Applications are now being accepted for the academic year 2012–13. The application deadline is 30 June, but places are limited and we advise you to apply as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.
Extended full time: average three days per week over two years
MRes Art, launched last academic year at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, is an exciting postgraduate programme focused on artistic research in three areas:
– MRes Art: Exhibition Studies. This course engages in art historical research from the perspective of contemporary art exhibitions, their display and their curatorial strategies. Exhibitions, as the contexts in which artworks are first made public, constitute the key critical moments in an artwork’s trajectory, and the MRes Art: Exhibition Studies programme provides groundbreaking analysis of the factors and processes that shape such occasions. The course is aimed at graduate or professional applicants with a committed interest in art and art theory, research and curatorial practice; however, students from a broad spectrum are encouraged to apply. The course is developed in collaboration with the publishing and research organisation Afterall, led by two of its editors, Lucy Steeds and Pablo Lafuente, and benefits from the participation of Charles Esche, the co-founding editor of Afterall and director of the Van Abbemuseum. Visiting lecturers thus far include art historian Claire Bishop and Roger Buergel, curator and artistic director of documenta 12.
– MRes Art: Moving Image. This course addresses the critical and theoretical discourses surrounding the practice of artists’ moving image, from a historical as well as a contemporary perspective. In collaboration with LUX, the London-based agency for artists’ moving image, the MRes Art: Moving Image pathway aims to promote new scholarship in the field of artists’ moving image, directed through a concentrated series of seminars, screenings and symposia. The course is aimed at graduates, artists and professionals seeking to deepen their knowledge of artists’ film and video, for the purposes of following academic, curatorial or practice-led interests in the area. The pathway is led by Lucy Reynolds, and visiting lecturers include Duncan White, Melissa Gronlund, Maeve Connolly and Rachel Moore, with professional seminars led by Ben Cook, Mike Sperlinger and Gil Leung of LUX.
– MRes Art: Theory and Philosophy. This course promotes dialogue amongst practitioners and theorists about art discourse today. Highly relevant for both artists and writers, the course discusses art from a contemporary perspective embracing ideas in Continental philosophy (from Immanuel Kant to the postmodernists), the Marxist intellectual tradition (the Frankfurt School, Slavoj Žižek), as well as psychoanalytic and gender theories (Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva). Pursuing the relationship between art, theory and philosophy, the course aims to advance both art practice as a form of thinking and thinking as a form of practice. The course is led by Christopher Kul-Want, author of the seminal anthology in this area Philosophers on Art, From Kant to the Postmodernists, A Critical Reader (Columbia University Press, 2010).
The three courses are taught at King’s Cross, the college’s new campus in Central London, and are directly tailored to individual interests and strengths. Successful applicants will be associated to a specific pathway, but joint teaching and other synergies will take place across pathways and within the wider postgraduate environment. Students will also benefit from studying at Central Saint Martins, one of the most prestigious art institutions in the world.
For more information on the MRes Art programme and each of the pathways, please visit: www.csm.arts.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/