PhD: Research List.

Historical context of socially engaged practise:

• Allan Kaprow: Blurring of art and life, Happenings
• Greenburg
• 60's Europe: Arte Povera 
• Art market: Pop Art
• Claire Bishop: Artifical Hells
• Pablo Helguera: Education Book

90's:

• Relational Aesthetics
• Bourriard
• YBA
• Celebrity Artists: 

Socially engaged practise:

• Arts relationship to activism
• Arts ability to drive social change

Current:

• Artist led spaces
• collectives
• Arts funding
• Michel Gove: Bob and Roberta Smith
• Alternative Arts Schools: Nato Thompson: Pedagogy 

PhD Proposal Layout

Context:

• Intorduction 200
• Describe your own work and interests and how you have persuade them so far 300
• Need for the project: gap in the knowledge give evidence 200
• current relevant thinking: Outline theoretical underpinnings of the proposal 300
• summarise existing knowledge relevant to the project 300

Project aim or research question: express your investigation as a question, which is relevant, manageable, sustainable and original 100

Project objectives: list specific, achievable goals to the project, in terms of what it will do or provide; this should relate to what you have said in your context 100

Project Methods: explain exactly what you are proposing to do. Where appropriate identify the types of research methods you are using 1000

The value of the proposed work: state how the project will address the problem outlined in your context section, or contribute to wider research, say who will benefit 1000

Outcome with timeline: list major milestones of the project and give a realistic estimate of how long each will take to achieve, this should relate directly to your methods section and be expressed in months not weeks

PhD: Affect Collective

Initial work:

Performance: Lydia (comfortable)
                      Elise (uncomfortable)

Sculpture: Lydia (uncomfortable)   Aesthetically, material
                 Elise (comfortable)

Props/objects: Function

Public Spaces: Function, Simple guestures, interaction with public (engagement), changing dynamics of the space, public theatre

New References: Psycho-geography, behavioural studies, situationisim

Long Term Projects: Library Bus/space to imaginan, Frees Market



FABRICATED FUNCTIONAL SPACES VS. INTERVENTION IN PUBLIC SPACES TO QUESTION THEIR FUNCTION

Performance for Squieze

Proposal for Squieze

Bargehouse, London

July 2013

Conversation Piece (homage to Juan Munoz)

Several performers dressed in plain clothes will position themselves around the Bargehouse building and along the South Bank at a set time each day whilst Squieze is open. Between the performers will be red string and tin cans to form a basic communication devise (like the telephones you’d make as a child). The performers will listen to the city and communicate with each other as the performance evolves. There is no set response. The performers could have their ear to the ground, relay a conversation overheard in the distance or simple speak what is on their mind. The emphasis is on communication between performer, public and the city.

Affect Collective

An outsiders view

I was going through my e-mails and came across Sean's response to reading my reflective journal essay. He makes some interesting points;

For instance, Licence To Spill got me thinking, as it does you when you mention "art's role in politics". But my problem is that I am at a bit of a loss as to what premise I have to assent to in order to concede that it is definitively "art", and to be considered wholly distinct from the sort of political expression a politician might make in the house of commons or a bloke sticking a home-made political sign to his window. Is it the symbolic aspect in the act of spilling oil and feathers in front of the Tate gallery with their BP sponsorship that puts this in the "art" category? Whereas a political commentator sharing her thoughts doesn't use such symbolism, so therefore that person is not making art in their expression. But then again, the very words are symbols that encode an overall meaning of a similar kind, it's a form of expression as legitimate as any other, so then which forms of expression can we identify as "art" and which can we say are "not art"? When David Cameron last gave a speech was that art? Is he an artist? If not, why not? Is it because he didn't give the speech a title or submit it to a gallery? Is it because it's an expected part of his job? Is it because it's not something you'd want to listen to for it's artistic merit? Why was Licence to Spill firmly in the "art" camp when other similar political acts aren't considered to be? Is it because these other acts were not intended as works of art? Does the intention of the perpetrator define their "art-hood"? Am I an artist without knowing it? Is someone out there writing an essay about me?

Research Questions 2#

First question was: How can a socially engaged practice operate in an art school?

The question is negative; assuming that such a practise cannot operate in an art school which is of course not true, but the very idea of a student conducting such a practise and the issues associated, is of interest.

With lots of deliberation I do now feel my interests were about the institution and how certain specification contradicted art practise.

Second question: To what affect can a specifically designed space influence participants in a socially engaged art work?

I have a problem with using the term "socially engaged"
The question is not working hard enough for me and the ideas I have. So what I thought I would do bullet points of my ideas and we could come up with something better?

• The sorts of spaces I am interested in is spaces for action and exchange
• Project spaces
• Hans Ulrich Obrist (curator): "The instructions is the work not the object...Instructions can be interpreted in different ways like recipes"
•  How we design the space around the activity idea could comply with a set of rules?
• "RULES OF THE GAME"
• curating is a massive part of my interests and how the space/work manipulates the viewer.
• Work spaces are also of interest
• the value in collective knowledge and how to nurture that.
• the possibility of producing different formats for public space. The currency exchanged in such situations may be cultural even political, the currency of social interaction is indeed as generic as it gets.
• How does such work connect to a person? I want people to not look at it but be in it!
• Aesthetics of space are important.

Here are some ideas I have accumulated today which gets me no further to my final question but I suppose I have to start somewhere.

Claire Fontaine - Fictional Artist

http://www.clairefontaine.ws/index.html

http://www.clairefontaine.ws/pdf/jk_interview_eng.pdf

Look at this interview, it really relates to our super artist idea :)