Retningslinjer for eksamensteksten, MAKU 4

Guidelines for the final MA text

Introduction

Why writing? Why an MA text?

Writing – both on your own artistic practice, art in general, and relating to wider contexts–, is an intrinsic part of operating as an artist today. Contemporary artistic practices are highly individual and often don ́t conform to norms such as productivity and accessibility. Mediating these practices in a way that makes them accessible while testifying to their complexity, is a way to articulate their relevance.

A Master text is

• An opportunity to formulate questions, strengthen your practice, reflect upon your own work.

• A research piece that helps you experiment with ideas in another medium, which is text, and to learn how to present research in text.
• An educational process that will equip you with tools and skills that are very useful – if not necessary – to operate as an artist.

• A way to situate the conceptual issues central to your practice in a broader theoretical, historical and cultural context.

• Not a sacred, unachievable piece which should be perfect from the outset. On the contrary it is generated from within your artistic practice: it emerges from research notes, thoughts and ideas, all the messy archive that you have gathered so far and that is gradually organised, revised, edited. Even though its principal goal is not to be published, but to be an instrument of reflection and expansion, the MA text involves nonetheless writing and re-writing, working on details, and reaching a high level of precision through a sustained editorial process.
• An environment in which you can develop your ability to express ideas in the medium of text, which as any medium has its own specificity.

Format

The most widely used format is printed text on paper. You can choose write a shorter text and include a part which is articulated in another medium – image collection, video, web page. The nontextual part of the text is not an artwork, but a constellation of research material, which is organized in such a way that it gives an idea of your line of research and network of concepts and questions you are dealing with in your artistic practice. If you choose more alternative formats (video, web, etc) make sure that the cohesion between this choice and the nature of your practice and project is clearly articulated.

Length

The MA text is between 3,000 and 8,000 words (between 10 and 25 pages at 1.5 spacing and 12 point font). If you go outside this framework -especially if you have less than 3,000 words- it should be evident why this is the case. If you have part of your MA text in an alternative format, its substance should be somehow equivalent to this word-count framework.

Content Guidelines

Recommendations on what the MA text can include or be generated by:

• Central Question(s): A central question or dominant issue in your project. This can be the question or notion you started your project with, or it can be a question or notion that emerged as you developed your project. This question is a tool to drive your creative practice further, it should have the power to generate more questions thus opening a potential space for thinking and further research. It can be an idea or intuitive projection you have come up with, or one that you extracted from other theories, histories or practices. There can also be more than one central question.

• Context: Relate your practice and your project to broader ideas, events and histories. Possible areas of contextualisation are history, art history, art theory, philosophy, visual culture, literature, popular culture, other artist’s or authors’ ideas or propositions. Remember that an intelligent critique of works and ideas is always welcome, and that relating your practice to broader ideas can be articulated by contrast and difference as much as by resonance and appreciation.

• Overview of your Project where Connections are Made Evident: Look back at your time at the programme and select different items of your work and/or studio practice. Connect and relate these items. Think of it as a mapping exercise where you draw lines and join events and ideas. Use your text to make these connections evident to an outside reader. For instance the relationship between an artistic result and a conversation you had with a colleague. Or the relationship between a certain theory that you are interested in, and an experiment you developed in your studio.

• Conceptual tools and methodologies: How have you chosen to work through your main questions? Why did you favour particular strategies? How did you test these strategies? and how have these affected your artwork?

• Turning Point(s): Single out moments in which your project took a shift or where a particular perspective emerged. Why and how did this happen? and what came afterwards? How did this turning point affect the overall project?

• Report some of the Progress and Future of your Practice: Go over some of the most significant artistic results you had during your project. Did these happen as part of exhibitions, or are these studio experiments that you found to be particularly resolved? Also How do you see your process, and the steps you have taken at the MA programme contributing to your future practice?

• Remember: To write an MA text does not mean that you write on works that you have already completed. There is a difference between writing on finished pieces and writing and reflecting on the conceptual infrastructure of your current, evolving practice. You can choose to write in essay form, academic style, fiction, or adopt a conceptual or creative textual practice, as long as your framework is probed with your main tutors, your research is established as the ground of the writing project, and the text is not an arbitrary exercise but it is closely connected with your current work as developed during the MA.

Written with the contributions of:

Alena Alexandrova, Daniela Cascella, Pedro Gómez-Egaña, Arne Skaug Olsen

Dec. 2015