SITUATED PRACTICE RESEARCH METHODS

This method introduces students to the main types of research methods adopted in situated practice. It provides an underlying conceptual framework for understanding approaches to practice-led research, and focuses on significant site-specific theories, criticism and practice, including Critical Spatial Practices and Theories, Discourses and Practices concerning site-specificity in and outside the gallery, Installation, Art and Spectatorship, Scenography and Curating, Practice-led approaches to research in art, architecture and design, Action and Participatory Research, Questions of Ethics and the Relation to the Other, Critical Architecture and Design Research, Public Art, Regeneration and Urbanism, Performance Design, Performativity and Subjectivity.

We aim to provide an introduction to the range of approaches taken to situated practice, by practitioners from across the spatial disciplines, emphasising transdisciplinary modes of practice and engagement. To foreground the importance of critically situating one's practice in relation to existing theoretical ideas and practice.

To explore how working in specific sites opens up possibilities for situated practice from responses to the formal and material conditions of location, to the social, cultural, political and historical pasts, presents and futures of a site, and to a focus on working with collaborators, including inhabitants and their roles as spectators, participants and/or possible co-producers and collaborators.

To introduce students to the kinds of approaches and questions they will need to tackle when it comes to developing their own individual approach to situated practice.

MEDIATED ENVIRONMENTS

Mediated Environments addresses the intersection of media theory, technology and architectural practice, charting the development of the contemporary mediated spatial paradigm. The module explores the complex interplay of spatial, sonic, filmic, networked and performative practices through early manifestations of Mediated Environments, through the work of exemplars of contemporary practice operating across a range of site conditions within varying cultures. The module progresses to examine the impact of the development of networked and mediated environments and the pervasive spread of personal media devices, apps and the impact of social media and new forms of publishing/broadcasting in the present day.

SITE WRITING

Through discussion of texts and projects, and the production of a piece of site-writing in the form of an artist's book, this method explores site-writing as a form of critical spatial practice from a transdisciplinary perspective.

Through discussions of texts and projects, from Mieke Bal's concept of 'focalisation' to Walter Benjamin's 'dialectical image', and from the literature of Italo Calvino to the prose of Gloria Anzaldua, this module examines from a transdisciplinary perspective the relationships between critical spatial practices and theories through the production of a piece of site-writing, as a piece of prose and/or site-specific text installation, presented as an artist's book.

The piece of prose and/or site-specific text installation explores questions of voice and approaches to writing which respond directly to questions of positionality and subjectivity in relation to spatial experience.

The artist's book explores how spatial and material approaches to writing can be developed through responses to spatial experiences through the use of font, layout, relation to text to image, choice of paper and binding.

THE OPEN WORK

The Open Work Module is designed to facilitate students to pose a self-directed body of work in order to gain knowledge related to the development of their wider project.

Students are encouraged to examine a broad range of interdisciplinary practices and skills to inform the developing research domain specific to each student, and to select a programme of work that best suits their developing research.

This module develops the kinds of approaches and questions they encountered in BENVGPS1 in a practical way that is focussed on the particularity of their own research domain, helping to define further questions they will need to tackle when it comes to developing their own individual approach to situated practice later in the course. This work and its accompanying portfolio will provide a basis for the development of each student's subsequent Major Project.

MAJOR PROJECT

This module is based around the preparation of an original piece of situated practice in the form of a Major Project, submitted first in the form of a live intervention into a site (or sites), then documented and reflected upon through an artist's book or digital archive, and finally remade in an exhibition format, which can include film-making, artwork and gallery installations, digital scripting, curation, scenography, performance, live art, participatory works, and or a conceptual design proposition. All final submissions must contain a substantial piece of written text of no less than 5000 words that outlines the theoretical investigation, conceptual positioning, and critical response to the particular site and approach chosen.

The aim of the module is for students to be able to produce a unique work of situated practice, which responds to a specific site or sites, in form as well as content. The module will be taught through a series of individual tutorials between the student and allocated supervisor, with a large expectation being placed on the student to drive the intellectual agenda and practical development of their Major Project.