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Art Practice and the Academy
On September 8, 2005, the Mellon Discovery Fellows hosted a discussion of the relationship between art practice and research within the academy, particularly within the University of California system. The featured guest was Professor Dick Hebdige, Film and Art Studio, Director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center and Director of the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts at UCSB.
The roundtable marked the launching of a series of speaking events and workshops focusing on the question, “When is Art Research?” This series, convened by Professor Shannon Jackson, is supported by the Mellon Strategic Group program and the Consortium for the Arts/Arts Research Center.
The event also capped off the Discovery Fellows’ 2004-2005 meetings devoted to the topic “Performance, Performativity, and Politics.” Over the course of these discussions, the fellows grappled with the double function of performance as artistic practice and theoretical framework. Performance, as both research object and research method, became a vehicle through which we explored the intricate relationship between arts and academics, more generally.
In planning for the public event, we discussed our shared interest in facilitating a dialogue between performance practitioners and performance theorists. But what would that event look like? What would it cost? In what space would it be held? “Would someone just do a dance and then someone stand at a podium and talk about dancing?” one fellow asked. How might practitioners and scholars speak to one another? Can art practice function as a mode of scholarship? What specifically would that exchange look like—across different disciplines, different art forms, and different audiences? What institutional apparatus would need to be in place in order to support such interaction? What is, what could be and, indeed, what should be the role of art practice in the academy and, more specifically, in the University of California?
The roundtable provided a forum for the five scholars, who represent both the arts and academia, to speak about the complex and often conflicted relationship between their artistic practice, their academic research, and their institutional roles. Jackson, for instance, spoke of her current role in mentoring graduate students who wish to enrich their performance scholarship through performance practice and vice versa: a ballerina who contributes to dance studies through a Foucaultian analysis of ballet and a theater artist who contributes to performance theory through a critical analysis of prison performance, for example. Kate van Orden explained her reasons for separating her artistic and academic lives in terms of the challenges her creative experience had posed to her academic job search and tenure reviews, as well as her need to protect and “cherish” her art. Anne Walsh emphasized the power dynamics inherent within the very question, “When is art research?” and encouraged the group also to ask, “When is research art?” An eminent scholar in the field of cultural studies, Dick Hebdige contextualized these remarks within his own research and directorial experience and attempted to translate some of the research goals of the arts to scholars across the humanities.
The event was exceptionally multi-mediated, as several of the panelists incorporated creative work into their presentations. Elizabeth Le Guin played classical music, Van Orden showed a clip of her re-creation of a horse ballet from the court of Louis XIII, and Walsh showed two of her short videos.
At the close of the event, Discovery Fellows Dean Krouk, Jennifer Gipson, and Jonathan Combs-Schilling raised three questions for us to continue discussing throughout the year: What are some concrete and pragmatic strategies for challenging text-centered modes of academic scholarship? What are the institutional concerns in making art as research a viable pursuit in the university setting, including the more practical levels? And finally: How might arts practice as academic research be incorporated into the classroom?
While this event certainly raised more questions than answers, it served to articulate some of the many difficulties and advantages associated with practicing art within the academy. We, at UC Berkeley, need to develop additional strategies for integrating art practice and academic research. Hebdige, Le Guin, Jackson, Van Orden, and Walsh provide a model for such interaction: those who can, sometimes do—create, research, and teach!
Nina Billone and Lane Harwell, graduate students in the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies, were part of the Mellon Discovery Fellows group that convened in 2005. The Mellon Discovery Fellows program brings together graduate students from a variety of disciplines in the first years of their graduate study. The fellows make up an ongoing discussion group that meets over the course of the year with invited faculty. Each year, they determine a theme to guide their conversations and bring guest scholars into discussions with the group.