page number:
49 / 104
file:
Kjell Rylander Archives
document:
Backstage Antics
author:
Glenn Adamson
dd-mm-yyyy:
25-02-2012
Kjell Rylander is in every way a product of university art culture. The objects he makes are saturated with the sophistication, self-awareness, and perhaps even introversion that we might expect of an academic. He has been involved over the past few years in a relatively recent intellectual phenomenon that has been sweeping through art schools across Europe. This is called “practice-based research,” a process by which intuitive making is rendered into rigorous investigation and self-criticism. Even Rylander himself isn’t sure what the prospects of this undertaking might be. When I put the question to him, he replied with his typical restraint: “perhaps is not a question to answer; perhaps it should not be answered, but explored. We are on a new ground, intellectually.” Indeed we are. Even so, before coming on to his work, it might be worth retracing the steps so far. The concept of “practice-based research” seems to have emerged first in Britain, for reasons that have more to do with politics than aesthetics. Once upon a time, institutions of higher education in the UK were split into two broad categories: universities, which attracted upper- and middle-class students and were organized around the longestablished principles of academic research; and the polytechnics, vocational schools aimed at a working-class clientele, which avoided the open-ended, individualistic education of the universities and instead prepared their students for practical careers in engineering, nursing, mechanics, and the like. To the left-wing Labour government that came into power in the 1990s, this arrangement was no more or less than a means of enforcing traditional class hierarchy. So they abolished the division between scholarly and vocational education. All institutions were now to be universities, and anything that happened inside them was to be considered research – no matter how practical it might seem. A corollary of this great shift in British higher education was that funding would henceforth be pegged to “research outcomes,” which would be measured both qualitatively and quantitatively. No exceptions. Faculty in art, craft and design suddenly found themselves “researchers.” For some this was a welcome blast of fresh air; it seemed an appropriate way to value the increasingly conceptual activities going on in their studio-based departments. For others, especially those working with traditional skills, it was bewildering: does throwing a pot at the wheel or painting a canvas really constitute research? If so, does that mean you have to do it differently? And if not, are those activities no longer worth studying? The most recent outgrowth of this puzzling situation has been the advent of the PhD in practice-based research. Now a potter or painter can get the highest academic qualification available, equivalent to that of any historian, sociologist or chemist. Art is not easily tested – it is notoriously subjective, its significance often difficult even to recognize