Katy MacLeod: The functions of the written text in practice-based PhD submissions

MacLeod, Katy. “The functions of the written text in practice-based PhD submissions. Working Papers in Art and Design 1. (2000) http://www.herts.ac.uk/artdes/research/papers/wpades/vol1/macleod2.html (accessed March 20, 2008).

As the title suggests, this two-part paper contemplates the written component of practice-based PhD submissions. While the first part describes three possible relationships between the exegesis and the art, the second section considers the question, “What, therefore, is the thesis, or, rather, what constitutes the thesis?” (4). MacLeod addresses this question by proposing a matrixical theory, an approach that seeks to acknowledge the intellectuality of making involved in working through ideas/matter/form in the artwork. Instead of challenging the written component as integral to the art PhD, MacLeod opts for a less controversial tack by proposing greater recognition of the artist-theorist/artist-scholar.

The first section offers a taxonomy of three types of written components.

1. Type A and involves renewing/positioning the practice so that the written text provides a specific reading of the artwork.
2. Type B, on the other hand, aims to theorize the practice/methods involved in making the art; it understands the written text is integral to framing the work.
3. In contrast, type C reveals the practice; the written text is integral and complementary to the artwork submission but the artwork here is the thesis because it offers a theoretical proposition. MacLeod is fascinated in particular with type C, as writing in this approach decenterd the practice by way of what she calls a “seesaw effect.”

…after the completion of one phase of the written text when the seesaw was high in the air, the ensuing work on the art project would destabilize what had been achieved to the point that when the researcher returned to the next phase of research on the written text, the seesaw was firmly down on the ground and the text had to be completely reconceived (3).

However compelling the seesaw metaphor, it leaves me wondering what differentiates this approach from the others, what makes A, B and C somehow mutually exclusive. Surely, exegesis destabilizes practice and vice versa in all three cases? And surely, practice-based research usually develops by zigs and zags? Certainly, I am alert to MacLeod’s sense that the written component in type C is more tangential than in types A and B. But her failure to clarify what makes it so—what makes it simultaneously exegesis, proposition and secondary to the practice—raises for me more questions than are answered by her text.

A two-fold question plays midwife to the second part of this paper: “what is the thesis in the practice-led PhD, or, rather, what constitutes the thesis?” (4). What constitutes the thesis is determined in large part on how the thesis is defined, which is why MacLeod frames her definition of the thesis historically, describing debate around the nature of the work in art research. This culminates in her assertion that art is a “theorizing practice” and thus capable of producing the research thesis. MacLeod seems to be insinuating that art is enough—that it has the capacity to be both research (with all its contingent accountability) and art (affording space for interpretation). But the art research theorist resists making this claim outright, opting for discussion of the artist scholar/theorist instead. In other words, she avoids taking direct issue with the institution of the art PhD (a politically fraught debate) and rather discusses art as an intellectual activity. Her concluding statement: “Hence, it is possible to argue that the thesis/text is not representative of the dialectical relationship at the heart to the practice based higher degree submission, but the thesis/artwork is” (5) Is this MacLeod’s answer to the question she puts at the beginning of part two, or is it an attempt to expand and/or limit the debate? Either way, I find her position confusing…provocative, certainly, but also, I fear, a slightly exclusive interpretation of practice-based research. At the very least, it fails to consider how writing might, in fact, be a medium for art.

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