This is an on-line research log, which chronicles and archives the traces and residue of the collaborative process of realizing the symposium, Practice Led Research - Multiple Perspectives in a Contemporary Art Context, hosted by the Excavation of the Contemporary Art Context class. Also interspersed in the research log is the tracking of my own personal research project's tangents, epitomes and overall development, as well as select sketchbook entries and notes from artist's talks, exhibitions, and so on.

Masters of Research in Creative Practices
Post-Graduate Forum

Practice-Led Research:
Multiple Perspectives in a Contemporary Art Context

Excavation of the Contemporary Art Context
Libby Wallace, Tekla Wozniak, Fiona Annis & Jess Ferrone
Mentor: Jim Harold

As a relatively new species of academic inquiry, practice-led research is a generative enquiry that ‘draws on subjective, interdisciplinary and emergent methodologies that have the potential to extend the frontiers of research.’ We propose three speakers who are exemplars in their fields and who offer particular insight into the application of research, specifically in the domains of curation, art practice, and academic theory. The invited speakers offer a range of specialized perspectives from their respective contributions to the contemporary art context.


Speakers

Judit Bodor is an art historian and freelance curator living in York, UK. Between 1999 and 2004 she has been involved in the activities of Artpool Art Research Centre an internationally established avant-garde art archive and exhibition space in Budapest, Hungary (www.artpool.hu). Since 2002 she has been researching and lecturing on archiving contemporary art and contemporary art archives as part of international series of art events, symposia and residency projects throughout Europe including Hungary, Slovenia, Poland, England and Northern Ireland. Currently she is a lecturer in BA Arts & Cultural Management and award leader of MA Curating in the Field of Art at Dartington College of Arts, UK. Since September 2006 she is also responsible for the public programme of The Gallery at the College.

Katrina Brown is founding Director of The Common Guild, a new visual arts organization based in Glasgow that is dedicated to producing an international programme of contemporary visual art projects, exhibitions, and events. Prior to her work with The Common Guild, Katrina was Curator and Deputy Director of the highly successful Dundee Contemporary Arts, and was responsible for its internationally-renowned programme of visual arts exhibitions, which introduced a number of significant international artists to Scottish and UK audiences as well as supported artists based in Scotland via the commissioning of new works and publications. She has also worked at Tate Liverpool and Tramway, Glasgow and was a committee member of Transmission Gallery in the early 1990s.

Christine Borland is Scottish born and based and is one of the countries most prominent artists. She is currently an Academic Researcher at Glasgow School of Art where her involvement in teaching extends over ten years and includes lecturing in the Sculpture/ Environmental Art Department. Short-listed for the Turner Prize in 1997, Christine is particularly distinguished for her deployment of both current and archaic medical protocols, forensic science practices, and engagement with biotechnology tools and ethics, to create complex and informed artwork. These intersections are revealed in a spectrum of projects ranging from gallery installations, book works, and public sculpture projects. Christine’s approach is particularly relevant to this symposium, in respect to how the process of research, embodied in work involving interdisciplinary collaboration, unfolds and informs contemporary art practice.

symposia

Symposium scene
Fresco from the Tomb of the Diver, 475 BC.
Paestum National Museum, Italy

Symposium originally referred to a drinking party attended by intellectuals in ancient Greece, but has since come to refer to any academic conference. The sympotic elegies (a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead) of Theognis, as well as two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, all describe symposia in the original sense, that is, along with games, boys, and singing, symposiasts could also compete in rhetorical contests, for which reason the term symposium has come to refer to any event where multiple speeches are made.

In relation to the origins of symposium as a festive gathering, the Greek verb sympotein indeed means to drink together, however, in keeping with Greek notions of self-restraint and propriety, the symposiarch decides the ratio of wine to water, and would often prevent matters from getting out of hand. The playwright Euboulos, in a surviving fragment of a lost play has the god Dionysos describe proper and improper drinking:

For sensible men I prepare only three kraters: one for health, the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home. The fourth krater is not mine any more - it belongs to bad behaviour; the fifth is for shouting; the sixth is for rudeness and insults; the seventh is for fights; the eighth is for breaking the furniture; the ninth is for depression; the tenth is for madness and unconsciousness.


ScholarlyCommuns at Penn. (online journal) Euboulos' Ankylion and the Game of Kottabos. [cited Jan 30, 2008] http://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/13/

on love

The Symposium is a philosophical dialogue written by Plato sometime after 385 BC. It is a discussion on the nature of love, taking the form of a series of speeches, both satirical and serious, given by a group of men at the house of the tragedian Agathon at Athens. Included in the chronicle are six relatively formal speeches, each representing an intellectual discipline, interspersed by discussion; followed by a seventh unplanned speech by Alcibiades. Thus the Symposium becomes a dramatized example of a time-honoured motif, seven sages at dinner.

It would seem that Plato regards love, recognized as a forms of beauty, as an essential ingredient of the philosophic path and the search for wisdom.



"Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities, (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may."
Sec. 212

collaborative efforts

collaborate |kəˈlabəˌrāt| verb
ORIGIN - latin from the verb collaborare: col ‘together’ + laborare ‘to work’
to work jointly on an activity, especially to produce or create something,
also, to cooperate traitorously with an enemy

By citing collaboration, calling collaboration, casting collaboration beyond singular sight invites a way of reading what takes place that pushes any event or any seemingly singular thing off of itself and into a mobile space, a transient space, a creative space - a future space as it is always more than one - it is always between.

(Rebecca Schnieder, Encounters, 2007)

begin

January 31, 2008

Excavation of the Contemporary Art Context
Symposium Planning Session

We had our first planning session and it went really well. The symposium's possible theme came so easily to us that it almost seemed to fall from the sky. The emerging theme, practice as research, focuses primarily on process, which both allows the four of us to really consider the core content of the master's of research programme, while also allowing us each to invite a speaker who is specific to our subject/discipline concerns. I hope to invite Christine Borland, it has been sometime now that I am looking at her work, and I would love the opportunity to meet her. There seems to be a fluid coherence with my colleagues, both in strategy and concerns.

Meeting Minutes 01 / 30.01.08

Present:
Libby (LW)
Finn (FA)
Jess (JF)
Jim (JH)

Absent:
Tekla (TW)

1. Revised notes handed out with timetable
2. ALL / Agree that there will be a rotation of roles in Minute taking and Chairing the meeting
3. JH: Symposium Format discussion. JH goes through list on timetable (date 30th January) what areas we are aiming to cover
4. ALL- Brainstorm via post-it notes as per project management > taskboard > see wall with ‘post its’ on
5. JF / Role of ‘us’ in the symposium – i.e. are we going to present or are we going to focus on the speakers and our role being a ‘chair’ or ‘respondent. – Role as creating dialogue.
6. JH / The definition of ‘symposium’ – how does music and drinks at another location sound?
7. FA / Flexibility on time/location
8. ALL / looking at how the standard postgraduate program fits into our subject outline.
9. JF / urgent is a) can we have one of the PG Forum dates and b) what are the restrictions on the venue / funding / date etc First step being claiming PG session.
10. FA / Are we restricted to that date. JH notes that the date specified is to fit in with the bigger picture of the session and to ensure we have enough time, so it would be best to try and fit as close to this as possible.
ALL / starting to go through the post it notes and moving them around and prioritising them. Suggestions of Christine Borland and Ross BIrrell
11. JH notes that its interesting that we have gravitated towards concept then speaker rather than speaker determining concept
12. Is artist/researcher a potential theme?
13. JH speaks about Lapland / artist researcher term and a general awareness
14. Outcomes – can the ambiguity of this term drive an outcome such as a publication that discusses it.
15. FA/ suggests that it would be a good opportunity for everyone to suggest a speaker inline with their discipline
16. FA questions JH about whether he still sees himself as an artist researcher
17. FA what is the relationship of a ‘gesture’ and ‘theory’
18. LW says role of research in the practice. This is a different factor and has a different definition between everyone.
19. ALL general idea of ‘justifying and explaining’ being difficult in the process of practice.
20. Topic of artist / researcher is a timely theme based on our course content.
21. JH suggests talking / having Sue as one of the Speakers. Visual Arts Project located on King St in Glasgow Re: Artists located in an institution because there was someone in there that they wanted to work with > does Sue have a booklet n this - strategy, choosing an institution and finding an artists who has an appropriate methodology and teasing out particular research interests together. Tom Lawson > Dean of Arts in Cal Arts interesting project in relation to Scottish Parliament.
22. FA / thinking about the curation of such a project.
23. JF / Suggest maybe Katrina Browne from a different perspective. Organisations that facilitate that happening.
24. How doe curators use research I their ‘practice’ i.e. that as a practice of curating. Broadening the terminology and focus…
25. JH says consider Transmission curating method and Street Level photography gallery. JH can introduce to Malcolm if necessary. Sue to Katrina etc
26. FA / what’s the gap in the Objectives vs the actual class timetable in relation to the whole Excavation of the contemporary art context. Can we get someone from a place like Transmission to give us a crash course in the basics?
27. JH/ Sarah Lowndes: Is this a potential speaker towards this topic area based on the book that’s listed on the reading list.
28. JH / alternatively can we have half hour sessions with Transmission / street level in one of our spare sessions for the year?
29. FA this being a class session rather than as part of the forum.?
30. JH do we want the theme of excavation to be a focus of our forum or separate?
31. JH Toby Webster / Modern Institute – gives background on the setting up, and split etc
32. Arts infrastructure or artist researcher ? one as a fallback session? The interview session may suggest a Symposium topic that cannot be ignored!
33. JH is there a specific subject matter that is important? i.e. food – if our overarching theme is research in practice maybe this will dominate. Jackie Donaghie > food , communal table experience
34. Everyone gives KB a rap! LW notes its important that the speakers are relevant to the greater school
35. JH raises thought of House for an Art Lover
36. JF suggest Anthony Schraag due to his GOMA exhibition, and what Irit spoke about in Transformation Design
37. JH / John Calcott (?) curation focus, based in school and running a department? Smithson film
38. JH work with historical and current practitioners and the dialogue that generates between them…
39. FA what the invite will look like, how the draft will be done… we have until the 20.02.08 inline with the project timetable.
40. JH no entry to Transmission, consider Saucha (?) Dallas and Market Gallery. There are others…..
41. JH/The idea of an un/de-regulated space, Ross Sinclair T-shirt shop…2 for the price of one….
42. JH/Malcolm - Slightly more gallery based now but did have a background of exhibiting in non-gallery base.
43. JH/Intermedia on King Street, Market could be interesting to speak with.
44. JH Dundee – artist run initiatives, pay expenses of travel but JH knows artist groups that could be drawn on – dynamic.
45. JH possibility to divide up sessions on two main themes across days. Could we have one of the classes as a forum and open it up to others? Tow on one day, tow on another? JH says for him to devise a scheme to mark fairly.
46. ALL agree maybe wait for Tekla. JH says no decisions need to be made yet
47. JH says remember hat the forum can take a variety of formats. i.e. is it just performance, is it an introduction and then video? Is it four seminars separately?
48. ALL / sent email to L.Beattie requesting Postgraduate Forum Session.
49. Depending on her response we will discuss actions next week. Two strands at moment, mull over strands we feel are most important. Be pragmatic about the scope and keep in mind its 25% of the total.

project management

notes and mapping - Laura would be proud

PG forum (request + response)

31/01/08

Dear Lisa,

We are writing to enquire about the possibility of hosting a Postgraduate Forum session on the 17^th of April, 2008. If you could please let us know if this is possible and communicate more detail on the use of facilities, provision of funding and organisational criteria which needs to be met.

We look forward to your response,

Tekla Wozniak, Fiona Annis, Jess Ferrone, Libby Wallace
(Excavation of Contemporary Art Context, MRes programme)

01/02/08

Dear Tekla, Fiona, Jess and Libby,

Thank you for your enquiry – it's great you want to get together and do this.

I would book the venue for you – the staff lounge - and the order refreshments etc (we have a budget and a supplier for this - usually snacks and wine/water etc, but if you have any special dietary requirements please do let me know).

Firstly I will check availability of the lounge on the 17th, then provisionally book it through Estates. Will check today and get back to you as soon as they respond. The staff lounge is the space through from the canteen which looks across to the Mac building. It's a good space with plenty of chairs, a few comfy sofas and tables. If you'd like to have a look first I can bring you there. If you have anymore questions it's no problem – otherwise I'll get back to you with the availability of the venue.

Best wishes

Lisa Beattie
Administrative Officer
Research & Postgraduate Studies Office