Reflections on Disciplines and Their Role in Universities

This short piece is adapted from a lecture I gave some years ago about the way disciplines, in particular film studies, develop into departments within universities. How do disciplines stay alive and remain current and connected to the social and historical context of which they are a part? How do they grow and how and why do they often stagnate?

Disciplines or areas of study and research are in large measure created and sustained by the institutions within which they are taught. To my mind when I say that, I am presuming that a discipline cannot be taught without also being researched, even if that research consists of no more than just keeping up with the production of others in the field.

Film Studies for example, has always been a hybrid of many different disciplines. This, as we shall see, has had both negative and positive results sometimes leading to an expansion of the discipline, other times leading to a severe contraction. Film is both an object of study and a creative discipline although there is a tendency to separate production from theory.

The construction of a discipline is dependent upon a set of processes which are located in the structure, politics and history of institutions. This may seem obvious, but over time the processes which have produced that history are often lost from view. The struggle through which that history has been forged recedes into the background. There have been many efforts over the last 35 years or so to build the study of film into a coherent and recognizable as well as acceptable discipline. Yet, because institutions drive towards discursive sameness (and this need not be a negative characteristic) as a means of giving disciplines credibility for teaching and research purposes, the often complex and bumpy road which has been followed doesn't appear to be a part of the discipline itself.

In concrete terms it would be unusual for a university film department to offer students a history of its own construction because that might entail rethinking the very purpose of the department itself. Furthermore, questions as to how one discourse, say in film theory, has become more privileged than another, go right to the heart of how a consensus has been built in the first place. Even, for example, the presumption that film history needs to be taught in film departments, suggests a particular theoretical schema, one that needs to be foregrounded and not simply assumed.

The internal cohesion of a discipline is driven by the demands of institutions, demands which are more often than not situated in the very language of the institutions themselves. How do the conditions of knowledge production affect the goals of disciplinary development?

The daily practice of film scholarship is provided with meaning by the community of researchers and teachers who together participate in constituting, creating and maintaining it. That community, however heterogeneous, will inevitably search for, and then fix upon a certain set of primary ideas which it feels 'represent' the discipline (a canon). The creation of a specific and sometimes very powerful discourse to re-enforce the strength of that approach is perhaps unavoidable. What needs to be discussed are the assumptions which have produced that discourse and the politics which have governed the choices that have shaped the discipline.

Sometimes, the environment of universities for example tends to militate against that happening. And so students are faced, as they are in many other disciplines, with an area called film studies which of necessity presents itself as already constituted. Again, this is perhaps unavoidable, but what interests me is what is lost in the process and how institutionalization has created pedagogical and research models to support certain discourses over others.

Cinema Studies has, in a short period of time, achieved what seemed very remote in the early 1970's. There are at present many teachers of cinema and an extraordinary proliferation of film departments at both the university and college level, particularly in North America. The discipline has been fragmented into a variety of specialties with each having an internal cohesion undreamed of during the early period of disciplinary 'construction'.

The heterogeneity of approaches which characterizes the study of film, has a great deal to do with what critical theorists like Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno recognized in the 1930's. Film was then seen as the cutting edge of twentieth century culture, the practical manifestation of all that was wrong and right about the effects of new technologies upon art and audiences. If we were to reconstruct the arguments of that period we would find that the examination of film was heavily affected by debates in psychoanalysis and linguistics, as well as in literary criticism and the arts. Those debates were not seen as an infringement on the already defined territory of film studies, rather, it was if new technologies like film needed those debates and drifted inevitably towards the ideas which those debates initiated and developed.

Ironically, if film represented that sphere, that cross-section of interests which reflected its position as a new technology, it also pointed the way to a re-evaluation of the critical and theoretical enterprise in the arts. Its particular organization of meaning, its effective collapse of signifier and signified, its astonishing naturalization of the difference between the real and representation, all of these characteristics meant that the study of film could not proceed along conventional lines.

It is interesting to note that in each successive phase in the development of film studies, "other" disciplines have been used, as if the difficulty of finding a strategy to analyse film, meant that some kind of master code had to be found elsewhere. But as it turns out, this elsewhere suggests a division between disciplines and other areas which film studies has never been able to sustain. Film as poem, film as novel, film as text, images as sentences, as words, as frames. Film as painting, as music. Film and television, film in opposition to television and so on. I won't even begin to raise all of the comparisons with photography, the presumed interdependence, photographic metaphors, the fact that film as movement, images in movement, have always been seen in the light of images as still, photographic stills.

What we call film studies has never been able to bare its soul, to reveal, beneath of all of the comparisons, precisely that uniqueness which might distinguish it from the interlopers who camouflage it. I would suggest that film studies has been quite fortunate, because that essence just doesn't exist, and both the history of the 'discipline' and the manner in which films produce meaning, points towards the interdisciplinary as the context in which definitions of the field can best be worked out. Problems remain of course because every discipline has its own history, its own set of debates, often, its own language. But this doesn't in any way devalue the process of borrowing, albeit that more care needs to be taken with the use of other disciplines, including a more profound recognition of their boundaries and assumptions.

Emily Carr University of Art and Design

L-R, Board Chair Dr. George Pedersen, Advanced Education Minister Murray Coell, Premier Gordon Campbell

Emily Carr Institute will now be known as Emily Carr University of Art and Design!

This historic change to university status reflects the fact that we are and have been awarding undergraduate and graduate degrees to a wide and diverse group of students from BC, Canada and the world for many years. University status will allow us to grow and develop as we move into the 84th year of our proud history as British Columbia's only specialized university of Art, Design and Media.

Our new status will also allow us to be more competitive and enhance the already rich tradition of research, professional practice and academic rigour that has made Emily Carr University into one of the most important institutions of its kind in the world.

Emily Carr University was founded in 1925 and is made up of an extraordinary community of faculty, staff and administrators whose passion and dedication provide a unique learning experience to our 1500 full time students and the many hundreds more who take our community-based continuing studies courses.

As we move into a new era in the history of the institution, I would invite all of our supporters, students, alumni and employees to share this special moment together and to email me their thoughts and hopes for the future.

Dr. Ron Burnett, President

president@eciad dot ca

Geometrical Mapping in Urban Systems (Research Proposal)

By

Jay Gazley (Jay is a graduate student of mine at Emily Carr Institute)

(I will be putting more research from Graduate Students at Emily Carr on this Blog over the next while.)

Since the advent of industrialization there has been an increasing shift in population demographics from rural to urban regions. Urbanization has led to enormous changes in power structures; large metropolitan areas have been increasingly dominating the social, political, and economic organization of nations. According to L.S. Bourne from the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto, “These areas, even when broadly defined, may occupy only 3 to 4% of the national territory, as in Canada, but harbour 80 to 90% of the nation’s productive capacity, population and wealth. In effect, the urban system becomes the principal expression of the territorial organization of the national economy and its social system.��? As such, a greater understanding of the multi-dimensional characteristics of urban systems is of great importance. I propose the development of complex visual models in painting and sculpture, that would explore and map the various elements, which compose and effect urban systems.

For years architects and urban planners have been theorizing about the creation of a utopian urban system. My research will analyze the various theories and constructs that both modernist and postmodernist thinkers have been using to shape the urban fabric to date. Modernism and postmodernism are usually defined as polarities of one another. Modernist design on the one hand is characterized as industrially efficient, uniform, linear, centralized, and utopian minded, with its large-scale monolithic projects, while postmodernism is seen as a critical reaction against the former in that it’s designs are pluralistic, fragmented, personal, decentralized, and known for multiplicity of purpose and land use.

In addition to these approaches my research will also consider the scientific methods of Systems Theory developed in biology, computer science, and economics, as applied here to urban systems. The coherence of a city then may be understood through the analyses of other complex interacting systems. “Complex large-scale wholes are assembled from tightly interacting subunits on many different levels of scale, in a hierarchy going down to the natural structure of materials. A variety of elements and functions on the small scale are necessary for large-scale coherence. Dead urban and suburban regions may be resurrected in part by reconnecting their geometry.��? The analysis of the connective and disconnective potential in urban units, as subunits of wholes, through geometric configurations, is primary to my methodological approach to research. My research will then focus on the spatial geometric aspects of urban systems, and involve the critique and testing of modernist and postmodernist theories through standards of coherence as established by systems theorists.

My research will also consider the important effects that globalization and transnational corporations are playing in weaving the urban fabric. Cities cannot be studied in isolation; national, and international factors must also be taken into account. I will take into consideration the effects of production, distribution, consumption, transportation, communication, and legislation within urban systems to construct several different visual models. Each model will consider its own set of pre-established criteria for exploration, and deal with a different set of architectural and urban planning problems, as posed by modernist and postmodernist theorists. Each hypothesis will then be worked out in painting and sculpture. These models will be developed in an experimental manner and will include the injection of empirical knowledge and statistical information when possible.

The focus of the research will be on large to mid-sized twentieth-century Canadian metropolitan areas. The models will investigate concept and form from a variety of different perspectives; both macro and micro viewpoints will be considered, as well as aerial, ground level, and subterranean perspectives. Of particular significance is the aerial perspective, which has not only traditionally been used by architects and urban planners, but is also of emerging importance as satellites are increasingly shaping the way in which we see the earth. The aerial perspective also informs how transnational corporations and military powers view abstracted and dehumanized landscapes from distant office towers or fortified bunkers with orbital satellites. In this spirit I will also utilize resources such as Google Earth, where by one may, with a few clicks of their mouse, zoom in or out on most geographic regions of the earth.

These studies will reexamine the theories that underlie the organization and evolution of cities, as structural, biological, economic, social, demographic, and geographic systems, and attempt to give form to the seemingly invisible factors that shape them. Working in such uninhibited mediums, as painting, and sculpture will allow me to create a new methodological paradigm for urban systems research that will work in a complimentary manner towards existing techniques. Such a space will allow for greater experimentation, and inventiveness, enabling me to move freely through ideas and forms without the traditional architectural or urban design constraints such as client, economy, and policy.

The result will be a comprehensive multidisciplinary body of work that would act as an idea bank for future building strategies, expand the current community of interest in urban systems issues, and serve to create discourse and critique in new academic and critical contexts.

This research project will be housed within the Masters of Applied Arts program at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. The program at Emily Carr Institute has a strong emphasis on research.

The context for learning, education and the arts (1)

This entry has five parts. (One, Two, Three, Four, Five)

The context for learning, education and the arts has altered dramatically over the last few years as has the cultural environment for educators and artists/creators. Part of what I would like to do here is examine the intersection of a number of crucial developments that I think have transformed the terrain of technology, education, art and culture.

This is a grand claim and I would be the first to admit that we are being incessantly told that change has become the major characteristic of the late 20th century. But, I do think that we are witnessing shifts which will have a profound effect not only on the social and political structure of Western countries but on the ways in which In which we see ourselves, act upon and within the communities of which we are a part and how we create meanings, messages and information for the proliferating networks that now surround us.

The one important caveat here is that although I am concerned with the transformations we are experiencing, I will in no way claim that we are undergoing a revolutionary change. I tend to see history as evolutionary, which in no way precludes dramatic shifts from occurring. As intellectuals, artists, technology developers and educators, I believe it is our responsibility to become active within this environment and to develop the critical and creative tools to respond to the ongoing evolution of an emerging aesthetic of interactivity in which aesthetic goals are linked with ethical goals and are based on a perspective of caring for both the individual and the larger economic, political, ecological, social and spiritual circumstances that create contexts for the individual. (Carol Gigliotti;Bridge to, Bridge From: The Arts, Technology and Education? Leonardo, Vol. 31, No. 2, April-May, 1998 p.91)

Our cultural claims about the various factors that produce change tend to be linear, the line being one that moves along a fairly straight, if not narrow trajectory from the less complex to the more complex. The approach that I will take looks at the displacements that are created by the movement from one phase to another, movement in this instance being more like transportation framed by what Bruno Latour has described as connections, short circuits, translations, associations, and mediations that we encounter, daily. (Bruno Latour, Trains of Thought, Common Knowledge, Vol. 6, # 3, Winter, 1997, p. 183.)

So, I will begin by exploring the various conjunctures and disjunctures created by the presence of digital technologies in nearly every aspect of the cultural context of the early 21st century. My goal, however, is not an overview, but rather, to raise as many questions as I can in order to introduce increasing levels of mediation both to our understanding of the digital and to our creative transformation of the digital into various media of communication.

To be continued.....

Speech presented at the 77th Graduation Ceremony of Emily Carr Institute

Honoured guests, Dr. George Pederson, Chair of the Board of Governors, members of the Board, Graduates, Faculty, Staff, Families and Friends, today I will speak to you about some of the challenges that we will all face in the near future and the crucial role that the graduates from this institution will play in the future well-being of our society and of Emily Carr Institute.

This is my tenth graduation ceremony since being appointed President in 1996. Each year is different and each year is special. Each year we celebrate your achievements and your successes. It is always a humbling experience for me and I hope for all of you. Over the last ten years 2800 hundred students have graduated from Emily Carr. Since 1929, 7500 students have graduated from our great institution. In other words, 81 years after our founding, over 37 percent of our graduates have come through Emily Carr during the last ten years.

Before I begin my formal speech, I want to take a moment to honour someone whom many of you have met. Rick Robinson has been working at Emily Carr since the early 1970’s and since 1974 as a core member of our technical staff. If you have ever gone into the wood workshop in the North Building, then you have met Rick. This is a man whose dedication to the job, to the Institute and to students has been total — a dedication that goes far beyond conventional norms and expectations. Rick is a gentle, wonderful person whose contribution to Emily Carr has been so very profound. Today, we are going to honour Rick with a certificate of achievement and by permanently establishing an entrance scholarship in his name. The Rick Robinson Entrance scholarship will pay the full fees of an incoming domestic student and is our way of saying thank-you to someone who has done so much for so many generations of students and who is a crucial part of the very fabric of our institution.

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On the Future…
“Sometimes there are moments in human history that seem to beckon awakenings. They perturb us to reevaluate our beliefs, assumptions, and reigning cultural stories. They challenge us to synthesize and integrate seemingly disparate forms of knowledge into new relationships, new patterns, and new theories. They invite us to invent new language, new rules, and new structures. They call us to create and live into new stories of possibility. These moments grace us with enlightened insights and more soulful understanding. They fill us with wonder and amazement. They open us to life and to the invitation to reclaim the fire and light that resides within us all to change the world.

(Stephanie Pace Marshall)

Stephanie Pace Marshall who wrote those words is one of America’s most important educational leaders. Her words are very important in the context of this ceremony. As graduates of Emily Carr you will encounter a series of moral and ethical issues and challenges that will test not only the education that you have had, but also your ability to respond quickly and sensibly to dramatic change at the social, cultural and political level. Soulful understanding connects you to your role as both artist and citizen, as designer and citizen, and as media creator and citizen. We carry many labels in our lives but none is more important than the label of citizen and with that label come many responsibilities including a passion for the social good, an understanding of and compassion for those less fortunate than us and a desire to contribute to the well-being of our society.

One of your most important challenges will be to make the environment for living and working in our society a more humane one and it will be your creativity, your knowledge and your sensitivity to invention and innovation that will mark you and also separate you from other post-secondary graduates.

In this, the sixth year of a new century, your skills in advancing and widening the role of the arts as an integral part of our social fabric and as a powerful catalyst in shaping the life of our local, national and global communities will be crucial not only to your well-being but to the well-being of the planet.

You are our greatest asset. You represent the living memories of the learning experiences at Emily Carr Institute, the continuity and connections between generations and the future of the institution as well as the future of the arts.

As Emily Carr moves into its next phase with graduate programs, a joint degree with the University of Northern British Columbia and the opening of our new research studio, Intersections Digital Studio of Art, Design and Media, we invite you to stay connected with us and to always feel that we are part of your extended family.

What do you take from this place? A grad project, stories, friendships, memories? Learning cannot be quantified. Hopefully you have learned some lessons about how to overcome hurdles, how to take on a challenge and succeed, how to better understand the story of your life and how to be sensitive to the stories of others. You will have brought poetry and imagination to your learning, new vision and the sense that the creative spirit cannot and should not be kept at bay. Hopefully, you will have learned how to channel your ideas into material forms but never at the cost of the passion that you have for experimentation. Some things cannot be expressed and some projects cannot fully represent the depth and complexity of your initial impulses. But, you are also part of a time when conventional notions of art, audience and display are undergoing fundamental change. It is no longer that simple to see oneself as an isolated creator. For better or worse, you are part of a growing cultural space that more and more people are noticing. You are a generation that will have a voice and with that comes even greater responsibilities to your families and to your communities.

My challenge to you is to always remember the institution that you have come from and to integrate your learning into the values of your life and to never forget that as holders of degrees from an Art and Design school, your mission is to bring the light and fire of creativity to the everyday lives of people in your communities, to inspire and be inspired, to challenge and be challenged, to create and promote and support the arts.

I will end with a quote from William Allen White who was one of the great journalists of the early 20th century:

"About all that a grad speaker can do for his auditors is to turn their faces around. He looks back upon the world as he thinks it was. Then he considers the world as he thinks it is. Finally in his receding perspective he discloses the pictured phantasm which he hopes will be the future. Thereupon his listeners may see mirrored in the gloss of his picture the world which they think they will make. It is a pleasant exercise.

GOOD LUCK AND ALL THE BEST FROM ALL OF US!!!!