PRACTICE AS RESEARCH: CREATIVE AND RESEARCH. PRACTICE IN THE FORMAT OF POSTGRADUATE EDUCATION

Abstract

The authors of the article focus on the discussion format of practical research. In recent years, practice as research has become a direction of research activity in foreign universities and an object of close attention from the Russian academic community. Representatives of various disciplines in art and the humanities convincingly argue the need for such a format of creative practice in performance, theatre, dance and contemporary art. Practice as research includes different forms and ways of representing applied and project art products. Today, a practising researcher causes controversy and discussion since the model of creative practice as a method of studying art is an innovative educational format. Also, the parameters of evaluating practical research, the relationship between theoretical, purely research, and creative material cause significant difficulties. The methodology based on practice and the parameters of the assessment of practice as research give rise to a lively discussion. The situation in arts and humanities teaching is complicated because practice-related research has been labelled as field research and practice-based experimentation in medicine, design and engineering for a long time. Artistic practice in contemporary art and design has recently become the object of close attention at the Graduate School of Art and Design at the Higher School of Economics since, today, the practical focus of visual research is the main direction in educational bachelor and master’s programs. A new understanding of art as a practice and, at the same time, research can shed light on many topics, including cultural anthropology, psychology, sociology, etc. That is why we defend the idea of the interdisciplinarity of such studies in our article. Artistic practice as a field of academic research and new experience in postgraduate education is at the centre of our study. We strive to generalise the experience of European educational programs, expand the range of methodological approaches and present the author’s concept. Practice and research have long been inseparable in many humanities; project workshops and representation of creative artifacts are at the heart of contemporary art and design education. Modern Russian education is just beginning to explore new territory. In this sense, our collaborative research of an innovative format is designed to analyse foreign experiences and formulate the need to promote new educational technologies within the framework of graduate school. The habitus of practice as research is such that research based on practice raises the question of the forms of critical activity and content parameters of a creative artifact and documenting research materials. The posed research problem in combination with practice demonstrates the originality of research. It expands the boundaries of the research field by introducing a hybrid methodology for evaluating a creative project and critical discourse. The task of the authors of the article is to identify a debatable problem field, analyse analytical data related to the innovative scientific field and present essential strata of the new educational format, Practice as Research.