Towards a Criticality in the Now

Abstract

Much has been said about the term ‘practice’ in the last decade or so: a large amount of thinking went into all sorts of terrains pertaining to the doings of practice as well as to the operational fields of those who call themselves practitioners. And much has been thought out as practice, including the academic model of ‘practice-led’ research. Notions of ‘practice’ appear in different contexts and to differing ends: in framing the activities of an artist; in thinking about the ethical conducts of research; in catching up with the performative moments of the live act; in pursuing the roles of a cultural practitioner; in tracing the Bahnen of deconstruction; in adhering to professional models of academia; in working suitably to disciplinary ideals…The actualities of ‘practice’ are many, its signifying space polysemic. Yet the present inevitability of this term for anyone working in the humanities must invite serious questioning as to why it has achieved such a prominent and, for some, critically acclaimed status in the arena of research. This essay wishes to challenge some of the claims, concerns and confusions relating to the spaces of art practice and their conceptual and ideological reconfigurations by the politics of a scientific research framework of the twenty-first century.

Keywords:

• Practice
• modern art theory
• art education
• higher education
• research methods
• deconstruction