coordinated by Neil Cummings and Research Fellow Mary Anne Francis

The collaborative research cluster Critical Practice recognises the dramatic effects on creative practice brought about by changes in the construction of society. These changes affect a multitude of levels - social, political, aesthetic and financial. Rapid technological change in information exchange and capital movements, for instance, have diffused traditional cultural distinctions and reconfigured economies of value.

In this new environment our practices - as artists, curators, designers or theorists - their interpretation, how they are theorized, historicised or administered, are no longer separate concerns, or indeed the prerogative of different disciplines. It's clear that artworks and artists exist within an ecology - an ecology built from an interrelated web of curation, exhibitions, museums and galleries, places of education, communities of enthusiasts, forms of funding, friendships, catalogues, bodies of knowledge, theorists, critics, advertising and so on.

The research projects pursued under the auspices of the Critical Practice research cluster will engage with the various forces that are implicated in the making of art, and the increasingly devolved experience of art made available through art institutions to their audiences. Using 'critical fieldwork' we will develop research into the subtle relationship between a creative practice and its sites, sources and modes of realisation. We will explore new models for creative practice, and look to engage those models in appropriate contexts. We intend to question the means of defining and working critically and creatively within a particular practice.

The cluster of practitioners involved in Critical Practice will imaginatively engage their research in appropriate public forums, both nationally and internationally; we envisage participation in exhibitions and the institutions of exhibition, seminar and conference papers, film, concert and other event programmes, We will work with archives and collections, publication, broadcast and web cast media; while actively seeking to collaborate.core researchers are

Aims

• our aims

Objectives]

• our objectives

Critical Practice is sometimes

Andrew Chesher, Wayne Clements, Corrado Morgana, Darrel Stadlen, Ian Drysdale, Isobel Bowditch, Dr Mary Anne Francis, Neil Cummings, Pete Maloney, Dr Tim O’Riley, Tom Neill, Trevor Giles, Neal White, and others

[edit] Minutes of Meetings

18th May 2006

[edit] Recent Projects:

Thinking Through Practice

This research project has been set up to explore the relation between aesthetic practice and philosophical questions. Whereas academic philosophy can tend towards using the arts as its object and alibi, and the arts to use philosophical theory as their rationale, Thinking Through Practice investigates practices in which aesthetic means and philosophical questioning are symbiotically related.

The aim of the project is to discover in what way and with what success aesthetic practice can address philosophical issues beyond the employment of the standard textual forms of philosophical discourse.

The programme will be determined by inviting proposals from Chelsea's research community.

The practices currently under proposal range across documentary, fiction film, theatre and video, through which philosophy intersects with neuropsychology, theoretical physics and politics. The cross-disciplinary possibilities are diverse and exciting.

We are developing a two-year programme with one event per term.

[edit] Next Event

Saturday 2nd December

The Other Within Me: The Practice of Deconstruction

Peter Zeillinger will 'think through' the practice of deconstruction as affirmative gesture. Breaks, interruptions, traces, doubts, performativity, all of these, inherent in such a practice, are brought to bear on the 'practical'. The event will take the form of a workshop and presentation on (amongst other things) generosity, the political and the question of faith.

To be followed with food and hospitality!

Peter Zeillinger is a philosopher and theologian working in the Catholic-Theological faculty, University of Vienna.

Event to take place in the Red Room, Chelsea College of Art and Design, UAL Start time 15.00 (talk and screening) 19. 00 - 21. 00 dining

Entrance Free, no booking required

If you would like to join us for the meal afterwards please RSVP to isobel.b@btopenworld.com

[edit] Previous Events

a rare screening of N is for Negri: a conversation with Toni Negri. 2000 Carles Guerra, Spain 2h:10 min.

Saturday 4th February 2006: Screening of the award-winning film The Ister- David Barison and Daniel Ross, 2004, Australia, 189 mins followed by a Q