PhD ExPlorer COURSE
SEPTEMBER 1 - December 1, 2024
If you’ve been wondering about practice-based research and whether your creative praxis would be a good fit for work in this field, then this is the course for you.
You’ll spend time seeing and hearing how creatives just like you have embraced the turn towards practice-based research.
We’ll also show you how the key to unlocking this transformational shift in your praxis already lies within the work that you’re making.
You’ll work with experienced practice-based researchers to gain a deeper understanding of this exciting field, attend presentations by leading practitioners and develop and share your own unique approach to working in this field with a group of like-minded peers.
This intensive course includes two workshops, two seminars, a proposal clinic, and three talks.
induction SESSION
September 14 15:15-16:45 UTC ZOOM LINK (Recorded)
AGENDA: 2 MIN PRAxis INTRO (share WORK IN CHAT OPTIONALLY),
SAFER SPACE agreement, COURSE DATES, COURSE OVERVIEW, CONTEXT, EXPECTATION, Goals
COURSE SESSIONS
The State of The Art
September 28 15:15 - 18:15 UTC ZOOM LINK (Recorded)
SYLLABUS:
This three-hour seminar will introduce participants to the work of four currently active creative researchers, in order to demonstrate the range and reach of contemporary practice-based research. Each of these practitioners has worked regularly with Transart over the past twenty years, and we will be examining their diverse creative activities in depth, with a view to understanding and appreciating how real-life examples of the enormous inherent potential of practice-based research function.
Goals include:
To understand the depth and rigour of contemporary practice-based research.
To understand how different modes of practice can brought into dialogue with a broad interdisciplinary research context.
To understand how the structure of a PhD program can inform, energize, and transform an advanced creative practice.
TALK TBA
September 28 14:00 - 15:00 UTC ZOOM LINK (Recorded)
TITLE, ARTIST, DESCRIPTION TBA
The ART OF RESEARCH
October 12TH 15:15 - 18:15 UTC ZOOM LINK (Recorded)
SYLLABUS:
This three-hour seminar will introduce participants to the broader context of contemporary practice-based research by examining and discussing the range and diversity of contemporary practice-based research cultures, with particular emphasis on their differences and commonalities. We’ll also look in depth at the particular ethos which informs TT’s approach to creative research, and how and why that enables the broadest possible range of practitioners to bring their praxes into dialogue with a research context, which in turn enables them to make significant contributions to new knowledge.
Goals include:
To develop a deeper understanding of the broad global context of contemporary practice-based research.
To understand the historic conditions which give rise to this form of research, and some of the epistemological, social, and economic factors which informed its inception.
To understand the specific nuances of TT’s approach to creative research, and how this facilitates and supports the engagement of a diverse range of praxes within the context of practice-based doctoral research.
The SEARCH FOR BETTER QUESTIONS
October 26th - 15:15 - 18:15 UTC ZOOM LINK (Recorded)
SYLLABUS:
This three-hour discursive workshop builds upon the previous two workshops in this series and shifts the focus towards an engagement with the specific praxes of course participants, with a view to uncovering the often-unarticulated questions which drive and inform our creatives activities, in whichever media we work. We’ll look at the way in which these questions can be brought into and embedded within a research context, and the role that methods, methodologies, and notions of reflection and reflexivity can play in this process. Finally, we’ll begin to assemble these components into the beginnings of an individual research proposal.
Goals include:
To assist participants in the process of articulating and refining the questions that lie at the very heart of every individual creative praxis.
To assist in the alignment of those questions with a potential doctoral research project
To begin the process of assembling a PhD proposal.
NOTE: If you already have a proposal, you can alternatively (or additionally) book a one-to-one session with Michael Bowdidge for input.
TALK TBA
November 30 - 14:00 - 15:00 UTC ZOOM LINK (Recorded)
TITLE, ARTIST, DESCRIPTION TBA
Course Leader
Michael Bowdidge is an artist, researcher and educator who works with found objects, images and sound. He received his undergraduate degree in Fine Art from Middlesex Polytechnic in 1989, and completed his doctoral research at the University of Edinburgh in 2012. His PhD took the form of a practice-based investigation into the possibilities and context of contemporary sculptural assemblage considered in relation to the later philosophy of Wittgenstein and the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin.