What is Interdisciplinary Art?

An Introduction to Interdisciplinary Art at Goddard College

with Program Director Danielle Boutet

Interdisciplinary Art at Goddard is an engagement in artistic diversity, in the continuing subversion of established canons, and in the constant exploration of new directions and new terrains for art making. While elsewhere art is divided into neat categories along the lines of mediums – such as “Painting,” “Music,” “Dance,” “Theater,” “Video,” etc., the low residency MFA in Interdisciplinary Art program does not emphasize the medium first, instead students work in the medium that best suits their inner vision. If and when this vision calls to be expressed through a new medium, students are encouraged to seek and discover it.

The low residency MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program encourages students to actively engage with contemporary discourse in the arts and to contribute their own unique perspective and experience. Some people have solid preferences for specific media and will work consistently with the same ones for long periods of time (if not an entire lifetime), while other artists tend to explore and rove a lot, experimenting with a wide variety of tools, media and forms. Neither the artist who works for a lifetime in one medium, nor the one who uses a different medium for each work, is the norm in the art world. While disciplinarity is still the norm in art departments and institutions, it is not a norm in the contemporary art world of practicing artists. Our interdisciplinary focus is an acknowledgement of this matter of fact. We see trends and commonalities between all the arts – at the level of the creative process, of content, of the purpose of the work, and so on. For example:

• A socially-engaged agenda: More now than ever, artists who see their responsibility as concerned citizens are developing an ever wider diversity of creative approaches and strategies, to the point where we see a completely renewed practice of socially engaged art. The ideas and intentions in these practices are compelling and provocative, and the many questions they raise can be explored in this program.
  
• An autobiographical agenda: There is a long tradition of women artists and writers who have reached deeply into their intimate personal experience in order to extract potentially universal wisdom and insight. Yet these autobiographical processes have not been as valued by Western critics and historians as other aesthetic quests. We seek to help those students who are engaged in exploring their personal experience and expressing it meaningfully in all its richness.
  
• A spiritual aspiration: Many artists integrate spiritual dimensions in their work, with or without acknowledging them. Within our interdisciplinary art framework, spiritual practices that manifest in artistic ways are valued from both their spiritual and artistic dimensions. Rather than imposing on such practices confining definitions of what is appropriate in art and what is not, we allow these practices to stretch and expand our view of art.

The above three examples are but only three of the larger concerns which have run across our student population over the years. On several occasions, students have displayed all three of them in their work – so even these categories can be misleading. As soon as an artist integrates into the work procedures, materials or discourses of two art forms, the work can be considered interdisciplinary. But beyond that, we see work in contemporary art that goes much further than this crossing boundaries of traditional art forms. Work, for example, that:

• Blends craft and political discourse
• Blurs the distinctions between process and product
• Crosses the boundaries between art and spirituality, art and anthropology, art and politics, art and nature, etc.
• Deconstructs the definition of art, of what art is, of what makes it “good art”
• Uses art for social or political purposes, such as community-based art

Disciplinary Work

Although the program's focus is on practices beyond disciplines, projects that are disciplinary in a traditional sense are not excluded. If you, for instance, want to develop mastery of one medium, we will support and encourage you in that direction, while inviting you to reflect upon the reasons and implications of this choice, and to locate your focused practice within larger contermporary contexts.

Theoretical Research

The MFA-IA excludes purely theoretical projects such as art history and art criticism. Yet, our focus on practice implies critical theory, contextualization and conceptualization, as well as theoretical research. You are expected to become acquainted with contemporary art theory and to contextualize your practice within the frameworks of art history and contemporaray social discourse. In the current context where art has been questioned and subverted to the point where its definition has become"what the artist says it is, " so to speak, we believe it is essential that you articulate what your art is, the social and cultural parameters in which your work takes place, and that you address critically the various questions raised by your practice.