南非開普敦大學Research Proposal寫作技巧：Draft for Theory and Practice IV Essay

Your draft must include at least 5 pages of text (1.5 line spacing) indicating an outline of your concerns. It must include the following:你dissertation必須包括，在至少5頁的文字（1.5倍行距），dissertation核心內容要指示你關注的問題一個寫一份大綱。它必須包括執行以下操作：

 

• Proposed Title

• Field of research: A body of text in which you outline the terrain of your concerns giving section headings and an indication of how you intend to layout your essay.•新藝術的歷史的在其中處的文意而言是您的工作就是坐落的先例和血統。

• Art historical context in which your work is situated i.e. precedents and lineage
.•藝術家：在至少4個當代的，您已選擇的作品價格不斷上漲的藝術家誰的工作在的區域中，Research Proposal寫作技巧你已經確定了，作為您感興趣寫作主要觀點。包括可能被證明是相關的的的作品。包括在有需要的時候會對該的圖像進行重新優化。

• Artists: at least 4 contemporary artists that you have selected who work in the area you have identified as of interest to you. Include works that might prove relevant. Include images if necessary.你的打算，以請參閱和誰的理論家乃屬恰當的為探索您的提出更多的的憂慮問題。

• Theoreticians to whom you intend to refer and who are appropriate for exploring your concerns more deeply.
•文學審查 - 建立研究領域的，并靠是什么內容已被寫入就可以了。這應該擔任作為一個工作為您的的短文列表，并應該最終演變成您的征文的參考書目。

• Literature review – establishing the field of study and what has been written on it. This should serve as a working list for your essay and should eventually evolve into your essay bibliography.

 

Despite the fact that this is only a working draft please ensure you pay attention to correct spelling and grammar. In addition make sure that you utilise the correct referencing conventions. Check in the library if in doubt. 盡管一個事實，即這僅僅是一個的工作草案，請確保你付出請閣下垂注到插入的拼寫和語法是否正確。此外，確保你使用正確的引用公約。

 

 

Remember:注意事項

 

The essay takes as its starting point your studio practice and the particular areas of interest and research that inform your work. Thus the body of your essay will examine the broader arena of your concerns as well as the art that relates to and/or directly informs your own work. You need to indicate that you are aware of significant artists who are pertinent to your area of research interest, either formally or conceptually. You also need to be able to indicate that you can historically locate the lineage of your concerns.

 

Using Theorists and their Theories:使用理論家和他們的的理論

 

You have been introduced to a variety of theorists in your discourse lectures. You may have, up until now, only seen them as relevant to discourse and not had the opportunity of seeing how you may apply their theories to your own work. Sometimes only part of a theorist’s work will be useful to your concerns – for instance French psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan’s analysis of the ‘mirror phase’ in human development has been particularly useful to artists engaged with how to represent the self. Julia Kristeva, a Bulgarian-French literary critic, psychoanalyst and feminist amongst other things, has interests which range wide, but her theory of abjection in particular has been fundamental to many a feminist artist concerned with the body. 

 

However, sometimes a number of different aspects of a theorist’s concerns may be relevant to your own research. This may prove confusing for you. Consequently when starting your engagement with a particular theorist’s work it might be useful to read secondary sources to begin with to get an overview of the theorist’s main concerns so you do not become bogged down in a field, such as psychoanalysis, with which you are not familiar. 

 

If you need overviews of theorists concerns it might be useful to scan the web. For instance http://www.zeroland.co.nz/art_theory.html#theo is a good website for all sorts of references to theorists who have affected or reflected upon art (although, fascinatingly, it leaves out female theorists for some unspecified reason so don’t only rely on it). Art: Key Contemporary Thinkers  edited by Diarmuid Costello and Jonathan Vickery is also a useful starting place for pointers in specific directions. Remember theories are tools which help you extrapolate your concerns and understand your own processes so choose theorists who seem to throw light on your own endeavours. 

 

A good source book for introducing yourself to schools of thought is Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism by Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois and Benjamin Buchloh. It’s worth owning a copy if you have the cash. It covers all the major movements, theorists, artists of the 20th century and beyond and, importantly for your project, it references philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and literary theory, which provides a broader context for the subject than is usually presented in other art history texts. Minor groups such as Lettrism, the Independent Group, Gutai, Kineticism, the Harlem Renaissance, Aktionism, earthworks, video art, and the aesthetics of ACT UP are included. These may well provide clues as to how to situate your own work.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

To give you some idea it might be useful to point out some of the more established arenas for theoretical engagement that exist. For instance for those interested in performance or gender Judith Butler is key, while Foucault is indispensible for those engaged in queer studies or concerned with issues of power. If you are want to explore issues of identity, particularly within a contemporary South African context, post colonial theorists such as Edward Said, Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak would be very relevant and Ashraf Jamal has written a seminal text, Predicaments of Culture in South Africa, that might be critical for your concerns. Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida would be considered required reading for most photographers, while Paul Virilio unpacks many of the implications of New Media and Baudrillard’s analysis of mediation and technological communication, his theory of simulacra and the end of history remain dominant in many an analysis of culture. Situationist Guy de Bord’s invention of the derive may provide fertile ground for those interested  in  the use of chance as an artistic tool while his notion of the ‘spectacle’ is important for  critiques of capitalism. Gilles Delueze’s work on difference, nomadism and schizophrenia has proved generally useful for artists and of course there’s always Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics for those of you with a penchant for working beyond the bounds of material product or his theories of Post-Production important to those of you who enjoy reprocessing already existing material. Clearly these are only a few of the possible theorists you might choose to reference. Your job is to look for those who are most relevant to your own research – in your draft you need to indicate why they are relevant.

 

The construction of the draft gives your lecturers an opportunity to check whether you are on the right path or not. Do it well and your vacation writing will go a lot more smoothly. Remember you will attach and  integrate an analysis and documentation of your own work at the end of the year so this essay will form the core of your catalogue.