Craig

“I completed my MFA in photography and visual theory about five years before starting a PhD. During the non-academic time I began teaching as well as continuing to work as an artist. What I realized when I started teaching (in 2000 at NYU and Hofstra University) was that I did not know the background of the theoretical models 'imported' by post '68 art practices (minimalism, conceptualism, performance, video, some photography, …), nor did I understand the etymology of the terms being 'applied' to art practices. That was my incentive to seek a post-graduate program in which I could continue to work as an artist and to utilize my background as an artist, as well as interest in teaching, in my research.

My first conversation with Scott Lash was about all of this. He shared his sort of wild-eyed optimism about what I was doing. I don't think he confused me with a scientific scholar or analyst, etc... I think he thought I would make art as PhD. But what I liked about Goldsmiths is that I could use art practice as an element, but not final outcome, of my PhD dissertation. So my wife and I moved to England (for her it was a return home) and I started the program. At that time there were about 45 students, maybe 15-20 at the seminars, and no one really knew what a 'practice-led' PhD meant or how it should be assessed. I decided immediately that I would write a thesis as thesis, the same as my colleagues. This helped me to move my practice away from 'representation' and into a materialization of some theoretical modeling.

I had a great group of colleagues at Goldsmiths. All of us attended our seminars weekly as well as seminars in "contemporary thought' every other week. It was through the discourse with these colleagues that the combination of practice/theory developed. I think this might happen in other places as well, but our balance between Cultural Studies seminars and other platforms available in the college was a tremendous influence. 

The Goldsmiths faculty (Lash, Hutnyk, Verges) gave me my first opportunity to organize conferences and invite internationally recognized artists and theorists into a single forum for presentations and discussion. Couple this with the access to so many lectures in London and the influence upon my own language, objectives, and aesthetics of presentation were profound. It was at Goldsmiths where I was able to sit at a table with Eric Alliez or Bruno Latour, or sit next to Stuart Hall at a dinner and be 'schooled' about the local. It's a rich, deep, do - it - yourself environment. You have to be self-organized (that's all of the vitalism influencing the pedagogy i think!!) – there are innumerable opportunities and global influences all on that skinny plot of land in New Cross – but you have to be on top of the scheduling and ask for the time with your supervisors, etc.

My PhD thesis looked at the spatial and temporal criteria or forms used in group, participatory, socially-engaged artworks. I created an artwork integrating computer aided audience engagement, sound, cardiovascular training equipment, and weight training equipment and presented/ performed this work during the Frieze and Scope art fairs. The artwork itself became my demonstration of the spatial and temporal criteria of relational artworks. The audience engagement and successive form production created in the performance itself provided me with examples of both 'participation' and 'interactivity' with artworks. The key objective of the thesis became the differences in kind between 'participation' and 'interactivity'

I continue to teach, to exhibit artworks (live and installed), and write/record. I'm currently working on an exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. with my colleague Colin Beatty. We are analysing the manipulation of market value and use-value in/of objects traded through the art market. We've created a corporate entity ("The Gun Club") as well as a financial trust. Through the trust we purchase the weapons, disassemble them into their individual operating parts, and distribute these parts to individual 'shareholders' of the Gun Club. Exploring the systems of regulation, the networks of power, that not only are demonstrated by the firearm itself (and opinions of them) but also by government agencies is of key interest to Colin and I. I'm also working on a book for I.B. Tauris publishers (UK) that is on Relational Art. I'll be looking at other artists rather than myself. It should be out in 2014.”