Assembly 2023

ASSEMBLY is a free set of presentations, discussions, interventions, and activities that address topics related to art and social practice. Participants shape the collective experience by contributing to dialogue, group projects, and publications.https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/assembly/1009/thumbnail.jp

Assembly 2016

ASSEMBLY is a free four-day set of presentations, discussions, interventions, and activities that address topics related to art and social practice. Participants shape the collective experience by contributing to dialogue, group projects, and publications.https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/assembly/1001/thumbnail.jp

A dual inheritance: the politics of educational reform and PhDs in art and design

This paper examines the changing relationship of art practice to academic research in higher education since 1960. Whereas art practice was often conceived of as divorced from any notion of academic or theoretical work in the post 1960 art school, by the 1990s the ground had changed to such a degree that it was possible to pursue doctoral study in art practice. This emergence of practice-based PhDs can be considered as part of a larger shift in art education and its acceptance of theory. On the one hand, the practice-based PhD could be interpreted as the logical consequence of critical, politically aware practices. On the other hand, the founding of the practice-based PhD can be connected to a series of educational reforms, particularly the introduction of the RAE, and the increasing need for departments to develop strategies for economic survival. In addition to tracing both the pedagogical, institutional and artistic legacy of practice based PhDs this paper focuses on the way in which a predominantly socialist commitment to integrated theory and practice meets with conservative educational reforms over the ground of the PhDs. I argue that this both highlights the institutional input into what art practice or indeed research is acknowledged to be and raises questions concerning the possibility of maintaining a critical art agenda

Videogame art: remixing, reworking and other interventions

This chapter explores some of the areas of intersection between videogames and both digital and non-digital art practice. By looking at examples of art practice drawn from videogames, it outlines some of the categories and so provides an overview of this area, placing it within the wider context of contemporary and historical art practice. The chapter explores the tendency for mucyh of this work to have elements of subversion or "détournement" whilst also identifying areas of tension in the appropriation of videogames as material for art practice

Practice-based doctorates and questions of academic legitimacy

Over the last six years there has been a massive increase in the number of students studying for practice-based doctorates in Art and Design. It is now possible to do a practice-based PhD in over forty departments, although what is expected from doctoral students varies considerably across institutions. In 1997 the United Kingdom Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) addressed the variance between practice-based doctorates in the report Practice-Based Doctorates in the Creative and Performing Arts and Design. This paper examines the recommendations made by the report and asks to what extent does it acknowledge art as a legitimate research practice within the university. The UKCGE report recommends that all practice-based PhDs have a substantial theoretical and contextualising element that will demonstrate general scholarly requirements and render the artwork accessible to judgement. I argue that this proposal is problematic on several counts; it draws a firm line between theory and practice, places academic research in opposition to practice generally and artwork specifically, maintains the stereotype of art as anti-intellectual and forgets the degree to which theory is itself a practice. In addition it suggests that art practice can only be legitimised as research when it is framed by a conventionally academic enquiry. I suggest that instead of trying to make art practice fit academic regulations it would be more productive to use the practice-based PhDs as a way of re-thinking academic conventions and scholarly requirements

A proper anxiety: practice-based PhDs and academic unease

Like any other PhD, practice-based PhDs are also the focus of much anxiety but, significantly, those anxieties reach beyond personal doubt and are shared by supervisors, examiners and senior academic management. Here, I suggest that the anxiety concerning practice-based PhDs should not be lightly dismissed because it is a product of the institutional relations practice-based doctorates put into place. At least in the short-term anxiety is structured into the qualification and the aim of this paper is to examine why. I argue that the demarcation of disciplinary boundaries is important for judgements concerning academic and artistic expertise. To become an expert you have to have a specialised field, which can only be only mastered if it is clearly defined. Practice-based research crosses many of these borderlines thereby creating anxiety about criteria of competence, assessment and authority. Significantly, however, the practice-based PhD has involved a shift in the institutional arbitration of competence. In the past art that crossed disciplinary boundaries was nevertheless evaluated within art colleges and in relation to their traditions and practices, whereas in this instance art is being judged within an academic context and with a different set of expectations in mind. Unlike other previously contentious forms of art practice, this is not a change in medium or subject matter that nevertheless remains within the parameters of the art college, but is a shift in the way that the art object is legitimated as such. The paper goes on to examine the practical and conceptual consequences of art practice being acknowledged as academically valid, exploring in particular the advantages and liabilities of anxiety for all concerned

Towards an office of institutional aesthetics

By exploring the territory between being within the zone of art practice and the zone of art educational institutions along with their attendant bureaucratic structures, Dutton will engage with the possibility of applying different types of (poetic) sensibilities that emerge out of reflexive art practice onto and into the heart of the controlling rhetoric and processes that function as normative behaviour within many institutions of art education. Thinking of the Art School as a site of an improbable constellation of subjectivities and political and institutional imperatives, Dutton will outline a path through which art and institution might begin to conflate in a zone of possibilities. Starting with a propositional ‘Office of Institutional Aesthetics’, which has its roots in real world scenarios, Dutton will characterise the tensions and strains of contemporary institutions of art education as ‘end’ obsessed—after which he will explore forms of practice which concern ‘becomings’ rather than completions. Dutton concludes that those of us who straddle art and art-educational spheres might need to re-think our institutions as networks of behaviours and tactics in much the same way we might encounter and engage in the process of art over the fetish of the artefact

Barriers to the Adoption of the ART Approach as Perceived by Dental Practitioners in Governmental Dental Clinics, in Tanzania.

This study aimed to determine the magnitude of the barriers to the practice of Atraumatic Restorative Treatment (ART) as perceived by dental practitioners working in pilot dental clinics, and determine the influence of these barriers on the practice of ART. A validated and tested questionnaire on barriers that may hinder the practice of ART was administered to 20 practitioners working in 13 pilot clinics. Factor analysis was performed to generate barrier factors. These were patient load, management support, cost sharing, ART skills and operator opinion. The pilot clinics kept records of teeth extracted; teeth restored by conventional approach and teeth restored by ART approach. These treatment records were used to compute the percentage of ART restorations to total teeth treated, percentage of ART restorations to total teeth restored and percentage of total restorations to total teeth treated. The mean barrier scores were generated and compared to independent variables, using the t-test. The influence of barriers to ART-related dependent variables was determined using Pearson correlation coefficients. Mean barrier values were low, indicating low influence on ART practice. Female practitioners had higher scores on patient load than male practitioners (p = 0.003). Assistant Dental Officers had higher scores on cost sharing than Dental Therapists (p = 0.024). Practitioners working in urban clinics had higher mean scores on patient load than those who worked in rural clinics (p = 0.0008). All barrier factors were negatively correlated with ART practice indices but all had insignificant association with ART practice indices. The barriers studied were of low magnitude, with no significant impact on practice of ART in dental clinics in the pilot area

Plazabilities for Art Education: Community as Participant, Collaborator & Curator

In the following article, a plaza metaphor and theories of plazability are applied to the recent work of three Other art educators to acknowledge, examine and articulate a refreshed vision for an art education based in community pedagogy which expands possibilities, builds community, and uses art to work for social change. Examples suggesting such achievements in creating plazability include work from a community artist backed by a visionary community arts foundation, a progressive cultural museum director and staff, and a contemporary artist each actively engaging the community in diverse ways. The innovative and community grounded practice and philosophies of these Other art educators suggest new possibilities for art teaching and learning through making a transfer to collective authority in the art classroom and call for the creation of new discursive spaces within art education practice

Figures of interpretation

This peer-reviewed article was intended to contribute to the general pedagogy of practice-led doctoral research through addressing the particular methodological issue of the relationship between written text and practice. This methodological issue concerns the modes of interpretation that arise in the relationship between the written text and the art work in practice-led doctoral research. The initial version of this paper was a contribution to the 5th Research into Practice conference (Royal Society of Arts, London, October 2008), whose central theme was the question of whether art practice-led doctoral research should provide the means for a clear interpretation of its contribution to knowledge, or whether it is a defining characteristic of art work that it is open to different interpretations. In the article I subsequently developed, I consider the idea that the act of interpretation which takes place between written text and art work is one that involves two distinct interpretative attitudes, and explore the possibility, with reference to Hayden White's work on the relationship between rhetorical figures and discourse, that a particular kind of knowledge is produced through the workings of their internal relationship