PhD work-in-progress day &PhD work-in-progress day & Artful Encounters. A Seminar on Ethnography, Art and Conservation
November 17-19 2010 Maastricht, The Netherlands
On November 17th 2010, a PhD work-in-progress day was organized at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in Maastricht, The Netherlands. The work-in-progress day was set up in the framework of the New Strategies in the Conservation of Contemporary Art Research project and the recently established PhD & Postdoctoral research network. (http://www.incca.org/phd-and-postdoc-network).
The aim of the meeting, dedicated to PhD candidates working in the field of contemporary art conservation, was to discuss each others work-in-progress in an informal, confidential and constructive setting. Prior to the meeting, four PhD candidates handed in a draft chapter from their thesis and these were discussed in depth. For each chapter two discussants were invited to provide comments; a senior scholar and a fellow participant. The author was then given an opportunity to respond before the discussion was opened to all participants. The meeting was attended by eight researchers on the PhD and postdoctoral level and three senior researchers. Thanks to all chapters and commentaries, the full day program proved to be very fruitful as well as enjoyable.
The PhD work-in-progress day was followed by the two-day seminar Artful Encounters. A Seminar on Ethnography, Art and Conservation, 18 & 19 November 2010 also in Maastricht and co-organised by members of the New Strategies research group (Vivian van Saaze and Renée van de Vall). A group of about 75 artists, academic researchers and students came together in Maastricht to exchange expertise on the relationship between art (production and research) and ethnography. This staged encounter between different disciplines was fuelled by the awareness that artists today increasingly employ methods of ethnography while at the same time, those studying the arts may use these very same ethnographic methods to understand and deal with art worlds.
Artful Encounters was a collaborative initiative taken by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, Research Centre Autonomy and the Public Sphere in the Arts / Zuyd University, and the Virtual Knowledge Studio. For contributions to the seminar and extensive documentation, please visit: www.artfulencounters.nl. The organizers of the seminar are working on a publication.
Photos:
1. PhD work-in-progress day: Ruth Benschop, Annet Dekker, Paolo Martore (Photo by Vivian van Saaze)
2. Artful Encounters, day one (Photo by Inge Stevens)
3. Artful Encounters, workshop ‘Fieldwork as Method and as Process' by Anne Beaulieu and T.L. Taylor (Photo by Inge Stevens)