Reinstating the Illusio of Practice in teaching and learning

1. Reinstating the Illusio of Practice in teaching and learning Dr Kerry Thomas Vice President VADEA (State and National Issues), Senior Lecturer, School of Art History and Art Education, COFA Kerry Thomas, George St 1, Tuesday 30 June, 2009

2. Background to this session • The concept of practice in the Visual Arts syllabuses • How practice has been represented in the HSC examination • Undergraduate students’ views of practice • My own interests

3. Some common misconceptions of practice • The artist/designer provides a truthful account of their practice • The artist/designer’s psychology or ‘inspiration’ provides a truthful account of their practice • Practice is reducible to the artist’s/designer’s intentions • Practice is transparent in regard to the artist’s/designer’s motives • Practice is agnostic to social/institutional relations

4. Some common misconceptions of practice cont. • Practice is equivalent/reducible to concepts and methods/techniques • Practice is equivalent/reducible to a mechanistic means-ends relation or a step wise plan or process (eg typified by a technical description, a lock step plan or an account of the creative process/creative problem solving) • Practice is rational

5. Practice: the analogy of the wind How does practice work in relation?

6. Practice exists only in relation to other circumstances and events: • It occurs in real time, plays with time and occurs over time • It occurs in a place • It occurs as a product of history that is often forgotten as history • It has a rhythm, tempo and directionality • It is temporal, uncertain, full of improvisation and can fall flat at any stage • It is socially constructed and contextually dependent, learned and normalised

7. Kerry Thomas, George St 2, Tuesday 30 June, 2009

8. Practice: the analogyof the ‘feel for the game’

9. A feel for the game is collective and requires those who enter the game to conduct themselves with due regard for their social obligations. • Honourable conduct (Bourdieu, 1998: 95) • The game can never be reduced to individuals alone.

10. Illusio:investment in the game • Intentionality, agency, belief, desire, identification and a commitment to the game are key concepts • The game is ‘worth the candle’, and beyond ordinary experience • ‘Whoever wants to win this game, appropriate to the stakes...and the benefits associated with it...must have a feel for the necessity and logic of the game’ (Bourdieu, 1994: p. 64).

11. In the social game (as with art, design) individuals cannot do whatever they like and hope to get away with it. Rather, their ‘feel for the game’ is employed in actions, which are both freer and more constrained by their command of the game and its immediate necessity. • Through an infinite number of strategies, players are able to do what the game requires at each moment while anticipating future action.

12. The good/expert player (artist/designer) is not constrained by mechanical obedience to codified rules and their strategies resist universalisation and mechanisation. • The good/expert player makes use of ‘double game strategies’ in which on the one hand their play conforms to the rules and are seen to obey the rules while on the other their play accords with the player’s own interests (Bourdieu, 1994: p. 63).

13. With the social practices of art and design • Social games take place in symbolic and denied economies • The love of art • Social obligation/reciprocity • Misrecognitions – repression, denial, open secrets, euphemisms • Double truths which are difficult to hold together • Duplicated logics, ambiguities, contradictory tendencies (Bourdieu, 1998: 95) • These games are rich with intentionality, agency, desire, belief, identification and commitment to the the game and its outcome

14. Interpreting the game (of practice): What function does/did X have (eg an event, action, property) in causing Y to occur?. Functions need to be ascribed (within a system of values). They are observer relative.

15. We could ask, what is the function of: • Psychology • Time and place: eg: events, teachers, mentors, patrons, institutional connections, grants, fellowships • The audience • The field • Theory (not only the artist’s theory but other theories that assist in explaining how the artefact and practice is caused) • The object itself (constraints on the object) • The artefact itself (material/conceptual) In causing the artefacts of practice and thus the practice itself (Brown, 2002)

16. Motives are likely to be concealed or disguised, motives take time to unfold in practice …often they may be revealed after the event and can be reascribed (Brown, 2001) • What is relevant needs to be recovered through inquiry (Brown, 2001)

17. Practice: a relational network

18. Barran nets

19. Interaction networks of proteinsNeonatal Rat Cardiomyocyte 2D PAGE Database

20. A merged network Neonatal Rat Cardiomyocyte 2D PAGE Database

21. Scale free networks

22. In sum • Practice is typified by relational modes of thinking that is exhibited in acquired and durable non-mechanical generative schemes that allow for the free production of thoughts, perceptions and actions (Bourdieu, 1997: 56). • These occur in certain historical and social/institutional constraints that are likely to be positively sanctioned and adjusted to an objective future that they anticipate (within a habitus): a relational network rather than a process. • Attempts to rationalise a practice may be false (Brown, 2001) • While practice has a practical and economical logic this logic is irreducible to a logical logic (Bourdieu, 1998) • Practice is enacted within constantly mutating networks (Brown, 2001).

23. References • AFL image: http://www.personal.ceu.hu/students/08/James_Holman/Images/afl.jpg • Barran nets:http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_u-BY-7VB1jg/Rq_7YuQu0II/AAAAAAAAABo/kWF9t6RIMOc/s400/baran_nets.jpg • Brown, N. (2001). The representation of practice. In Selected Working Papers in Art & Design, Vol. 1. Available at: www.artdes.herts.ac.uk/papers • Brown, N. (2002). Practices of Research in Art Design and Education. SAED 4051/9002 Course Outline COFA UNSW. • Bourdieu, P. (1994). In other words essays towards a reflexive sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press. • Bourdieu, P. (1997). The logic of practice. Cambridge: Polity Press • Bourdieu, P. (1998). Practical reason: On the theory of action. Cambridge: Polity Press. • Chess image: http://www.fotosearch.com/CSP057/k0578868/ • Heymans, Sussie. (2007). Family tree; banksia; interference pattern. COFAspace exhibition flier, 23-27 March 2009. • Krommer, F. Octet Partita in F. Op. 57 (1807-10) Allegro Vivace. From Wind Music, The Chamber Orchestra of Europe. • Neonatal Rat Cardiomyocyte: http://2d.bjmu.edu.cn/show2d/（1-2）direct%20and%20indirect%20Networks.asp • Netball image: www.edgarcentre.co.nz/ sports/dunedin-netball-... • Symonds image: http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/10/05/symonds_wideweb__470x292,0.jpg • The University of Chicago New Office (2006). Digital Darwinian world reveals architecture of evolution. Retrieved 29 June, 09 from: http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/06/060807.networks.shtml Other useful references on practice: • Bourdieu, P. (1993). The field of cultural production. Cambridge: Polity Press.