PhD Oral Exam - Victoria Stanton, Art Education

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

In the aftermath of COVID and the ensuing global shutdown (with the exception of frontline workers forced to speed up like never before), the general culture of acceleration, overwork, and growth has not changed. Still marked by the effects of the pandemic, we nonetheless continue to grapple with a dominant cultural paradigm whose unchecked drives result in progress at any cost. As an embodied response to this ongoing crisis of unsustainability—a response, I contend, deeply rooted in both my socio-geographical upbringing (Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal) and my practice as an established performance artist and arts educator—my doctoral dissertation investigates the pedagogical (and revolutionary) role of rest, slowness, idleness, and refusal within contemporary artists’ works, specifically performance artists or adjacent forms that happen in live or time-based ways. In parallel it also considers the social justice implications of integrating rest in the post-secondary studio art classroom. Asking the questions: How can “doing nothing” constitute a form of art that has particular social justice relevance and meaning? And: What can slow processes—in particular those occurring as performance art events—teach us about “learning in the making,” which is to say, more inclusive forms of education that take the whole person into consideration, this PhD project is anchored in a research-creation and teaching-based approach. Methods such as close reading, research journaling, narrative crafting, and fieldwork—teaching an experimental performance art class to 11 participants over eight weeks and conducting interviews with four experts as public events—were additionally supported by the socio-anthropological framings of hanging out/deep hanging out, and overlapping artful methods of participation and conversation. The creation component, extending from the above, is informed by the experimental practice of slow coding/post-coding and performance scores while the overarching method that contains and upholds all these activities is love. Introducing, finally, the notion of “slow research-creation,” this highly self-reflexive discursive text, accompanying collection of performance scores, and performance event that constitutes my oral defense together provide an expanded lens through which to challenge the pervasiveness of toxic productivity and disrupt conventional understandings of how/where research happens and what comprises knowledge/ways of knowing.