Doctoral Theses / Doktorsavhandlingar Konsthögskolan Valand

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    Ateljésamtalets utmaning – ett bildningsperspektiv
    (2011-05-20) Wideberg, Christian
    The present study is in the field of Educational Science and is an investigation of the studio critiques i.e. the teacher/student studio interactions that take place as part of two higher education programmes in the Fine Arts in Sweden; these are the three-year Bachelor of Fine Arts programme and the two-year Master of Fine Arts programme. The aim of the dissertation is to find out what is essentially important in a studio critique, to understand its context and integrity, as well as to examine how a teacher captures the opportunities and challenges that occur within the force field of the student’s intention, of his or her idea and his or her formal knowledge. A phenomenological hermeneutical method is applied as the method of inquiry in the study, where several different collecting methods are used to gatherempirical data. An historical overview, transcribed interviews, a log book and studio critiques make up the narrative text data, which have both practical and scientific relevance. The core theme of the studio critique is to challenge the quality of the student’s artistic expression, thus contributing to involving him or her in a process of growth; this process embraces the potential of the studio critique to nurture and attain quality, which is the main result of the study. Studio critiques are complex and interwoven interactions of two kinds: 1) interactions where the teacher and the student seek common ground in a mutual process of understanding and accord, and 2) interactions where the integration of intention and quality is strived for. In his or her role as supervisor, the teacher aims at finding the point of interface between the student’s intention and the material qualities of his or her work. Ultimately the goal of this form of growth (German: Bildung) is to maximise student potential, thus enabling him or her to develop the full range of his or her talents. When the main topic for the studio critique is found, another interaction begins. This process addresses the challenge of integrating concept and material, the ultimate goal of which must be a seamless fusion of the two if the finished work is to possess sublime qualities. One can regard the studio critique as a process where the student reaches a deeper knowledge of self and his or her artistic goals, where subjective and creative impulses are essential for the developmental growth of this form of living knowledge.
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    Jag hör röster överallt - Step by Step
    (2011-05-04) Gedin, Andreas
    I Hear Voices in Everything – Step by Step, is a practise-based dissertation in fine arts. It includes three art exhibitions, several independent art works and an essay. It discusses the role of the artist and the making of art mainly through the ideas of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1875-1975) but also by reflecting on similarities between the artist and the curator. Being a dissertation in fine arts, the aim is not primarily to develop any certain philosophy but to use theory to discuss art, and vice versa. In the first section, the methodological presuppositions are articulated and contextualised. The relevance of artistic research as a means to develop artistic practice and as a means to increase the understanding of artistic practice is also addressed, as is the reasonability of using the philosophy of Bakhtin in this specific context. Bakhtin is usually referred to as a literary theorist; however, his dialogical philosophy concerns man’s being as a whole, that is, it is through dialogical relations man is constituted. Here, man, and also art in general, is understood by Bakhtin as being temporary meeting places for art works, readers, artists, protagonists, history etc. The reflective text in itself also endeavours to be dialogical and polyphonic by including different voices such as fictional characters, real comments, emails, letters and quotes. In the second section the practice of making art is discussed in relation to Bakhtin and other writers. One main topic is if one, by using Bakhtin, can also regard an art work as a meeting place for language (in its broad sense) so as to include physical material, skill, and experience; and hence, if one could, or should, regard the artist as a kind of curator, and vice versa. Bearing this in mind, is there then any relevant difference between organising language into an artwork or into an exhibition? The third section focuses on the artworks that are a part of the PhD project; these include an exhibition and two planned exhibitions. The central theme of, or the catalyst for, the works of art is repetition. Published as one exclusive copy, and also smuggled into the Lenin library, Sleeper is a collection of essays on the ingredients of a tuna fish casserole. Thessaloniki revisited is a video of a reading of a short story. Spin-Off is a video where a curse is read by an actor. Sharing a Square is a documentary-based video of a ritual drumming session in Calanda, Spain, and Erich P. is an artwork based on an embassy to Russia in 1673 and on contra-factual archaeology. As a final part of the dissertation project these artworks will be shown in a solo exhibition, and there will also be a curated exhibition, which will include only other artists. The last part of the dissertation’s title “Step by Step” refers to a larger art project called Taking Over, which this dissertation is a part of. Taking Over deals with different aspects of power relations in five separate projects. Being an integral part of this larger and thematic art project, the dissertation also refers to different aspects of power, and even to the lack of power in relation to the artist’s position in research contexts, both inside and outside academia. It also underlines that artistic research is part of a wider artistic practice.
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    Off the grid
    (2008) Bode, Mike; Schmidt, Staffan
    Off the grid is an artistic research thesis which puts a Swedish housing estate in a video interview dialogue with homeowners in the Northeastern US through focusing on three topics: travel, self-definition, and community. Based on the situated, visual and conceptual image the project merges seemingly incompatible experiences: eight residents in Husby, an immigrant community outside Stockholm, and eight households not connected to the utility grid, in upstate areas of New England and New York State – and two artistic researchers at University of Gothenburg. The interviewees are paired together and handed unedited copies of each other’s reflections. We asked them for their comments, elucidating the practical and metaphorical consequences of travel, self-definition, and community. Even though backgrounds, stories and current conditions differ, an understanding of common interests and similarities are clearly identified. Among the three questions discussed the right to self-definition stands out as central: it is opposed, delayed in its implementation, violated or threatened – still, all participants individually and/or collectively struggle to uphold it. In thinking with the visual and conceptual image Off the grid also offers new perspectives on the significance of artistic research, contributing to its further contextualization.
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    Spaces of Encounter: Art and Revision in Human-Animal Relations
    (2009-03-13T09:54:19Z) Snæbjörnsdóttir, Bryndis
    This PhD project explores contemporary Western human relationships with animals through a ‘relational’ art practice. It centres on three art projects produced by Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson – nanoq: flat out and bluesome; (a)fly; and seal – all utilize lens-based media and installations. Discourses on how humans construct their relationship with animals are central to all three projects. The first one looks at polar bears, the second at pets, and the third at seals, in a variety of different sites within clearly defined contexts and geographical locations. The thesis explores the visual art methodologies employed in the projects, tracing in turn their relationship to writings about human-animal relations. This includes both writings researched in the making of the works and those considered retrospectively in the reflections on each art project. These artworks engage their audiences in a series of ‘encounters’ with the subject through simultaneous meetings of duality, e.g. haunting vs. hunting, perfection vs. imperfection and the real vs. the unreal. These dualities are important in theorizing this relational space in which the eclipse of the ‘real’ animal in representation occurs and in formulating questions embedded in and arising from the artworks on the construction and the limits of these boundaries. The ‘three registers of representation’, as put forward by the artists Joseph Kosuth and Mary Kelly, have further helped to frame and develop the thinking, concerning both the mechanisms within the works and their perceived effects.
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    the sky is blue
    (2011-10-11) Carlsson, Tina
    Through its works the sky is blue wants to show that both institutional and subjective limitations are present in our lives but that we also have the ability to go beyond these limitations by way of our dreams, our fantasies and our visions. I maintain that this ability, which is built into the title’s adamant claim that the sky is blue, carries within it the possibility to change the present. However, knowledge and understanding of the now is also needed for change. the sky is blue wants to show how the individual experience and the subjective story are productive and necessary parts of the formation of that knowledge. The particular, or the individual experience, is central to the works in the sky is blue. the sky is blue contains photographic works, artworks and textual works. The three works “jag samlar på himlar, jag samlar på himlen” (I collect skies, I collect the sky), “1000 stories about a blue sky” and “under en himmel” (under a sky) are the point of departure for the dissertation and its central works. A subjective story that seeks the answer to the question why I do what I do forms itself around these works. By choosing the same method in the dissertation work as in my artistic practice I let the question intervene with the question what I do when I do what I do. This means that the dissertation the sky is blue, which has come into being in the search for a why, is an implicit answer to the question: what I do when I do what I do. In “två bakgrundstexter” (two background texts) is described how two losses have formed the conditions for the coming into being of the sky is blue. There is a series of micro-essays related to the “two background texts”, which, instead of looking backward, take their point of departure in the present. In “tolv betraktelser” (twelve reflections/discourses) everyday flow is central; in these texts come the thoughts and reflections on expressions that take up space when I am confronted with different events in my everyday life. The texts in “fyra verkbeskrivningar” (four descriptions of works) are written in intimate relation to the works, and are, instead of reports on the material of the works and their coming into being, portrayals of the personal “state” that are the points of departure for these works. Just like the personal experience, which never forms itself in a linear way but rather consists of different parts or wanderings here and there that correspond to each other, the sky is blue is built up of different parts that are situated in a dialogical situation with each other. In order to maintain the dialogue between the different parts of the dissertation, I have chosen not to use the book format, which, in most cases, invites linear reading; the different parts of the dissertation have been placed in a box instead. The dialogical situation between the works does not only correspond to my artistic practice; I also consider the former to nurture the methods that are used to convey knowledge and meaning within the arts.
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    You Told Me – work stories and video essays / verkberättelser och videoessäer
    (2010-05-06T10:32:45Z) Bärtås, Magnus
    You Told Me is a practice-based research project and consists of three video biographies (the Who is…? series), and two video essays (Kumiko, Johnnie Walker & the Cute (2007), Madame & Little Boy (2009), an introduction with a contextualization and methodology of the field, and three essays. The dissertation is an observation and analysis of certain functions and meanings of narration and narratives in contemporary art, as well as being an experiment with roles, methods, actions, and narrative functions in an artistic medium – the video essay. Using the methods of “pilgrimage” (Chris Marker) and essayistic practices, and by revisiting and retelling biographies, this work tries to find a place in between collective and personal memory. During the practical process and the reflective theoretical work the different elements or instances of the video essay are identified: the subject matter, the images (the representation), the artist/author, the narrative/text, and the narrator/voice. In documentary film the lack of natural correspondence between these entities is often dissolved or denied – this work instead exposes the instances as separate units. A question arises: What alternative roles can be established between these elements, for example by negotiation and transference between them? The methodological part of the text focuses on the conceptual invention made during the process, which I have called work story [verkberättelse]. A work story is a written or oral narrative about the forming of materials, immaterial units, situations, relations, and social practices that constitutes, or leads to, an artwork. By discussing analogies between storytelling, collecting, and biographical accounts together with examples from conceptual art, the dissertation shows how the work story is not only crucial for the understanding of the artwork but that the act of making and the very order or sequence in which the making proceeds often have symbolic, metaphorical, metonymical, political, and even epistemological meanings. In an extended form a work story disseminates meaning rather than capturing it. This is the essayistic work story that permits a writer/artist to wander off and touch upon a subject as if in passing, reproducing its neglected genealogy and destiny in the detailed materiality of the work story.