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HOW DO YOU ASSERT AUTHORSHIP IN YOUR WORK? Emily Grego
Of the many discussions in the Jewelry + Metalsmithing Fall graduate seminar, the one with the least consensus grew from reading Roland Barthes’s The Death of the Author.1 Disagreements arose over how authorship manifests in work, whether or not the author should even be important, and ownership of ideas. Admittedly, authorship is particularly difficult to define in art jewelry, a new field coming from a craft where historically the maker is rarely recognized.
After hearing responses from within my own department, I began an investigation into the views of RISD graduate students as a whole by asking the question “How do you assert authorship in your work?”2 Seven possible answers were distilled from previous discussions: concept, organization of ideas, research behind work, the hand, aesthetics, control what is shown, and I don’t.3, 4 The survey was conducted in interdisciplinary seminars and workshops, but primarily at Graduate Open Studios, during which I traveled from studio to studio and surveyed students in all sixteen of RISD’s graduate departments.5 In total, 103 graduate students completed the survey.6 The results are shown in the accompanying pie chart.
1
I know many writers have responded to Barthes. We read those too, and it didn’t help.
2
In short, I tried to condense a fifty-year critical discourse into a one-question survey. See footnote 11.
3
I wrote “CIRCLE ONE” (see footnote 4) on the survey, yet seven people chose two answers or wrote something else. See footnote 10.
4
Some students felt the need to choose more than one answer despite instruction. Some chose to circle their principle choice twice and then their other choices once. Some numbered their choices; some drew arrows or diagrams on the survey indicating their choices. One drew a circle around their first choice with other circles slowly rippling out from around it to encompass one of the other options. See footnote 11.