MRes Art: Moving Image

Course detail

MRes Art allows you to address a specialist area of fine art research and to explore the relationships between your chosen specialism and the broader fine art community in the context of our Fine Art Programme.

Synergies in our Fine Art Programme - incorporating MA Fine Art, MA Art and Science, MA Photography, MRes Art: Exhibition Studies, MRes Art: Moving Image, and MRes Art: Theory and Philosophy - create a dynamic context for exploring practices and issues within contemporary culture.

In its extended full-time mode MRes Art gives you the flexibility to access London's richly varied opportunities for work and study while maximising your personal and professional development.

MRes Art prepares you to work particularly in the academic and research contexts of professional environments, to undertake PhD study, or pursue independent research. The course benefits from links with relevant professional and academic organisations in London and internationally and from the varied expertise of its research staff.

The three pathways provide a focus for your study while also enabling you to explore shared ground and questions of disciplinary territories and boundaries.

MRes Art: Moving Image is the first course of its kind. Founded on a strong link with LUX, a key UK agency (based in London) for the support and promotion of artists' moving image practice, the pathway provides an opportunity to focus on theoretical and historical study of artists' moving image. Despite artists' moving image being one of the most visible and fastest growing contexts for visual arts practice, there is no existing centre of scholarship in this area and, at this time, practice runs far ahead of discourse. While huge amounts of work are being made and shown, the specific language to describe and respond to it critically remains underdeveloped.

MRes Art: Moving Image develops in-depth knowledge and exploration of artists' moving image as an evolving and discursive field of study. The postgraduate course presents an integrated series of screenings, seminars and set readings of key works, which together address a range of theoretical positions and historical contexts.

MRes Art: Moving Image supports and is shaped by:

• Development of scholarship and research in the subject
• Student access to the professional working context of LUX as well as its large network of collaborating national and international institutions, artists and key arts professionals working with the moving image
• Student access to the UK's only significant collection of artists' film and video works and the largest such collection in Europe, held by LUX, and use of the British Artists Film and Video Study Collection held at CSM
• Student projects that draw on LUX's experience of delivering public programming (exhibitions, screenings, commissions).

Course dates

Autumn term
Monday 24 September 2018 – Friday 7 December 2018
Spring term
Monday 7 January 2019 – Friday 15 March 2019
Summer term
Monday 15 April 2019 – Friday 21 June 2019

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Course outline

While laying the foundations for an in-depth knowledge of the subject, MRes Art: Moving Image promotes understanding of artists' moving image as an evolving and discursive field of study that touches on many areas of scholarship, from visual arts to experimental music. Rather than following established historical trajectories, MRes Art: Moving Image presents an integrated series of screenings, seminars and set textual readings of key works addressing a range of theoretical positions and historical contexts. Gallery visits and lectures augment the seminar programme.

MRes Art: Moving Image gives you the chance to engage with the academic and professional expertise of CSM and LUX, leading to an in-depth understanding of the current questions and contexts surrounding artists' moving image. The MRes course proposes new approaches to the history and theory of moving image culture, and promotes a professional emphasis through its unique association with LUX. It helps you create vital links to moving image organisations outside the academy, enabling you to develop the professional and academic skills needed for your chosen field of moving image scholarship.

MRes Art: Moving Image aims to lead UK scholarship in the international arena of artists' moving image through its academic activities (conferences, symposia and publications), facilitating research by its staff and serving as a platform for you to develop your interest and research towards potential MPhil and PhD study. A strong curatorial component locates you in the professional field of artists' moving image culture via lectures from visiting curators and artists, gallery talks and visits, and potential individual placements with museums, galleries and other relevant organisations in London and beyond.

MRes Art: Moving Image creates a firm foundation of knowledge from which you can frame and develop your chosen area of study and contribute to debate. The first year offers teaching in research skills while engaging you in the specialist subject of your pathway. At the same time you'll prepare for a personally directed programme of study - your research project. In the second year you'll pursue and realise your project. Your progress is supported through tutorials and critical discussions, and monitored through written assignments and presentations. Your realised project is the principal assessed work leading to the MRes qualification.

Unit One - Framing Artists' Moving Image

Unit One runs concurrently with Unit Two and introduces you to the key theoretical, contextual and critical frameworks needed for an in-depth understanding of artists' moving image.

The unit offers seminar and lecture programmes to build knowledge of the key thinkers and debates that have emerged throughout the history of artists' moving image, from early explorations of cinematic perception such as Walter Benjamin's notion of the 'optical unconscious' to the influence of Marxist thought on the idea of a counter-cinema. At the same time these theories and theorists are located within the contemporary perspective of moving image practice - via, for example, the impact of counter-cinema on the current 'documentary turn' in contemporary artists' film.

The seminar programmes are supported by a series of film screenings hosted by LUX, which provide opportunities to debate and challenge questions raised. Gallery visits and lectures from visiting experts support the seminars and screenings.

Unit Two - Thinking as Practice (Research Methodologies One)

This unit, common to all courses within our Postgraduate Art Programme, helps you engage with the postgraduate and research community at CSM.

Unit Two introduces the fundamental research skills that enable you to make informed decisions about appropriate methods to use in your chosen area of study and your professional future. The unit examines specific research skills and different kinds of research. Skills and knowledge areas covered include interviewing, literature search and review, archival skills, software for use in research and e-resources, feasibility studies, data analysis, referencing, citation and bibliographic conventions, and ethics. Seminars and workshops emphasise participation and the building of core research skills through practical exercises and small group projects.

Lectures ask how arts research and discourse is developed, shared and understood. The focus is on methods of learning, thinking, evaluation and interpretation as both practice based and theoretical forms of enquiry. The diversity of research activity at CSM provides a broad range of models and examples, with particular attention given to the place of practice in research projects.

Unit Two is assessed by workshop assignments.

Unit Three - Critical Practices (Research Methodologies Two)

Building on the introduction to research provided by Unit Two, Unit Three - which is common to all three MRes Art pathways - increases your focus on in-depth understanding of research methods and how they're applied within the arts and humanities.

The unit aims to demonstrate the dynamic ways in which conceptual and theoretical frameworks can be developed through the application of research methodologies.

You're expected to relate your learning in this unit to preparation for your research project in the parallel part of Unit Four. Tutorial and workshop support helps you do this.

Unit Four - Independent Research Project (IRP)

Unit Four has two parts. Part One is undertaken in parallel with Unit in year one. Part Two is devoted to independent study and the development and completion of your research project in year two.

Part One

Part One focuses on developing your research project proposal. It involves directed reading or viewing, the formulation of specific research questions and methods, and the production of a literature review (annotated bibliography) that forms part of your draft research project proposal. Your proposal's development is supported through increasingly student-directed seminars and group (as well as personal) tutorials, plus written guidance on the required contents of the proposal document. You'll explore issues of purpose, validity and feasibility in methodological and resource terms, negotiating external links, exchanges and access arrangements as required.

At the end of year one (weeks 28-30) draft project proposals, including the literature review, are presented for interim assessment through consultation with your tutor and group seminar feedback, and you receive written feedback confirming your plans and/or advising revisions.

Part Two

All projects, including a commitment to the forms of your submission and appropriate ongoing supervision/tutorial arrangements, are agreed at the outset of year two.

A symposium shared across the MRes pathways presents and discusses all project proposals. A second group event involving invited professionals occurs early in the spring term of year two (prior to the PhD applications point). This event provides a discussion forum challenging you to recognise and debate key questions arising from your research project work to date.

Throughout the second year you lead interim presentations about your research, in person at seminar groups and individual tutorials and online, discussing progress, challenges and findings, and issues of form, audience and dissemination. A third event hosted at LUX at the end of year two presents and disseminates the project outcomes.

At the end of Unit Four you're assessed through presentation of your realised research project in the agreed forms, the project proposal document, and a report describing and evaluating changes and progress. Your marks for Units Three and Four determine the classification of your MRes award.

MRes Art Programme Specification 2018/19 (PDF, 354KB)

View the MRes Art: Moving image events archive

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MRes Art: Moving Image group events

• Stranded In Canton

  A screening of William Eggleston's film, followed by a short, illustrated lecture by Herb Shellenberger

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• Magic For Beginners

  A screening of moving image works that explore the genius, brilliance and obsession that comes with youth

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• Mark Toscano

  An artist talk and screening from the Los Angeles based filmmaker and preservationist at the Academy Film Archive

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• no other words, nothing to say

  Five works by New Zealand artists dealing with language, mediation, and spectatorship in a post-internet context

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Facilities

• Library

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• LVMH Lecture Theatre

  Find out more about the LVMH Lecture Theatre

• Lethaby Gallery

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Staff

• Dr Duncan White, Pathway Leader

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• Filipa Ramos, Associate Lecturer

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• Maeve Connolly, Associate Lecturer

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• Uriel Orlow, Associate Lecturer

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• Maria Palacios Cruz, Visiting Lecturer

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• Rachel Moore, Associate Lecturer

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Staff

Pathway Leader, Moving Image: Duncan White

Reader: Dr Joanne Morra

Course Leader for MRes: Art and Pathway Leader for Theory & Philosophy: Chris Kul-Want

Associate Lecturer: Ruth Maclennan
Associate Lecturer: Colin Perry