Outline
Established in 2001, the Masters of Contemporary Art Theory (MA CAT) is a post-studio programme that supports the research and practices of artists and aspiring art professionals.
The MA CAT encourages practices that are speculative and reflective, developing artistic research on, and in, a range of media, sites and organisations.
The programme supports an applied knowledge of art now, grounding schooling in the practices of art and contemporary art theory as well as extra-disciplinary and intermedial approaches.
The taught curriculum consists of an innovative series of learning sprints designed to support the development of your artistic research and practice through:
- workshops
- practica
- partnerships with art organisations
- carefully scaffolded approaches to collaborative inquiry (‘problem-based learning’)
- peer-production (‘paragogy’).
You will create art projects designed to engage and develop emerging hypereconomies of contemporary art and its variety of media, technologies, images, artefacts, tactics, texts, cultural contexts and professional practices.
Our philosophy and values
A defining aspect of our theory programme is the emphasis we place upon speculative scepticism – not starting from the position of knowing what post-studio practice is; rather, being motivated by speculation on what it might be.
We generate a paragogic atmosphere that supports mutual cooperation; a dynamic, intellectually ambitious environment in which staff and students can learn together.
You will generate and embody an assemblage of practices, combining process of production, translation and consumption. Our students make this happen;
they often work on collaborative forms of practice and inquiry. The programme staff are therefore eager to support applicants based on their ability to work as part of a creative team as much as we are interested in their artistic and academic potential.
We attract students with very different backgrounds and experiences. This difference generates dissensus, diversity and a richness that is key to learning about, and expanding, the field of contemporary art.
The focus on building a supportive creative community through innovative forms of peer-generated knowledge (such as open learning and problem-based learning), on the rigorous and experimental combination of theory and practice and the international profile of the student body makes our master’s programme unique.
The CAT faculty and our partnership organisations regularly identify and examine what are (currently) accepted notions of artistic production as a means of encouraging our students to develop a highly ambitious research-practice.
To do this, academic staff aim to provide specialist support for students wishing to pursue research on and in established fields of contemporary art practices and theory, while fully engaging with the ever-changing context of emerging media and innovative forms of critical and organisational praxis.
What and how you will study
Artists think and act. Being contemporary means engaging with multiple perspectives and different ways of learning. Students of contemporary art theory conduct research in relation to a broad range of creative, cultural and historical contexts in ways that are speculative, writerly, philosophical, organisational, social and economic.
By engaging equally with the production of people and social relations, and the production of material objects, our students shift from seeing parts to seeing wholes, from being disempowered and reactive to actively creating their artworlds. For this to happen, our students do not simply learn how to see things from an artist’s viewpoint.
The MA CAT is an integrated curriculum specifically crafted to develop an understanding of multiple perspectives in ways that open different possibilities for our graduates from those offered by cookie-cutter MFA studio and curatorial programmes. This means focusing not only on what we teach, but on how we learn, and on the many different environments we learn in.
On the CAT programme, artistic learning and research is conducted in a wealth of settings: in galleries, biennale, residencies, art fairs, and - of course - through artistic and theoretical practice.
Artistic learning and research are exploded networks; our students learn how to pool and share resources to cultivate a climate in which all communities flourish.
Programme structure
During the programme you will apply aesthetics, art theory and criticism, art historiography, anthropology, and conceptual personae to engage with contemporary art’s variety of media, technologies, images, artefacts, tactics, texts, cultural contexts and professional practices.
The programme consists of 4 taught courses and 1 research capstone. Each taught course is broken down further into 3 or 4 ‘learning sprints’ which last 2-3 weeks.
You will complete each learning sprint to build the knowledge and skills required to tackle the summative assignment at the end of each course.
Semester 1 – Taught Courses
Themes in Contemporary Art (40 Credits)
This course develops the core artistic research method of ‘thematic integration’ by focusing on three themes directly drawn from the current research of teaching staff.
Having completed the three learning sprints, you will then develop and work with your own theme in a summative project.
Contemporary Art and Open Learning (20 Credits)
This multidisciplinary course engages with areas of overlap between the ‘educational turn’ in present-day artistic research and current developments in the field of open educational research.
Semester 2 – Taught Courses
Curating (40 Credits)
This course develops the core artistic research method of ‘curating’.
Contemporary Art + Anthropology (20 Credits)
This multidisciplinary course engages with areas of overlap between artistic research methods and research methods developed within the discipline of Anthropology.
Summer – Supervised Research Capstone
Contemporary Artistic Research Project (60 Credits)
After passing all four taught courses, you will continue to work on your own artistic research project over the summer with the support of your supervisor.
Your research capstone can take the form of a written text (‘thesis)’, or it can be practical (‘project’).
Part-time study
As a post-studio programme, the MA CAT is specifically designed to support part-time study. The CAT has a large community of alumni who have successfully completed their studies part-time.
Part-time students take one taught course each semester. You do not take any taught courses in the summer of Year 1. You complete the final capstone in a single semester in the summer of your second year after passing the four taught courses.
Part-time students must set aside 20 hours per week during each semester in total for their studies.
A single course will normally require a half-day attendance on-campus in Edinburgh each week for classes, with some additional time for 1:1 tutorials. These tutorials can be conducted online if this is beneficial for part-time students.
The MA CAT programme defaults to blended learning and is very well supported by the latest learning technology. Our substantial Virtual Learning Environment (Blackboard Learn) contains a wide range of structured learning resources, including recordings of lectures and live classes. This makes it particularly conducive to part-time study.
The CAT also enables the Contemporary Artistic Research Project capstone to be completed entirely off-campus which, again, is of great benefit to flexible learning.
