This week we have been talking mostly about validation

I'm not sure why I keep thinking about the fast show but I always remember Jesse when something keeps coming up all the time.  I'm not sure where the idea of validation came from but me and Kate were interviewed for some research last week and it got us both thinking.  Doing lots of work with the University I've encountered bits and bobs about what's called practice as research I've managed to avoid it most of the time- not because I've got anything against it just that it's not something I'm currently that interested in.  When we were asked about how we validate our work and to an extent our existence within the art ecology, without the scaffolds or frameworks of the gallery.  I was reminded of this bit of text I'd read.

Significantly, the practice-based PhD has involved a shift in the institutional arbitration of competence. In the past art that crossed disciplinary boundaries was nevertheless evaluated within art colleges and in relation to their traditions and practices whereas in this

instance art is being judged within an academic context and with a different set of expectations in mind. Unlike other previously contentious forms of art practice, this is not a change in medium or subject matter that nevertheless remains within the parameters of the art college, but is a shift in the way that the art object is legitimated as such. The practice-based PhD involves the theory and practice of art being acknowledged as

academically valid. What then are the practical and conceptual consequences of academic validation for artists and how exactly does it provoke anxiety? 

I suppose the thing that is similar is that the apparent validation exists within institutional models of validation .  I like the way the article above says that art can only be transgressive within other disciplines it struggles to transgress it own institutional boundaries. It's the same for work outside the gallery it can only be transgressive in relation to a circular, self referential and blatantly silly gallery system populated by many  people content to live a life unexamined.( this week I have mostly been reading Socrates)

It's interesting just been artists who get on and work with people - the actual validation is a more simple exchange between people, an essential link to the everydayness of the work.  Tim Niel often says that the problems we face are often created by the questions we decide to ask.  This is not to say we should all trundle on and not be reflective or reflexive it is more that we should concern ourselves with the critical questions that help move us towards where we want to be.  I'm fairly comfortable with not been validated by a gallery system built on the rocky foundations of a system built on market capitalism and middle class cultural imperialism.   Then again it would be nice to get some work in a proper gallery.