Interrogations presents a Postgraduate Workshop organised by De Montfort University Faculty of Art and Design and Loughborough University School of Art and Design (supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council).
Speakers Emma Cocker, Nottingham Trent University; Professor Gen Doy, De Montfort University Faculty of Art and Design; Dr. Jane Tormey, Loughborough University School of Art and Design
ABSTRACT: Wandering: Straying from the disciplinary path
In this presentation I am proposing to draw on my interest in the practice of wandering as a means through which to explore selected ideas in relation to interdisciplinarity and interdisciplinary approaches to research. It is not intended as a coherent ‘map’ of this area of practice, rather something more like a meander through the terrain: a selective and partial dérive or itinerary in which certain ideas and propositions will be investigated; others bypassed, traversed or condemned (for the moment) to ‘inertia or disappearance’. Referring to other theorists and writers, the practice of wandering and the geographical, spatial or navigational readings it conjures, will allow me to touch upon the potentiality or possibility, but also the problematic of interdisciplinarity. I hope that the motif or metaphor of wandering might bring to mind a diverse range of issues against which to think about interdisciplinarity including perhaps ideas around defamiliarisation and distance; disorientation and uncertainty; curiosity; translation and tourism; trespass and piracy; borders, boundaries and threshold zones; rights of access, belonging and homelessness; reclamation and regeneration; territory and power; invasion and control; even the migration, colonialisation or the diaspora of ideas and practices. Performed according to an ephemeral, unfolding logic; wandering is a model of enquiry whose findings emerge through constant (r)evolution, where observations remain in transitional flux or interminable disarray. It is a framework for encountering and understanding the world and our place within it that retains rather than eradicates the potential for uncertainty and disorientation; that emphasises rather than disables the interplay between facts and fictions, reality and the imagination, theories and anecdotes. The motif of wandering might thus enable reflection on the potential role of the positional and subjective, or the partial and provisional within research practice, re-inscribing them a value within the process of meaning making and the construction of knowledge.
CONTEXT: This is the first event of the 2 year Postgraduate Training project which follows on from the 'In Theory' project last year organised by LUSAD and De Montfort. Its title this time is 'Creative Interdisciplinarity in Art and Design Research'. It will introduce general issues that students would all potentially find useful in terms of concepts, methods, approaches and research strategies relating to the notion of the interdisciplinary. The aim is to interest students in interdisciplinary research - to see interdisciplinarity as a way to enhance and encourage creativity.
Issues to be discussed might include:
• Why interdisciplinarity?
• In what ways is interdisciplinarity useful and stimulating for practitioners and other research students?
• The relationship of theory to practice in interdisciplinary research. Opportunities and pitfalls.
• How to locate and digest suitable interdisciplinary theories and concepts without being overwhelmed, or just resorting to "pick and mix strategy".
• "Translating" from one discipline to another. Should you be "true" to your source or is it better to modify the material you take from other disciplines?
• The problem of illustrating (in your practice) ideas from other disciplines, and how to avoid this.
* Isn’t everything interdisciplinary?
This is the first event of the 2 year Postgraduate Training project which follows on from the 'In Theory' project last year organised by LUSAD and De Montfort. For more information see http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~acdih/interrogations.htm
Friday 11 January 2008
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