From address to outcome, a proposal for discussing research in the art academia towards the idea of a critical landscape

Abstract

This text aims to discuss forms of teaching/learning that allow for the understanding of the involvement of students in carrying out actions that pertain to two major areas of intervention: landscape and knowledge, and how research processes may be generated by those actions. Landscape is intended to be approached from a dynamic and critical point of view, beyond its multiple senses and descriptive characters, such e.g. as rural or urban considered as limiteded descriptions. Knowledge is considered horizontally as a collectively generated process focused on providing tools for research and analysis based on student-centred actions. As a brief open-ended exercise, this text does not aim to respond to a set of challenges involved in the definition of the practices that will attempt to discuss, such as, firstly, the contradictions inherent in the definitions of trans or post-medial practices, in constant change and often contested from current theory and art itself; and second, the danger of enclosing ourselves in definitive terminologies to describe the practices that occupy us and that often operate precisely in opposition to the propensity to find and stabilise definitions, which is the aspiration of the academia. How is academic research in the art academia to deal with these contradictions and how to distinguish between practice based and practice led research, will be the key questions that the text will try to address critically. Is the space of the academia the last space for utopia? Cover page: Relational