Doctoral theses in Arts

Material devices exposed to the dangers of the sensitive

Abstract

More and more often, we artists work on our doctoral theses in academic environments that operate mostly under the parameters of the scientific method, which do not always suit our interests or the way we do things. But could we have our own models? What models could they be? Artistic practice as research is emerging today as a possible model. This text is based on a personal experience related to that: the completion of my own PhD, and therefore of the corresponding doctoral thesis. This thesis has tried to create knowledge from another place, i.e. from art, by acknowledging its value and reclaiming our own ways of doing things for this purpose, including subaltern knowledge, physical embodiments and implication. A thesis focussing on images of forced disappearance and their possibilities for enunciation, where the scientific distance that comes from observation without an observer becomes impossible.