art_research : : research_art

So, first of all, for anyone who's keeping tabs, the teaching is going very well. I've been lucky to have some good students in the past, and granted it's only the second week of the semester, but I think this is the best {collective} group of students I've ever had. Yay! Anyway, in addition to teaching, today (which I do every Tues/Thurs, at 8am!), I attended a roundtable headlined by Dick Hebdige, entitled, "When is Art Research." I went because Hebdige's Subculture had quite an influence on me, in my younger days, and also because I do struggle with the contentious relationship between the art world & the academy. It was actually Anne Walsh who got up and said that asking when art is research is like trying to justify art practice, from the perspective of an academy that sees it as a lesser practice, rather than asking when research is art. I'm very intrigued by research-heavy creative practices, right now, and I suppose I'm doing much of that myself. I used to try to forge such a separation between my art practice, curating, and academic work, but now there are so many areas of overlap. I'm not sure if I've finally seen the light of interconnectedness between the things I'm into, or if I'm just becoming a one-trick-pony. All I know is that I would be into doing what I'm doing, whether or not anyone ever ratified it as 'art' or 'research'...