues or problems to be addressed. You must specify why it is important that these particular questions, issues or problems should be addressed; what other research is being or has been conducted in this area; and what particular contribution this project will make to the advancement of creativity, insights, knowledge and understanding in this area
• it must specify the research methods for addressing and answering the research questions, issues or problems. You must state how, in the course of the research project, you will seek to answer the questions, address the issues or solve the problems. You should also explain the rationale for your chosen research methods and why you think they provide the most appropriate means by which to address the research questions, issues or problems. (AHRC Research Funding Guide 2008: p.26)
In Canada, in 2003, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) initiated a funded, three year pilot project “Research and Creation Grants in Fine Arts” for artists working within universities. Artists working within Canadian universities are eligible to apply for grants of up to $250,000 (CDN$) for up to a three year program of research. To receive one of these grants artists also have to understand a similar definition and meet certain similar criteria:
Research/creation (specific to the Research/Creation Grants in Fine Arts program): any research activity or approach to research that forms an essential part of a creative process or artistic discipline and that directly fosters the creation of literary/artistic works. The research must address clear research questions, offer theoretical contextualization within the relevant field or fields of literary/artistic inquiry, and present a well considered methodological approach. Both the research and the resulting literary/artistic works must meet peer standards of excellence and be suitable for publication, public performance or viewing. (SSHRC Research/Creation in Fine Arts, 2008)
For an art practice to be considered as research as defined by these funding agencies, and also to be eligible for other research funds within a university, artists as researchers are required to 1) explicitly define and articulate research questions; 2) reflect and contextualize this research within the field; 3) document this research with specific methodologies with defined outcomes; then 4) disseminate this research and make this new knowledge and understanding public, with the goal of enhancing knowledge within their field; and finally 5) write an assessment report for the funding agency to justify and report how these funds were spent.
In light of these requirements, I will now try to unpack these first four characteristics of artistic research and touch on some complications. I will start with the ‘research question’: how many artists first set themselves explicit problems to answer? One of the challenges in visual arts research is that the research question isn’t always apparent at the start of the artmaking process. We often begin making things without really knowing why or what we are doing; it is through the act of making and reflection that the research question becomes clear.
If research is answering and reflecting on questions, and there needs to be a research question that drives the research, when does that question need to be articulated? This is a dilemma, because based on the granting criteria, the research question needs to be articulated first to qualify for funding; yet in fact, as I just noted, this question usually emerges after and from within and throughout the process. One big danger of framing the question too early is that the artwork may simply become illustrative: an illustration of an idea rather than an investigation that becomes clearer over time. This approach to discovering a core research question is out of sync with research funding opportunities.
Second, the artist needs to be a reflective practitioner. This makes good sense to me, as I would suggest all artists use a process of critical self-reflection, tempered with an understanding of the field of inquiry that situates their practice. The complication is that this takes time. Sometimes it takes many years for an artist’s research concerns to really emerge and become apparent. This typically happens over time, through a process of reflection on the artworks being made and looking at the field: visiting colleagues studios, seeing exhibitions and visiting museums and galleries.
Third, methods and methodologies: what are the methods being used to conduct this research? For universities in the United Kingdom in particular, many ‘practice-based’ arts researchers have adapted a reflective method of critical inquiry and problem solving from the social sciences called Action Research. The four steps of Action Research (Carr and Kemmins, 1986: p162) closely resemble the methods of the art critique that many artists are familiar with from their schooling.
Action Research is a rhetorical, recursive method of ‘reflective practice’ (Schon. 1983) that offers a strategy for viewing artworks within an art practice. In a series of steps, first described by Kurt Lewin (Lewin. 1946) artists first move through a ‘planning stage’ (1. plan) where they research and gather data; then the second ‘action stage’ of making something (2. act); then third the ‘results phase’ where output is monitored (3. observe); and then finally the ‘reflection phase’ where the artwork is observed, evaluated (4. reflect). This reflection, then leads to a revised plan for new works and the cycle of artmaking starts again. (Lewin. 1946)
Practice-based arts contrast reflection-in-action and practice, with reflection on action and a practice where the outcomes sit, in part, within a desire to learn from the experience of making. The practice of making comes from within a specific discipline of making, rather than a necessity for further action.
Fourth, making the outcomes public. Outcomes can be ‘multi-modal’ and take on a variety of forms within the visual arts, but traditionally they will result in artworks or artifacts that are exhibited and made public. The venues for exhibition may vary broadly, from museums or galleries to websites made available over the internet.
C. RESEARCH THROUGH ART
Christopher Frayling wrote Research in Art and Design (Frayling. 1993), an important essay in framing an initial argument for why ‘practice-based’ research in art and design qualifies as research along with the need for related university PhD credentialing for this form of research. That argument has been well made by Frayling and others and has been won, at least certainly in the UK and Australia with many universities offering practice-based PhD degrees in Fine Arts (we are still seeing the debate around this credential being played out in Canada and the United States). In that essay he distinguishes between: ‘research into art’, ‘research for art’, and ‘research through art’ (Frayling, 1993: p5). These distinctions are useful to the extent that they help him focus his essay, which primarily draws on examples from popular film representations of the artist, however his historical examples of artists and artworks, while they may have been useful at the time, have little relevance to contemporary artists practices.
When examining Frayling’s essay I am specifically interested in when he considers what artists make as research, so I leave ‘research into art’ as the focus of art historians and critics as these investigations consider the art object from a theoretical distance and reflect upon it. Artists may come to refine and discover innovative techniques, methods and materials in the making of their work, which may lead to ‘research for art’, through innovations with new and materials or techniques. However, it is the third category: ‘research through art’ or artmaking, which I am focusing on was for Frayling was the most fraught distinction. He got stuck on exactly what the AHRC have now clearly articulated as the distinction between professional artists practice and art research.
Michael Biggs paper The Rhetoric of Research (Biggs. 2002) focuses on why Frayling found this third category problematic and he points out that Frayling doesn’t make clear how ‘artifacts embody thinking and fail to make explicit their knowledge and understanding’ (Biggs, 2002: p.114). He goes on to argue here and elsewhere (Biggs. 2004) that neither writing through texts nor the art objects themselves are comprehensive in this regard, but rather Biggs believes both are necessary and mutually co-dependent in our understanding of new knowledge.
D. RESEARCH BY ARTISTS
One of the key criteria for quantitative, scientific research that is concerned with specific objective outcomes, is objectivity: where there needs to be a fundamental indifference as to who performs the research. This may also true of other qualitative scholarly research in the social sciences and humanities which both often rely on objective research surveys and methods. Practice-based artistic inquiries are qualitative and discursive, and there is no theoretical distance or separation between the researcher and the research artwork or object. As artists we carry out this studio-based inquiry and research ourselves, without the objective distance of other types of research. Here, as research is necessarily performed from ‘within’ by artists through making art, where creating art is part of the recursive, reflective research process; the artist is also the researcher and objectivity is impossible, but rather the art making process folds back on itself as a result of reflective feedback and is essential to both the research process and the results. Artmaking always lacks the objectivity that scientific research is predicated on. We need to ask then, what then are the methodological issues raised when the subject/practitioner is also the researcher?
The main defining characteristic of practice-based research is that it is carried out by artists. In fact, I would suggest as Henk Borgdorff notes, ‘only artists and not scholars or academics are capable of conducting such practice-based research’ (Borgdorff, 2005: p16) There is no fundamental separation between practice and the theories that are reflexively interwoven to the fabric of this type of research.
This seems one of the biggest hurdles for most theorists trying to understand practice-based research. I believe this is partly because of the anxiety within the funding agencies and the university about how this research is viewed by others outside of the discipline. Within the university, along with teaching and service, research is an important part of how all faculty members are assessed and evaluated for promotion and tenure. However, as the fine arts are relatively new to universities, accepting artmaking as research within the university, does not always sit easily with other more historical academic types of research.
In writing about university postgraduate programs Neil Brown points out:
Making art is variously represented in university postgraduate programs as a method of research, as the outcome of research, or as a research equivalent. As a method of research the visual arts are employed with increasing confidence as a mode of ethnographic inquiry into cultural objects and events. Considered as the outcome of research, artworks are represented as the product of poetic, technical, and other measures of cultural investigation. As a research equivalent artworks are accorded the status of research but only insofar as an imprecise analogy can be drawn between the value of innovation in art and science. (Brown, 2003: p2)
We are still developing a language for research in the visual arts. As noted above, this issue is of particular interest to funding agencies and universities, because these institutions are funding research across many disciplines so comparisons and equivalencies are paramount, as funds and employment are at stake.
E. NEW KNOWLEDGE
If we are to agree that one of the goals of research is, as the AHRC states: ‘to create new knowledge’ or ‘an original contribution to the body of knowledge’ (AHRC Research Funding Guide, 2008: p.27) then it is important to understand what knowledge is, and how research contributes and creates new knowledge. The Oxford English Dictionary defines knowledge variously as (i) expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. Other dictionary definitions define knowledge as ‘acquaintance with facts, truths or principles, as from a study or investigation also awareness, and a state of knowing.’ Knowledge is also used to mean the confident understanding of a subject with the ability to use it for a specific purpose. This makes sense in relation to artmaking as well as to research in any other field.
What do we mean by the term ‘new knowledge’ in the context of research in art and design? If we focus on the kind of research that artists do and the knowledge that is gained in making art, then this kind of knowledge is qualitative and is embodied in objects, in artworks, then I believe we mean several things. First we are interested in natural knowledge or practical knowledge (know-how) in that we need to know how to make something and then in the more sophisticated discursive knowledge (knowing about) something. Here we need to distinguish between the artist’s practice of doing (making) and what is made or the object or artifact that has been made.
Michael Biggs considers what we mean by ‘the advancement of knowledge’ and ‘making a contribution to knowledge’ in art and asks the question: what is the nature of knowledge in art and how is that knowledge is embedded in artworks? (Biggs. 2002a) He notes that our cultural readings of art appear to prioritize the critic and what is written, over the artist and the “the work of art” and he rhetorically considers whether artifacts alone have the capacity to embody knowledge:
Have we somehow conspired to arrange matters so that knowledge is always what we say about something rather than what we show about it? If so, that would account for the difficulty of using objects as constituting or communicating knowledge. Is the problem that the whole concept of knowledge and research arises out of words rather than actions, or do we simply have too narrow a range of examples ie. only lexical examples? Have we defined ourselves into a corner?
The core for me is a constructivist problem. Have we created our concept of knowledge through examples and peer recognition?: to which I think the answer is no. Or does our concept of knowledge arise as a result of the rationalist debate, as an abstract entity that is conceptually constituted rather than manifested and embodies in examples of experience? Does epistemology not only study the nature of knowledge but construct the concept of knowledge in the first place? This would certainly explain the apparent priority of the word over the artefact. (Biggs, 2002b: p1)
If I reflect on my most profound artmaking experiences, it is hard to understand how to characterize the knowledge gained. I would characterize them as moments of deep focus, when I am fully immersed in what I am doing, when I am ‘lost in the moment’ of the process of making the work; in what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi calls ‘flow’, (Csíkszentmihályi. 1996) where there is tacit knowledge, in a summation of materiality, deep skills, ‘techne’ (Heidegger. 1954), where my use of materials comes from the confidence of many years of practice. This is a description of the ‘ineffable knowledge’ of an artist engaged in the making of things. The articulation of what knowledge is remains elusive and visual artists need to take responsibility for our own definitions of knowledge.
F. OUTCOMES AND ASSESSMENT
Interesting ideas come about through curiosity. As artist researchers, we need to know what else is being done and the size of our field of research. It is fair to assume that if we are interested in something, we are not alone: others must be interested in similar research questions. Who else is doing similar research? How do I find out about related research in my field and how do they find out about me?
One of the characteristics distinguishing artistic research in publicly funded institutions like universities from artworks made in artists studios, is that it is based on the rigour of a peer review process and needs to be publicly accountable through outcome and assessment. This is not only part of good research practices but it relates to funding process. What is the research environment where this research is typically taking place? Is it in an artist’s studio, in a university laboratory, or as we may increasingly discover, in the virtual studio of an artist’s laptop computer? In addition to the need for defined outcomes (which are typically artifacts) this research must be disseminated and tested. Public exhibitions function as primary sites for evidence of art research and also operate as a research tool for assessment, as exhibitions offer a forum for public discussion and feedback.
How do we define and measure good research, what are the qualities that make it significant and how does this relate to making an original contribution to a body of knowledge? For any artist it could be important enough that the new knowledge gained through research is individually transformative, but to measure the true significance of a body of art research, we need go beyond the university environment and consider the broader milieu of the contemporary artworld. If the research results and outputs, the artworks within an exhibition, are to be held in high esteem and are considered world leading, internationally excellent and recognized as an essential point of reference, I would suggest that peer review, critical acclaim within the university as well as the larger artworld are all measures for works of great significance. Not all research will attain this level of significance and make such a dramatic original contribution, but research assessments within the university and funding bodies are all built on this kind of criteria.
G. CONCLUSION
Describing and qualifying the characteristics that define research in the visual arts has become an important issue for artists working within the university environment. It is important to identify and articulate these qualities in that it brings those activities on par with other academics in the university as well broadening our understanding of art. As this essay points out, in order to distinguish between artistic practices of ‘ordinary’ professional artists and artists as researchers it is by making what is typically implicit for artists, explicit: through articulating the research question, having defined research methodologies, reflecting on what is produced, and making the research evident through an exhibition of the artifacts produced.
Both the SSHRC in Canada and the AHRC UK have been dedicating funds towards ‘research/creation’ and ‘practice-led research. What remains to be seen is the impact that these funded research endeavors have in a broader sense. For the research that artists carry out within universities to be important, it must have value and create and contribute new knowledge to the field. I believe for this research to be truly important then it also needs to have an impact and be seen to resonate within the broader publics of the contemporary artworld.
Reference and Bibliography:
Books:
Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986) Becoming Critical: Education, Knowledge and Action Research, Lewes: Falmer
Csíkszentmihályi, M. (1996) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row
Sullivan, G. (2005), Art Practice as Research, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications
Biggs, M. (2002a), The Rhetoric of Research. IN: Durling D. & Shackleton J. (Eds.) Common Ground Proceedings of the Design Research Society International Conference at Brunel University, pp111-118. Stoke-on Trent, UK: Staffordshire Universiity Press
Biggs, M. (2004) Learning from Experience: Approaches to the Experiential Component of Practice-based Research IN: Forsking, Reflection, Utveckling. p6-21. Stockholm: Vetenskapsradet
Heidegger, M. (1954) Building Dwelling Thinking, tr. Hofstadter, A. IN: Krell, D.F. (ed.) 1993, Basic Writings: Martin Heidegger, pp. 347- 363. London: Routledge
Lewin, K. (1946) Action Research IN: Gertrude W. Lewin (Ed.). Kurt Lewin: Resolving social conflicts; selected papers on group dynamics. New York: Harper & Row.
Journals:
Frayling, C. (1993), Research in Art and Design, London: RCA Research Papers, Volume 1, Number 1 1993/4
World Wide Web:
Arts & Humanities Research Council UK (2008), Research Funding Guide. (Internet) AHRC UK, Available from <http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Pages/default.aspx> (Accessed 24 July, 2008)
Smith, M.K., (1996; 2001, 2007), Action Research (Internet) The Encyclopedia of Informal Education, Available from
http://www.infed.org/research/b-actres.htm (Accessed 3 August, 2008)
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (2008), Research/Creation Grants in Fine Arts. (Internet) SSHRC, Available from
< http://www.sshrc.ca/web/apply/program_descriptions/fine_arts_e.asp#1a> (Accessed 24 July, 2008)
Conferences:
Kunst als Onderzoak (Art as Research). (6 February 2004). Felix Meritis, Amsterdam. Borgdorff, H. (2005) The Debate on Research in the Arts. Amsterdam
PARIP 2003 National Conference, (11-14 September 2003). University of Bristol, Biggs, M. (2003) The Role of “The Work” in Research. Bristol
CD-ROM:
Brown, Neil (2003) Art as a practice of Research. IN: Proceedings of the 31st InSEA World Congress, August 2002. InSEA Member Presentations: papers and Workshops CD-ROM. New York: The Center for International Art Education, Inc., Teachers College, Columbia University.
E-Journals:
Biggs, M. (2002b) Editorial: the concept of knowledge in art and design. (Internet) Working Papers in Art and Design 2, Available from <http://www.herts.ac.uk/artdes/research/papers/wpades/vol2/intro02.html> (Accessed 5 August, 2008)
Pakes, A. (2004) Art as Action or Art as Object? The Embodiment of Knowledge in Practice as Research (Internet) Working Papers in Art and Design 3, Available from <http://www.herts.ac.uk/artdes/research/papers/wpades/vol3/apfull.html>
(Accessed August 3, 2008)
Reilly, L. (2002) An Alternative Model of “Knowledge” for the Arts. (Internet) Working Papers in Art and Design 2, Available from <http://www.herts.ac.uk/artdes/research/papers/wpades/vol2/reillyfull.html>
(Accessed August 3, 2008)
Roberts, P. (1998) Rereading Lyotard: Knowledge, Commodification and Higher Education (Internet) Electronic Journal of Sociology, Available from
<http://sys.glotta.ntua.gr/Dialogos/Politics/1998_roberts.html>
(Accessed 5 August, 2008)
