share-handbook-for-artistic-research-education-high-definition

132 Contested Values and Critical DebatesInterventions: Position Papers and Dialogues5. A. 3. ‘Knowledge-Making in the Age of Abstraction’(Steven Henry Madoff)It’s an honour to be here and to address all of you, 5 and let me begin by sayingwhat a quandary this is. The US and Europe are at very different stages in thedevelopment and growth of doctoral programmes in arts practices. I’m currentlyserving on an advisory committee of the College Art Association (CAA) todetermine its policy statement concerning the validity of a doctorate as theterminal degree in the visual arts, and particularly in relation to the MFA.The current policy statement, written in 2008, includes these words: ‘The masterof fine arts (MFA) degree in art and/or design is the recognised terminal degreein the visual arts. It is considered by the CAA, the National Association ofSchools of Art and Design (NASAD), and the vast majority of institutionsof higher education in the United States to be equivalent to terminal degreesin other fields, such as the PhD or EdD’. 6Yet it seems you have already queried many times over all of thequestions that my colleagues and I are now asking, such as the warrantfor such a shift, and what Mick Wilson and others call ‘first principles’,such as epistemological enquiries into the nature of knowledge itselfand the parity of forms of measurability, replicability and validationbetween research in the sciences and research-based arts practiceswithin the university structure of bureaucratic approbation on whichhiring, promotions and grants depend. Everything that I’ve readindicates that you’ve been addressing these questions for morethan a decade, intensified by the Bologna Process. And, while suchfirst principles remain grounds for contestation, this conference iswitness to the movement beyond these fundamentals, from broadenquiry to broad execution.For the moment, I’d like to put this in a different light. At YaleUniversity’s art school, I’ve taught a course I call ‘What Do We ThinkAbout When We Think About Teaching?’ I begin it with some thoughtsabout what I consider the cardinal activity of teaching, which is aspecific form of care. No one knows what a particular artist needsto know to become the artist they need to become. But, in the act ofcaring, we find out. To care is to listen. The word ‘teach’ comes fromthe Indo-European root ‘to show, to point out’, and ‘care’ originatesin the Indo-European root ‘to cry out’, which, in Old English, tookon the specific sense of oversight and protection. ‘Care’ is a word,then, about concern and interest, and the teacher shows what needs5. This is a revised version of the keynote address made at the third SHARE conference in Brussels,24 May 2013.6. See the CAA’s MFA Standards at http://www.collegeart.org/guidelines/mfa.