Catalogue / Katalogas “Darbalaukis”_2017_web (PDF, EN / LT)
is is not an art or design show. This is an exhibition of artistic
research, or in other words, an exposition of projects by art doctoral
(practice-based) students that addresses a problem how to present
a research or stages of it so as to make them readable, watchable, or
listenable both in the context of art and design and in that of scientific research, as art doctoral studies belong to either. The concept
of exposition involves the aspiration to find a way of “disposing”
(public exposing or “publishing”) findings or processes of artistic
research in an art space, which would reflect the investigative nature
of it. Therefor the language of this exhibition is of hybrid nature as
it contains features both of art practice and scientific research. It integrates
graphic expression, attributes of various media, principles
of installation, planar and spatial composition, research methodologies,
typologies and organisations, keywords and apparatuses of
scientific publications. In brief, the exhibition raises a question how
to expose artistic research and provides possible answers.
Over the last hundred years the strategies of exhibiting art have
changed essentially. 110 years ago Lithuanian artists Antanas
Žmuidzinavičius, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Petras Rimša
and others initiated the fi rst exhibition of Lithuanian art in Vilnius,
at the time occupied by the Russian Empire. The exhibition included
works of fine art (visual art) and folk art (a sort of design in a sense).
One can imagine the way of exposing art at the time: walls crowded
with artworks from left to right and from top to bottom must have
looked like a dense and intensive map, which left its viewer for a
lonely wander around a maze of meanings.
This exhibition also tries to piece together the art project and the
research, or so called practice based and theory based parts of the
art doctoral project, and to find a way of presenting them. This distinction
however is problematic in itself. Is research always “theoretical”
– does every artist contributes to the theory? Why research
work is not considered to be practical and creative? And vice versa,
isn’t an artwork by an art doctoral student his/her research and/or
its result? How to produce one integral project that would be both
research and artwork? These questions bother not only art doctoral
but also MA students.
Exhibition poster
Desktop or worktop: it is a display of a work process and a place of
exposition, yet mostly seen by the one, who is working there. In this
show it is exposed for colleagues and the audience aspiring to initiate
a conversation between people, artefacts and ideas.
How does a desktop/worktop/showtop by an art doctoral student
or its snapshot look like? Is it a multitude of visual and textual elements
spread over his/her desktop? Is it a neat and conceptually organised digital
landscape? Or maybe objects and artefacts that strike up conversations on his/her desks and shelves? A mind or object map on the floor or a wall of his/her studio? Or perhaps a thesis (a research) read aloud or rendered into images?
The exhibition exposes 25 positions by art doctoral students in visual arts or design.
Desktops here become showtops: displayed around the space they make up a sort of (artist’s) publication, and the contributors of the show provide creative adaptations of the formats established by the institution and the doctoral programme.
The exhibition was in part curated and
moderated collaboratively during collective
meetings, therefore my personal role
shifted every time from curator to moderator
and backwards. I invited art doctoral
students to think of connective links (artefacts,
keywords, etc.) between investigative
and creative parts of their art projects and
to produce a map or a (expanded) snapshot
of the current moment of their creative and
research process.
After all, this exhibition is an experiment
that invites to experience, to see and to rethink
processes of practice-based doctoral
studies in art and design.
Curator-moderator assoc. prof. dr. Vytautas Michelkevicius