Centre for Fine Art Research - Research Groups
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The Centre for Fine Art Research (CFAR) embraces contemporary fine art, philosophy, discourse and immersive art practice with inventive intersections of ‘old’ and ‘new’ technologies: painting; sculpture; print-making; photography; mixed reality labs; archive and installation; electronic –digital; acoustics; media arts and the new sciences - alongside the questions of embodiment, incorporeality and the queering of sense. We currently have 22 PhD students working across our practical and theoretical research specialisms including AHRC, BCU bursary and collaborative funded projects. The academic and technical staff, research students and Fellows, whose works are showcased on CFAR’s web-site and social networks, are internationally recognised artists, scholars and practitioners, whose research is generated by curiosity.
CFAR’s major objective focuses on making sense in the fullest use of the terms making, exchanging, translating into everyday knowledge the techniques, methods and practices that challenge and embolden the landscape of fine art - particularly in our modern/ postmodern digitally transforming environments. Dedicated to teasing out the intra- and trans-disciplinary links with materials, spatiality, archive, memory, history, representation and time, it fosters expression and production via a strong emphasis on painting, sculpture, installation, media writing, photography, video and film.
The Centre’s strategy supports individual as well as collaborative research, which over the past ten years has evolved into five major research strands
• Art in the Public Sphere
• Dirty Theory, Immersive Art, Wild Science
• Electronic Media Art Philosophy Practice
• Ars Erotica & the Queering of Sense
• Interpretation Archive Documentation
To support these strands the Centre has long established and newly created platforms, which underpin and facilitate research practice and enhance our commitment to engaging with external communities, organisations and agencies. These platforms include Eastside Projects (EP) for which the Centre was a co-founder in 2008 and recognised by Arts Council England (ACE) as the National Portfolio Organisation; the International Project Space (IPS) founded 2003 by the Centre and funded by ACE, and more recently 2012 ARTicle located within the School of Art – all these galleries are led by internationally renowned curators. Additional platforms include several globally recognised initiatives, including The Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA), alongside its weekly Research YouTube podcasts, peer reviewed journal Zetesis and internationally recognised publishing house, ARTicle Press.
With the appointment of Professor Johnny Golding in 2012 as the Director of CFAR, it now leads the Strategic Research Network in Fine Art, Contemporary Philosophy and Culture, which includes links with CALarts (Los Angeles), PACTAC (Victoria), The Sorbonne (Paris), Parsons School of Design (NYC), MIT (Cambridge), STEIM (Amsterdam), Univ of Cologne (Cologne), Leipzig School of Art (Leipzig), The Vienna Academy of Art (Vienna), The Academy of Science and Art (Slovenia). These links have enabled the Centre to address cutting-edge theoretical and practical issues, placing it and the university within a global critical and theoretical debate in Fine Art. In so doing, CFAR’s exhibitions, performances, interactive web platforms, international conferences and symposium aim to foster debate, knowledge transfer and cultural exchange linking the local and regional with the international and global through experiment, intellectual rigour and inclusion.
Research: BIADResearch@bcu.ac.uk
BIAD, Birmingham City University, Gosta Green, Birmingham B4 7DX