Cyber-permissiveness and the Unwanted Baby: The Imminent Arrival of Planned Mediocrity in Art College Culture

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During Denis Potter's penultimate TV interview, the playwright looked straight to camera and declared "Everything in this country which is not about the business of making money is in a permanent state of decline. The feeling is palpable". This paper sets out to suggest that, in this, the current art college mindset colludes, in the wake of global trends, creating a disenfranchised organizational culture. Benches are unrealistically marked, descriptors endlessly re-described, artificial quality controlled by a phalanx of anonymous bodies, themselves fearful of being caught in the act.

Taking as a model Foucault's idealistic sympathies, given vent in the 60's social movements - in which art colleges played a not insignificant part - the exhortation here is to challenge all forms of power discourse and question the relationship between power and knowledge. David Harvey (1989) reflects on Foucault's position thus: 'Close scrutiny of the micro-politics of power relations in different localities, contexts and social situations leads him to conclude that there is an intimate relation between the systems of knowledge (discourses) which codify techniques and practices for the exercise of control and domination within particular localized contexts' This tension is witnessed daily in our boardrooms and directly affects our courses. It is a problem, if we accept Potter's alarming prophecy, which is subject to orchestration. Certainly, there is a mystery mid-wife in the delivery suite, as Onions(1990)observed, 'charged with being the woman who is with the mother at the birth'. Meanwhile, as I will argue, any number of unlikely fathers are pointing the finger at each other, in fear of the inevitable DNA test. (Definitely Not Art)

Stream: Arts Policy, Management and Advocacy

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Phil Thomson works as an educator under the direction of Professor Mario Minichiello at BIAD. He is is an artist, writer and reviewer with a background in design as a creative director in advertising and almost thirty years experience within the university. He also manages to maintain an international portfolio as a lyricist and occasional performance poet. He has a particular interest in relational culture in education and is currently researching Gumbrecht's assertions that discussion in the physical presence of others can lead to intellectual innovation.