Methods 2017-18: Difference between revisions

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'''Handbook description:''' "The Reading, Writing, and Research Methodologies Seminar is tailored towards (further) developing research methods within the first year of this master. By establishing a solid foundation of research skills, it will eventually prepare students for their Graduate research in the second year. Through reading core theoretical texts, they will establish a common vocabulary and set of references to work from. They will learn the practice of classic ‘essayistic methodologies’, including close reading, annotation, description and notation, students learn to survey a body of literature, filter what is relevant to their research and create comparative pieces of analysis. The seminar helps students to establish methodical drafting processes for their texts, where they can develop ideas further and structure their use of notes and references. The course takes as axiomatic that the perceived division between ‘practice’ and ‘theory’ is essentially an illusion."
In this course students identify and share the research methods they currently employ in their practices while also engaging with and testing out new ones. We will be discussing the very idea of ‘method’ (What counts as a method? When is it useful to recognize and affirm an action as a method?) as well as the very idea of ‘research’ (What counts as research within an artistic practice? What role does research play in your own art-making? What does it do or not do? How to describe and present your ‘research’ activities?). Working both individually and collectively, students will undertake and reflect on a sequence of practical research tasks involving (for instance): reading, writing, making, looking, listening, improvising, planting and playing. In the process, they will elaborate their own individual answers to these questions – answers that are meaningful in terms of the practice and can be communicated to others. In addition to the work produced in each day-long session, the outcome of the seminar is a Text on Method (1,500 words), submitted in May 2018, which forms the basis of the First Year Self-evaluation Assessment.


'''Curriculum:'''
Eight sessions led by Kate Briggs with Mike Sperlinger, for whom writing is a means to record, support and contextualize other kinds of research and artistic activity, a tool to think with as well as a material practice in its own right. These sessions will almost always involve some reading + the production of text, as well as the related practices of note-taking and annotation, live / silent / individual / collaborative editing and revision. In this way, our sessions prepare students for writing the Text on Method in spring 2018 and for the longer writing component (8,000 words) which is written in the second year.


The seminar over the two trimesters will involve:  
Four seasonal, practice-based sessions led by Bernd Krauss (under the heading of, ‘RRRRRealities) will explore some moments of pre-creation, in which we, without preconceived ideas or interests, look closely at specific (mediated) realities. Questions include: How do we approach an unknown territory? What kind of tools or methods can be used, and/or be found, that allow us to experience, sense, and track particles of the real that we may not already understand? We will speculate that collecting and gathering particular types of information within specific parameters can grant us a kind of authority about the microscopic realities we encounter. This will allow us later to question, build on, transform, modulate, practice and create with a certain rooting in an unfamiliar environment/territory, thus exposing ourselves (and audiences) to moments of education and understanding.


(a.) Identifying the object of your research: description and analysis of your work
Learning Outcomes


(b.) Contextualizing your work through description and reflection on contemporary and historical practices.  
- Identify and / or invent and actively test a wide range of methods available to artistic practice.
- Reflect on, discuss and communicate with authority the role that research plays in one’s practice.
- Establish a meaningful descriptive vocabulary for the materials, questions, concepts and forms inherent to one’s practice (in preparation for the graduate research project).
- Identify and test a wide range of approaches to writing in English, considering questions of form and mode of address (in preparation for the writing component)
- Engage meaningfully with the work of others, through conversation and collaboration.  


(c.) Identify research material key to your practice.
Assessment


(d.) Synopsis and annotation of key texts
Assessment for this course is based on the Text on Method (submitted in May) as well as year-long, meaningful and productive engagement with all activities.


(e.) Writing machines: creating methods for group and individual writing.


Throughout, there will be an emphasis on working collectively, whether in a larger discussion group or in smaller reading and writing groups.


==Outcome: Text on Method==


The specific outcome for the RW&RM seminar of 2016-2017 will be a 1500 word text which reflects on your own method and situates your work in relation to a broader artistic and cultural context. The various texts produced within the RW&RM seminar will serve as source material for your text on method. In common with all modules on the course RW&RM serves to support the other elements of the course (Self-directed Research, Issues in Art & Theory, Practice-Group Critiques &c.). Therefore, the text on method will inform your Self-Evaluation at the end of the third trimester and provide the basis for your Graduate Project Proposal that you will produce in the fourth trimester.


Here are the [[Text on Method guidelines]];  
Here are the [[Text on Method guidelines]];  

Revision as of 10:22, 3 November 2017

METHODS 2017-18

Led by Kate Briggs, Bernd Krauss, Mike Sperlinger and Nina Wakeford


In this course students identify and share the research methods they currently employ in their practices while also engaging with and testing out new ones. We will be discussing the very idea of ‘method’ (What counts as a method? When is it useful to recognize and affirm an action as a method?) as well as the very idea of ‘research’ (What counts as research within an artistic practice? What role does research play in your own art-making? What does it do or not do? How to describe and present your ‘research’ activities?). Working both individually and collectively, students will undertake and reflect on a sequence of practical research tasks involving (for instance): reading, writing, making, looking, listening, improvising, planting and playing. In the process, they will elaborate their own individual answers to these questions – answers that are meaningful in terms of the practice and can be communicated to others. In addition to the work produced in each day-long session, the outcome of the seminar is a Text on Method (1,500 words), submitted in May 2018, which forms the basis of the First Year Self-evaluation Assessment.

Eight sessions led by Kate Briggs with Mike Sperlinger, for whom writing is a means to record, support and contextualize other kinds of research and artistic activity, a tool to think with as well as a material practice in its own right. These sessions will almost always involve some reading + the production of text, as well as the related practices of note-taking and annotation, live / silent / individual / collaborative editing and revision. In this way, our sessions prepare students for writing the Text on Method in spring 2018 and for the longer writing component (8,000 words) which is written in the second year.

Four seasonal, practice-based sessions led by Bernd Krauss (under the heading of, ‘RRRRRealities) will explore some moments of pre-creation, in which we, without preconceived ideas or interests, look closely at specific (mediated) realities. Questions include: How do we approach an unknown territory? What kind of tools or methods can be used, and/or be found, that allow us to experience, sense, and track particles of the real that we may not already understand? We will speculate that collecting and gathering particular types of information within specific parameters can grant us a kind of authority about the microscopic realities we encounter. This will allow us later to question, build on, transform, modulate, practice and create with a certain rooting in an unfamiliar environment/territory, thus exposing ourselves (and audiences) to moments of education and understanding.

Learning Outcomes

- Identify and / or invent and actively test a wide range of methods available to artistic practice. - Reflect on, discuss and communicate with authority the role that research plays in one’s practice. - Establish a meaningful descriptive vocabulary for the materials, questions, concepts and forms inherent to one’s practice (in preparation for the graduate research project). - Identify and test a wide range of approaches to writing in English, considering questions of form and mode of address (in preparation for the writing component). - Engage meaningfully with the work of others, through conversation and collaboration.

Assessment

Assessment for this course is based on the Text on Method (submitted in May) as well as year-long, meaningful and productive engagement with all activities.




Here are the Text on Method guidelines;

Here is the link to previous texts on method: '''FINAL VERSIONS''' deadline 6th May

Link to the RW&RM archive

Previously