Art & Research : What do you think?
Two artists on the 2.0 site recently engaged in a brief discussion about how work is described and it got us, here at BlackFlash, thinking. Specifically, I’m referring to Colin Carney’s entry in the artist pages and David Pollock’s reaction to it. The issue underlying their exchange, and perhaps the larger issue behind artist statements and art research in general, is the role of research in art. To what extent is a “social sciences” dialogue being used in art-speak nowadays?
Being through the art school system myself, I remember the days of my MFA when my colleagues and I would scramble to put together our SSHRC grant applications. In case you don’t know, SSHRC stands for Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Funny that it should be offering funding to fine arts student, no? Evidently not. SSHRC grants are given to fine arts students as researchers. The caveat is that the student must show what sort of new research he/she is engaging in and what methodology he/she is using. I was not the only one at the time to be struck by the foreignness of the demands. Indeed, funding bodies create demands and artists, who often need money to make ambitious projects, attempt to deliver.
While this is an academic context that I’m citing here–SSHRC grants are there to fund your graduate studies–the people who are being educated in these programs go on to shape the future art community. Are these changes good or bad? Are they largely propelled by the decisions of funding bodies and society’s desire for an instrumental function in art, or is it also a part of art’s natural evolution that stems from a history of political art and social engagement? How do we begin to qualify art that takes as its premise social engagement–by ethics or aesthetics?
We’re hoping the BlackFlash community can share their ideas about their own travails in being an artist, in looking about art and in reading about art. What do you think?
