Supervising Artistic Research Doctorates

[This is a legacy post from Nov 26th, 2020 2:51:30pm, ported across from the old website for continuity]

I just took part in this excellent event by the Orpheus Institute: Feed-back, Feed-forward: Approaches to artistic feedback in doctoral supervision. This session has close relations to two other large EU projects on Artistic Research which are well-worth a look for their thought-provoking and supportive documentation: ADIE (Artistic Doctorates in Europe), and Advancing Supervision for Artistic Research Doctorates. Here are some brief notes on things I picked up today and yesterday. Please excuse the fragmentary nature of the bullet-point format; much of this is paraphrased—simply what I was able to type (furiously) while listening—but hopefully it is an accurate and useful representation.

Simon Waters discussed his approach to supervision with excellent advice especially in terms of practical advice about the relationship between candidate and supervisor. 

• The importance of having significant discussion with the candidate before they apply. This helps in several areas (and might head-off some complications down the line): to establish both the direction and viability of the project, and the skills of the candidate in relation to that project; begins a relationship of trust between supervisor(s) and candidate, knowing they will spend 3+ years in close contact.

• The importance for the student of learning how to ‘play’, to be creatively playful as a mode of thinking and research.

• the value of the supervisor challenging the student in a productive way.

• Importance of the supervisor establishing distance from the way they were taught, or their own PhD experience. All students are individual and the supervisor should be reflective and self-critical about how their own experience shapes how they see candidates (and their projects). This isn’t to abandon your own experience, simply to be critical and not make assumptions.

• This self-criticality also extends to tools/skills the student has to develop so they can be reflective in and around their practice: ethnographies of the self, self-observation etc.

• My favourite phrase from this was the idea of ‘supervising the unknown’, in being present with the candidate on a journey that is necessarily contingent and emergent. This idea is picked up below in the Wesseling session.

Janneke Wesseling’s talk was on ‘Explicating the Intuitive’, and was especially useful for my own thinking on how artists navigate the PhD with its requirements for intuition to be explained (usually) through words of some sort. I took a solid four pages of notes on this session, which I summarise below to present the themes (roughly): though I haven’t yet read it, this paper by Wesseling might cover some of the same ground.

• the importance of intuition as central to practice, developed over years of embodied training.

• research is driven by intuition and personal vision

• Key to ‘objectifying the subjective’, especially through writing, and dialogue with peers.

• note that this is distinct from ‘objectivity’ as discussed in relation to scientistic research. Rather ‘objectifying’ is about putting the research into the modality of objecthood, placing it on the table for all to see and engage with play with.

• which leads to the importance of artists being able to discuss what it is they are doing. That the ‘public dimension of research is its core business’.

• which is not a reference to impact, but a reference to making research transferrable and part of discourse.

• Wesseling cites Brian Massumi’s  ’The Thinking-Feeling of What Happens’ for its discussion of art and philosophy speaking to each other, being ‘part of the same ripple pool’

• The importance of staying true to the hunch that begins the research, which usually arises through practice [and must be explore through practice].

• HOW TO EXPLICATE THIS INTUITION

• Wesseling draws significantly on new-materialist around the breaking of the subject/object divide. Karen Barad’s ‘intra-action’ is especially important here around the ideas of knowing as direct engagement with material (see Barad New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies, ed. By Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin (Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press, 2012))

• also, Bruno Latour on the theory/practice divide as a unity fractured by the blow of a powerful hammer.

• Phrasing the research question is main tool in explicating

• The biggest challenge is to find the question, but no serious research is possible without it 

• Research is a way of asking questions. 

• Often the central question is only truly revealed at the END of project, but the question evolves and adapts across project 

• The initial question just needs to be productive enough to start.

• Wesseling leans on Whitehead’s notion of question as a productive limit or constraint, a ground for action. Also, Stengers (in Thinking with Whitehead) ‘we must limit ourselves to the problem that has been raised, and trust our problem’.

• Whitehead’s concept of the ‘foothold of the mind’, and trusting the foothold to continuously ground the research as it develops. That this footholding is the condition of experimentation.

• The candidate, when trying to come up with a question begins in the phase that is mainly felt, not fully understood: ’this feels important!’. It’s key to follow that intuition and build on it, find footholds with concentrated attention and detailed specific investigation.

Heloisa Amaral presented a very useful workshop on the DasArts Feedback Method, developed by philosopher Karim Bennamar together with staff and students from the performing arts school DasArts (Amsterdam), As Amaral says: “This encourages feedback givers to address an issue without judgement and from different positions, as well as to more clearly and creatively justify this positioning in relation to the needs of the artist receiving feedback. Furthermore, the Method places great focus on the responsibility of feedback-receivers in formulating what they need, what they are looking for, and what they are struggling with. In a nutshell, it is about learning to ask the ‘right’ questions in order to get the ‘right’ questions back.” A key insight that I found useful here was in using specific language and response formulations to create distance from simply expressing opinion, and usefully focussing the feedback.

The exercises include:

• 1) affirmative feedback: ‘what works for me is X’

• 2) perspectives feedback, speak from someone else’s shoes. For example, ‘as X I need Y’, e.g. ‘as an audience I need more context’ etc.

• 3) open questions, make you think through a specific position, not about yes/no answers. Possibly generating new avenues of thought: making them think about something without telling them what to do.

• 4) concept-reflection and methodology. Placing concepts in the space and allowing free reflection and exploration on these concepts

• 5) tips and tricks: specific advice with emphasis on being precise, e.g. ‘why book X useful might be useful for your question/practice’

Finally, Vida Midgelow’s workshop on ‘Creative practice in/as Feedback’. As Midgelow says, the session “shares findings and proposals arising from research undertaken by ‘Artistic Doctorate in Europe’. This will be interwoven with light, collaborative and playful activities that aim to develop self-reflection, challenging us to move beyond traditional models of direct critical feedback, toward more expansive and creative modalities.” The website above offers several excellent resources, but key points for me in this session included:

• Thinking of the feedback process as slow, of allowing, listening, waiting.

• Moving from ‘what is a thing’ to ‘entering the experience of a thing’.

• Challenging the idea of ‘supervision’ into something that embraces complexity and attunement. 

• taking ideas of supervision from other domains. The idea of supervision as ‘assistance’ or as ‘seconding’ (from psychotherapy). Tim Ingold’s idea of the meshwork of interaction and exchange. Ideas from Dance Movement Psychotherapy of  reflective conversations, transitional awareness, somatic engagement.

• Coming to language from experience, avoiding naming too quickly, and allowing instead the emergence of thick description: ‘attending-to’, ‘noticing what you notice’. Narrativising experience not to critique it but to open it up: how do we pay attention to the how-ness of ourselves in any situation?

• starting from looking for the ‘miraculous moment’ in the work, which might not be obvious to anyone else.

This is at best a snapshot, but I encourage readers to consider these ideas/positions/prompts and seek out the more expansive documentation linked above. The Advancing Supervision for Artistic Research Doctorates project has a conference in Summer 2021 that is worth keeping an eye on for developments and resources.