The current site is at http://www.mdx.ac.uk// while the designer Roberto Battista's site is at http://www.robat.scl.net
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· research profile
Mission Statement
R... exists to further understanding of how professional artists research new processes and forms in making new work, by working with professional artists and others
Aims:
to establish new understandings of creative methods and their application in practice-as-research, extending knowledge-bases in these areas;
to explore and challenge traditional hypothesis-centred and critical-analytical research methodologies established within the university;
to redefine notions of research within the "economies of professional creative practice" and the university;
to profile art-making as work; the arts disciplines and interdisciplinarity; the pleasures of discovery and the notion of the emergent premise in art-making;
to reposition creative practices in relation to contextual issues including new technologies, co- and joint authorship; creative-interpretative synergies;
to establish a critical mass of artist-researchers, meeting regularly, to instigate new creative work across established disciplines;
to provide a variety of structures and infrastructures to support artist-researchers in the definition of their research, and the making of their work;
to provide an infrastructure for practice-led and artist-informed postgraduate study within the University,
to develop new modes of mapping and disseminating material specific to creative process, prioritising new technologies and "mixed-mode" mapping;
to further develop criteria for definition and evaluation of creative practice-as-research, as part of the wider national debate;
to contribute to the development of a national infrastructure supporting practice-as-research, at the interface between academic and other centres of art-making and its study;
to communicate shifts in theories of professional art-making to the wider cultural industries.
Objectives
R... will set up a variety of structures that enable practicing artist-researchers to pursue advanced research into art-making, while also providing opportunities for artists to interface with a range of elements within the traditional university structure (e.g. higher degree teaching and research). If our core research imperative is practice-led research, we must support a wide variety of practices, enabling artist-researchers to define their own research questions as they attempt to develop a definitional and analytical language wth regard to their own practice. In addition, will support the formation of research teams centred around particular research projects.
’s overall objective is to modify the ‘knowledge-status’ of practice-as-research, prioritising the roles and responsibilities of the art-makers themselves. To this complex end, will enable the artists themselves to:
- interrogate their own practice, asking questions about its own structures, outcomes and the means to articulate these;
- break new ground and reflect critically on the ways that ground is being broken;
- utilise experimental forms of authorship, such as clearly-defined collaborative methods, while defining those methods;
- use new or unexpected means of distribution, and describe those means, their relevance and their possible impact on the making of the work;
- use new technologies in ways that fundamentally affect the making of the work and its outcomes, defining the ways in which the technologies have affected the making process and/or vice versa.
A primary objective is the building of bridges between the university sector and the equally fortified towers of the cultural industries. A significant number of activities take place in a public context, open to all comers. We seek to find mechanisms and opportunities to contribute to the national debate concerned with the knowledge-status of and the means to evaluate art-practices to professional standards.
Process as research: in terms of practice-as-research, is principally concerned with processes in art-making, rather than with the outcomes (the more usual focus of - for example - performance studies in the university sector). Our concern, therefore, is with the investigation of creative processes. While it may be argued that such processes are difficult to identify, and that in seeking to innovate, they necessarily lie outside reflections on established practice, seeks to identify commonalities in the making processes across established disciplines, and to identify the professional engagement of the artist as worker.
Key immediate objectives and strategies include the recording and making available to a wider audience the artist’s mapping of her or his creative processes. Many artists already keep notebooks of work, but these are rarely referred to in retrospect, or used as a mapping tool for the making process. will exploit a number of strategies for observing ad mapping practice, including third person and participant-observation and the formation of research teams.
Critical reflection requires that we consider whether mapping techniques themselves affect creative process, and to what effect. It is vital to acknowledge that some artists have refused to define their own practices, and resist definition by others, because those processes constitute one aspect of the artist’s hard-won intellectual property. Hence reflection by others needs not to be undertaken as a further means to analyse the art-product: it needs, instead, to be undertaken from within the real-time and space of the making-process itself.
seeks to influence the larger debate about the ways in which a nation supports the making of new work and how creative processes can be promoted by a supportive infrastructure. provides opportunities to bring practitioners, presenters, funders, academics and policy makers together to discuss some of these issues, working with our partners in the Arts Council and the South Bank. supports a wide range of practice-as research processes and seeks to provide funds and facilities for the making of work, governed by already-established management and selection criteria within the School of Art, Design and Performing Arts.
Strategic Placement
R... was established in 1999 as a major, artist-driven research centre in performance arts. Its
central strategy rests on the appointment of an outstanding group of professional artists, committed to examining and questioning their own practice:
- it seeks to bridge perceived gaps between the academic and cultural sectors.
- it encourages artist-researchers to question theoretical accounts of their work, to explore research aspects of professional practice, and to consider their theoretical implications;
- it brings together practitioners, performance theoreticians, policy-makers, students, and general audiences on a regular basis to discuss important questions related to contemporary practice.
- it aims to carry out in art-professional practice what some other research centres tend to interpret and write about.
Strategically, has been recognised by arts practitioners as a key instigator, particularly with regard to contemporary practice issues, of attempts to deal with the critical gap between academic sectors and the professional art-making sectors.
Practice-as-research is now widely recognised as a highly problematised area of considerable strategic importance to the research community, particularly with the emergence of an increasing numbers of practice-led doctoral awards. . Much of the debate surrounding practice-led research has centred on concerns about establishing recognised evaluation criteria for practice-based PhDs. From this perspective, it is important to draw a clear distinction between practice-based or practice-as-research to professional standards, and practice-informed research. The latter area is well-established, and generally it is undertaken through and produces writing in complex registers.
How can the university sector determine what art-making practices constitute research? What is the relationship between art-making and the notion of "quality descriptors" which operate in research contexts? The six artist-researchers appointed to are recognised in the arts-professions as having extended the boundaries of their artform, and willing to interrogate the research status of their own practices. enquires into the research-methodological engagement here, noting that Action Research strategies - in which there is a constant cross-referencing between action, intention, agency and critical-analytical review - might be useful to this category of researchers. On the other hand, few methodolgical enquiries deal with the creative singularity of the work of the professional artist, who struggles toward self-definition within one or another art marketplace (e.g. overseen by arts funders and festival organisers as well as box-office).
remains strongly focused on this question of research methodologies and the status of a range of research-based art-making undertakings, many of which take place within the oral economy, rather than the writerly economy more specific to the university. The cataclysmic or groundshifting changes and challenges to arts practice and the theoretical, linked with the postmodern, have significantly eroded some disciplinary boundaries, while new technologies have affected approaches to both process and outcome. Postmodern collaborations, shared authorship, multi-skilled creative practitioners, and evolving methodologies together suggest that researchers and performance-writers need to be attentive to changing ways of seeing and doing which seem to ‘erupt’ in innovative art-making.
provides a major forum within which innovative performance-making can be brought into creative collision with the work of those more traditionally concerned with written articulation of significant art-making practices. It may well be difficult, however, for art-makers to adopt a hypothesis-testing methodology within the context of practice (although it could equally be argued that practitioners are always testing hypotheses). Professional art-makers recognise that their own outcomes are uncertain in advance of the event of their emergence; hence the questions being asked by must also remain flexible, open to difference, ready to adapt its programme to changing ways of seeing and doing.
Collaborations
Strategic partnerships are sought, at two different levels of co-operation. Our current partner is the South Bank Centre, one of the most important cultural hubs in the world. currently seeks one more primary partner (an HEI in the UK or the EU). intends to work closely and directly with our primary partners in the development of practice-led research projects, and each of the partner-institutions will host major public events: in 2002, the South Bank Centre will host a major international conference entitled NightWalking: navigating the unknown.
These partners will play a key role in dissemination, helping us reach a wider public, as well as bringing their own areas of specialism and expertise into the mix
Existing Research Culture and Context
Middlesex University has a strong reputation for its undergraduate courses in the performing arts, but until 1999 research in the performing arts has lagged behind. Within the School of Art, Design & Performing Arts (School of Arts) the only research centre to score well in the 1996 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) was the Centre for Electronic Arts. However, in a shadow RAE carried out by the University in 1998, Performing Arts, and particularly Dance, was flagged by the University as an area in which the research culture was thriving, and which was likely to achieve a significantly higher score in the 2001 RAE. is a key strategic force in the ongoing development of a research culture within the performing arts at Middlesex.
R... functions as the Trent Park campus Postgraduate Research Centre as well as the home for the research team. Because of its acknowledged strategic importance, has received significant support from the University, particularly from School of Arts. This support has to date included supporting building renovation and the salaries of the Centre’s Head and Researchers (primarily coming from HEFCE-funded Nffr funds), making clear the University’s commitment to as a centre of excellence. The University’s resources, however, are limited, and it is imperative that we secure additional external funds in order to secure the longterm future of the Centre.
Since 1999 has established a series of public events, which will include major national and international conferences as well as researtch symposia, bringing the research activities of the team to a broad audience. We have laid plans to extend these public events, as well as including a larger group of researchers within the University in activities. Such events have already taken place at the Trent Park campus, at the Jerwood Space, the South Bank and at Chisenhale Dance Space, all within easy reach of Central London. At the Centre, we hold a regular series of Research Seminars, many of which are open to the University community.
One of the leaders in this area is the South Bank Centre, one of ’s two primary partner institutions, who have held a series of public events attempting to initiate and develop theoretical debate from the work they have presented. The Arts Council of England has recognised the value of collaborations between the HEI and the arts sectors. These collaborations signal the importance of the activities of the innovative research centre to debates concerning arts policy and the funding which it oversees.
Artists' dialogues is an area that will contain the ongoing debate between artists, researchers and students. We may include a discussion board in this area at a later stage.
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Head of Centre: Professor Christopher Bannerman
The Centre for Research into Creation in the Performing Arts
Middlesex University, Trent Park, Bramley Rd, London N14 4YZ
Tel/Fax: 020 8411 6288
e-mail: @mdx.ac.uk
