Carnal Knowledge is an outcome of the renewed energy and interest in moving beyond the discursive construction of reality to understand the relationship between what is conceived of as reality and materiality, described as the "material turn." It draws together established and emerging writers, whose research spans dance, music, film, fashion, design, photography, literature, painting and stereo-immersive VR, to demonstrate how art allows us to map the complex relations between nature and culture, between the body, language and knowledge. These writings (...) are unique in the field because they represent the authors' commitment to a new materialism through the creative arts. The questions they address include: Does the material turn in the creative arts take a different turn from continental epistemology, philosophy and the humanities? How does the agency of matter, the material nature of artistic practice and the notion of "truth to materials" affect what we understand as the "new materialism?" In engaging with these questions the book offers perspectives on the emergence of this exciting fresh field of new materialism. (shrink)

This paper critiques enlightenment notions of representation and rehearses an alternative model of mapping that is grounded in performance. Working from her own practice as a landscape painter, Bolt argues that the particular experience of the “glare” of Australian light fractures the nexus between light, form, knowledge, and subjectivity. This rupture prompts a move from shedding light ON the matter to shedding light FOR the matter and suggests an emergent rather than a representational practice.

Refuting the assumption that art is a representational practice, Bolt's striking argument engages with the work of Heidegger, Deleuze and Guattari, C.S.Peirce and Judith Butler to argue for a performative relationship between art and artist. Drawing on themes as diverse as the work of Cezanne and of Francis Bacon, the transubstantiation of the Catholic sacrament and Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray , she challenges the metaphor of light as enlightenment, reconceiving this revealing light as the blinding glare of (...) the Australian sun, and suggests that too much light may in fact reveal nothing. Finally she asks: how does an embodied practice fare within the culture of conceptual art? (shrink)

In 2012 the author completed a series of drawings that, while figurative in form, were structurally based on and derived their inspiration from Robert Motherwell’s abstract series, Elegies to the Spanish Republic. This wholesale 'borrowing', 'quotation' and 'citation' raises the questions addressed in this article. What does it mean to engage in acts of appropriation now? And, more importantly, can such acts of appropriation draw on the spirit of the 'original' work to make a difference?

Barbara Bolt takes the most relevant of Heidegger's texts, including his most famous work, 'Being and Time', and sets out ways of thinking about art in a post-medium, digital, technocratic and post-human age.

Is it possible to find an ethical and generative way to speak about the ‘work’ of Indigenous art? Regardless of what prohibitions exist to protect sacred knowledge from the gaze of Western eyes, Indigenous work is circulating; it is being read, misread, interpreted, misinterpreted and otherwise known. How can a non-Indigenous person ‘speak’ about Indigenous art without reducing it to the diagram, collapsing it into Western modes of knowing, or intruding into the domain of restricted cultural information? Given the lessons (...) of the Indigenous cultural practices, I propose that the work of art is performative and not merely representational. Through attention to the operation of rhythm in Kathleen Petyarre’s paintings, I propose to reconfigure contemporary understandings of performativity. In this formulation I will argue that in the dynamic productivity of the performative act, the world intrudes into practice, and in a double movement, practice casts its effects back towards the world. In this way I suggest that just as life gets into images, so imaging also produces reality. This mutual reflection is the work of art. (shrink)

This book presents a timely reconfiguration of the relations between art, philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics. Through connection with a range of contemporary social and philosophical issues and movements, this collection of essays highlights the imperative of sensorial aesthetics. The book focuses on the radical philosophical approach to aesthetics enabled by the works of Jean-François Lyotard and Gilles Deleuze. From these philosophers an older meaning of aesthetic has been recalled. Before it indicated primarily the theory of art and beauty, “aesthetic” referred (...) to the sensibility, the capacity to receive sensations. In summoning this “sensorial” meaning of aesthetics in their respective works, Lyotard, Deleuze, and other recent thinkers turn the philosophical theory of aesthetics away from the dominance of cognitivist and reception theories, and towards a thinking of aesthetics through considerations of the movements of matter, affect, and sensation. (shrink)

In Australia, the university ethics approval process is guided by the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. The National Statement does not provide a hurdle to be overcome or avoided, nor is it a Godzilla-like monster that must be slain for truth to survive. Rather the National Statement provides an affirmation of an abiding respect for all life and a mechanism for beginning the intelligent questioning, theorization and contextualization for a work of art. Focusing specifically on the emergent (...) discipline of artistic research, this article addresses the question of how the supervisory process may take on the ‘spirit’ of the National Statement to engender genuine ethical debate, rather than merely focus on the instrumental obstacles that seem to get in the way of the research. It specifically addresses the emergent field of artistic research and the concomitant resistance to ethical regulation of artistic research, in which bureaucratic instrumentalism and compliance or censorship are considered to potentially emasculate the vitality of an art work and the ability of art to serve as a truthsayer or agent provocateur. In this, the attitude of the supervisor toward research ethics in artistic research is considered a key factor in determining their students attitudes towards the ethics process. This article will present several initiatives undertaken with the intent of more fully engaging supervisors and students with research ethics. (shrink)

This paper reports on the experiences of creative practice graduate researchers and academic staff as they seek to comply with the requirements of the Australian National Statement on the Ethical Conduct of Research Involving Humans. The research was conducted over a two-year period (2015 to 2017) as part of a wider project ‘iDARE – Developing New Approaches to Ethics and Research Integrity Training through Challenges Presented by Creative Practice Research’. The research identified the appreciation of ethics that the participants acquired (...) through their experience of institutional research ethics procedures at their university. It also revealed a disjunction between the concepts of ethics acquired through meeting institutional research ethics requirements, the notion of ethics that many researchers adopt in their own professional creative practice and the contents of professional codes of conduct. A key finding of the research was that to prepare creative practice graduates for ethical decision-making in their professional lives, research ethics training in universities should be broadened to encompass a variety of contexts and enable researchers to develop skills in ethical know-how. (shrink)

The Meeting of Aesthetics and Ethics in the Academy provides a deep understanding of the nuances of ethics in the creative environment and contributes to the critical exploration of the nature of research ethics in higher education. Written by world-renown academics with a wealth of experience in this field, this volume explores ethical challenges and responses across a range of creative practices and disciplines including design, documentary film making, journalism, socially engaged arts and the visual arts. It addresses the complex (...) negotiations that creative practice researchers in higher education undertake to ensure that the ethical compliance required does not undermine the research integrity and artistic aspirations. By presenting carefully considered challenges to accepted models of research, this book illustrates critical analysis through a variety of case studies and anecdotal examples that provide an insight into improved ethics practices and policies in higher education. This book is perfect for academics, ethics administrators, higher degree research candidates and supervisors looking to engage further in creative practice research and wanting to explore and understand its ethical oversight. (shrink)