Working Through Theory, Experiencing Through Theory: The Impact of Formal Research on Art Practice

I studied for my PhD at the Royal College of Art in the painting department from 1999-2003. I studied for an MA in Fine Art at Central St Martins, where I had reveled in writing my thesis and wanted to find out if I could develop it further, also on the MA I had produced a body of paintings that left me wondering where, in painting, I could go. The impetus, therefore, to embark on the PhD research came out of a desire to reflect in a sustained and considered way on the problematics around my art work. Much of the discussion, when I started the MPhil, was about what would constitute a PhD by project. It was clear that the same questions were driving both the art making and the writing and that I wanted to proceed by attending to those same questions in parallel in the different modes of address. It was however a surprise to me that increasingly, the two forms of practice would shape each other. Some artists researching PhDs are wary of the influence of theoretical research on their art practice. I was ready to be challenged and so was open to whatever the research required. I also enjoyed developing a critical approach to understanding issues of cultural identity and how my work could develop through the deepening of my knowledge base.

My first year was one of orientation and self-questioning and I immediately made two fundamental shifts in focus - I decided to concentrate on contemporary art rather than take the historical perspective I applied with for the thesis and I began working in video¹. I had made a series of text-based paintings exploring the relationship between historical racism/anti-Semitism through Enlightenment thinking, and contemporary neo-Nazi material. As my ideas became more narrative based and textual I felt I needed a time based medium to explore the lived experiences of peoples lives in relation to contemporary racisms.

Rachel Garfield
'So You Think You Can Tell', 2000

I made the video piece 'So You Think You Can Tell' in 2000, at the beginning of the second term. The video consisted of two interviews intercut, of two women's lives. Both women have shifted from one community to another (that is between Jewish and Black). In this work I build up an image through narrative composed from the interviews. Both women I had met in different circumstances - not in the course of research but in the course of my everyday life. Immediately upon meeting the second woman I realised the potential for exploring some of the issues I was grappling with in relation to the questioning the boundaries of community, colour, race.

It was around that time (summer 2000) that I wrote a paper on Ali G. My interest in this performer was to do with issues of 'passing'; the perceived position of the Jewish community in Britain and the historical relationship between Jews and Blacks. Writing this paper allowed me to test out my proposition that Jewish identity could problematise discourses around race, which rely on appearance; i.e. colour of skin and origin as the markers of difference. My reading to date had mainly been across the arena of Black identity. The Ali G piece was pivotal for leading me to explore, performance, performativity and the subject in relation to Jewish identity. 'Ali G: Just Who Does He Think He Is?' was published in the Jewish Quarterly² and Third Text³. While I was writing I first started thinking about the new piece of art that I was going to make.

At each formal stage I felt I was refining my position and so gaining clarity and purpose. I was lucky enough to get the funding so with great relief I embarked on a full time PhD.

The subject matter for my next piece, 'Unmade up', 2002, developed out of the first film but the structure was informed by the research for the Ali G paper. One of the defining moments of both women's lives in the previous video had been their choice of life partners. This is also of central concern to the Jewish 'community' (in common with many other minority groups) as the continuation to the next generation is paramount. I began interviewing as many people that I could from many different backgrounds and age groups who were Jewish and asked them questions regarding who they were and weren't attracted to.

Rachel Garfield
'Unmade Up', 2002

In the editing I began to formulate the device of overlaying voices, taking them out of sync and out of context, telling a multiplicity of stories, celebrating the incoherent subject. For the visuals I used myself - but myself 'performing' different me's - me as observer and me as object of the conversations and me as subject. This installation took a year to make but benefited from the pace, as the sophistication of my ideas and the piece developed alongside one another and particularly through the reading. I wouldn't say that the interviews changed but the way of using them changed through thinking about issues of performativity and the formation of subjectivity.

It took me some time to decide on which artists to write about and how to structure the thesis. It was through making a link between the work that I found interesting and my thinking about performativity that I decided on the artists and the format. I had been asked to write a catalogue piece for the artist Oreet Ashery ⁴, and I had written a paper for a journal in the summer of 2002 on the artists Oreet Ashery, Nikki S Lea and Douglas Huebler through Judith Bulter's reading on Athusser's 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses' essay, this helped me through some of the confusions and blockages that I had been struggling with ⁵. The editors who had commissioned me abandoned the project but the paper had done its work for me and helped me think through my own practice by thinking through those issues.

Rachel Garfield
'Youre Joking', 2005

The structure of the thesis had evolved over the period of study. The first chapter was a comparative study of the strategies employed by Black and Asian artists and institutions and Jewish artists and institutions. Here I explore some of the different forces at play within the histories of the two forms of curatorial practice ⁶. The second chapter examines and critiques some of the key thinkers who have framed the debates on Black identity. Stuart Hall, Kobena Mercer and Frantz Fanon who inform my understanding of the development of the elision of Jewish identity within identity politics. The third chapter through Butler's reworking of Althusser's interpellation theory I question the lack of choice in how a subject forms his or her identity (the notion of choice first came up in the Ali G piece where I suggested that one of the reasons Jews are excluded from the Identity Politics debates is that they are perceived to have a choice in whether they are visible or not, as 'other'). Finally I study the practice of three artists, Oreet Ashery, Ruth Novaczek and Deborah Kass who, by using the cipher of an avatar, undermine any reliance on reading of self through the visual in their work. I completed the thesis in the summer of 2004.

So for me the benefits of this kind of research was that it afforded me the opportunity to think across different fields of knowledge which in turn allowed me to make breakthroughs in my thinking and so my art as described above. I was allowed all the freedom that I needed to explore the relationship of theory to practice in my own way also as describe above. However I made sure that I was working with supervisors who understood my project and my aims. I was hungry for guidance towards a disciplined approach to reading and writing and for equal confidence in writing as I already had in making.

Oreet Ashery
'Self Portrait as Marcus Fisher No. 4', 2000

There is more and more pressure for artists now to embark on PhDs particularly to obtain posts in art institutions with the concomitant expectation that all artists would benefit from an intense and sustained theoretical input. This is not the case. There is still not a concensus on what a practice based PhD is, which complicates matters ⁷. It worked for my particular interests - researching for a PhD allowed me to find a model and the tools to develop the relationship between reading, writing and making which continues to impact on my practice. The aim was not to do a PhD as such but to research what the problematics are around exploring Jewish identity through art.

Ruth Novazcek 'Series 1', 1999

Notes:

¹ I had initially proposed to research the Jewish identity in relation to Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman and their concern with the Sublime as a way of finding an implicit expression to their Jewish identity.

² R.Garfield, 'Ali G: Just Who Does He Think He Is', The Jewish Quarterly, winter 2000, Number 180, pp.69-72

³ R. Garfield, 'Ali G: Just Who Does He Think He Is', Third Text, vol. 54, Spring 2001, pp.63-70

⁴ Oreet Ashery: Transgressing the Sacred, R.Garfield, in CD Rom: 'Alter Ego' as catalogue for exhibition, curated by Wibke Behrens, Berlin, 2002 and R.Garfield, 'Oreet Ashery: Transgressing the Sacred', The Jewish Quarterly, No. 186, pp.11-13

⁵ My point of entry into the debates on identity became premised on who calls the subject into being and the answering or disavowal of that call. (characterized by Althusser's vignette of a policeman calling "hey you" at a man across the street who turns around and says "who me?" )

⁶ That is the histories of curating so called 'jewish' shows and so called 'black' shows and all their concomitant problematics.

⁷ See http://www.avphd.gold.ac.uk/burgin-paper.pdf . This was a paper presented by Victor Burgin at a workshop entitled 'The Assessment and Examination of AVPhDs', 27 and 28 January at Birbeck college.

Illustrations:

Rachel Garfield
'So You Think You Can Tell', 2000
Video, 23 mins

Rachel Garfield
'Unmade Up', 2002
Video, 8 min loop (still rendering, John Timberlake)

Rachel Garfield
'You're Joking', 2005
Video (still rendering John Timberlake),
Installation shot Artsdepot 2005
Photo credit: John Timberlake

Oreet Ashery
'Self Portrait as Marcus Fisher No. 4', 2000
Photograph
Copyright the artist 2006
Photo credit: Manuel Vason

Ruth Novazcek
'Series 1', 1999
Video grab
Copyright the artist 2006
Courtesy Ruth Novaczek, The Lux

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