Month: March 2007

COLLEGE—MA Application

I’m making some progress on my MA application form. I found out last week that I had missed the deadline for submitting the form for it to be ready for the associated funding application. I’d misunderstood the instructions on the College’s website as applying just to the their internal funding scheme, not to the AHRC’s process as well.

The AHRC would probably have been my major source of funding next year. Looking at their information it seems they can grant an individual around £14,000 a year, which is designed to cover all living expenses. However, I have been warned that they will not consider anyone who doesn’t get a 1st in their previous degree.

Now, I don’t want to sound overly ambitious, but of course I aim to get this 1st.

But having missed the deadline, of course, all this is moot. So I’ve done a bit of rethinking and although I’ll still apply, I’ll have to find a part-time job in order to be able to pay my way.

Getting back to the application, the biggest stumbling-block has been the personal statement. At present it looks like this:

MA Application Statement

Why I wish to study at Goldsmiths.

Looked at simplistically, the MA in Contemporary Art Theory is the natural follow-up to Goldsmith’s PGDip in Contemporary Art History which I will complete this year. That said, during the PGDip I have developed proven skills in this area, through the areas in which I have worked and subjects I have been drawn to.

The PGDip built on an existing area of interest for me. Prior to taking this course I had completed a BA in Fine Art at Middlesex University, not in itself a particularly theoretical environment, but by the end of which I was producing artworks which were concerned with the nature of art in general and the relationship between the artwork and the institutions in which it existed or was placed. For instance, for my degree show I invited another artist (Peter Fend) to exhibit in my place and used the opportunity to probe the limits of the academic structures in place at the college.

At the time, I had only a very cursory knowledge of the theory backing up such artistic manoeuvres, although I was greatly attracted to theory as a concept in itself, borrowing quotations and particularly loaded author’s names as exemplars for a potential depth of knowledge which I did not yet have.

Choosing to take the PGDip was designed to give me that knowledge. A knowledge that would give the necessary backup to my ideas and works.

What do I want to do with the MA?

Over the past few years I have begun writing on a combination of theoretical and quotidian subjects as part of my daily activities and aim to expand on that writing during the MA by improving the quality and also the visibility of it. The MA will provide the opportunities to perform research and write extensively, in a critical setting where I will be pushed to make more of these writings.

The MA will also give me the environment in which to fully concentrate on particular subjects that I have become interested in while on the PGDip. I have become somewhat enamoured of Deleuze (a phase I believe a lot of people go through) and have spent many a happy(?) session trying to get to grips with his work. I am also interested in looking at the political in relation to philosophy, and vice versa, as a means to investigate theory as a practical source of social effectiveness. This MA will allow me to really get to grips with these subjects in a much more detailed and personally relevant fashion.

Personal reasons for doing MA

I believe I have the talent and ability to think and write both critically and philosophically. I enjoy pushing my thought processes into new areas and to turn those thoughts around in strange ways. In general, I am curious to know what it means to think about things, then what that means in the context of art, and then what that means in a wider context.

Finally, I know from my previous experience that Goldsmiths gives me access to many useful extra-curricular events and facilities and this MA will provide a high quality teaching environment and milieu in which to consolidate my own work.

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CREATIVE JOURNAL—Mujeres Creando—Art and Political Activism

In Lab last week I was quite negative about the Bolivian feminist performance/action group Mujeres Creando1, mainly with respect to their relevance and effectiveness, but also with their translatability to the present state of affairs in Europe and particularly Britain.

This reaction was sparked by an anecdote about their presence at a conference last year where they performed and talked about their work. Apparently their presentation was greeted with a degree of scepticism by the audience as to it’s effectiveness when taken out of the Bolivian (or South American) context. The way the response was described, the audience were put off by the group’s less than academic style (given the context within which they were presenting), and the methods proposed as being those which Britain had seen from activist groups in the 80’s and 90’s and which had proved to have had little effect on politics and society in general.

After this we watched a video of one of Mujeres Creando’s performances in Bolivia. It took place in a public square, with a woman throwing pots of red paint (possibly blood) over the floor while haranguing the assembled crowd. Another member of the group, gaudily dressed as a caricature of someone from the upper-middle-classes (I think). The performance leads to the involvement of the police, performing a predictably heavy-handed eviction and arrest of the troupe. Much struggling and screaming ensues.

And here lies a problem with all works, it depends for it’s immediate effectiveness—it’s affectiveness?—on some knowledge of the context on the part of the viewer. Speaking personally, for this work I have only the vaguest idea about the background in Bolivia, about the treatment of female and/or gay members of their society. So my first contact with the piece lacks the necessary information for me to make anything of it (and given that I do not speak Spanish, I cannot gather anything from the dialogue), and I am hence only able to interpret formal aspects of the show, and relate what I am seeing to similar events I am aware of.

Is this a surmountable problem? In the context of the performance itself, is it a problem in the first place? The Performance only loses it’s context—it’s meaning—through the recording, so when performed I assume the piece works for it’s audience, and only by being mediated does it fail (at least on that front).

So what can be done to regain that context, if that’s all that’s necessary to make the piece work? At a very basic level, the video would need to include a lot of extra information to situate to performance within the social and political milieu, and this information would need to be tailored to a certain extent to the particular audience viewing the piece.

So what can be said about the reaction of the English audience to their work? Many will have no direct knowledge of experience of the situation in Bolivia, thus losing any possibility of an empathetic reaction. The performers at the conference may be able to engender an affective reaction through their engagement with the issues and ability to communicate with their audience.

So is this particular (lack of) reaction just apathy or a reasonable suspicion of this type of activism? Has performance of this type lost it’s effectiveness in Britain?

And what about it’s status as art? Is that relevant anymore? Does being classed as art neuter the work’s political aspirations? Again, does ‘art’ give the work some caché in Bolivia that is lacking in Britain? Have the British become inured to art? Is art not the place to make any kind of statement, if you want that statement to be taken seriously? Has the avant-garde tradition of épater le bourgeois been emasculated?

It’s very difficult for me to relate to what is undoubtedly a very serious situation in Bolivia. Using performance art to address it leaves me with conflicting emotions – on the one hand I can see that in it’s place it could have been effective; on the other I am repelled by the methods that seem to me to be embarrassingly ineffective. But of course, I am only thinking of them in relation to myself, one person’s reaction. Just because I do not react well, does not prevent the work from being effective with other people. I feel bad for being so negative now. I was being very limited in my thinking. I should ask myself what I would do in this situation.

  1. Mujeres Creando

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