ABSTRACT
While the academic identity is often conceived of as a radically individualistic one, particularly in the arts and humanities, we have discovered the benefits of long-term collaboration across creative practice and traditional academic research activity. This chapter takes the form of a conversation. This is an extension of our established working method, which is explicitly feminist and grounded in the principles of non-hierarchical knowledge transfer and speculative enquiry in contemporary visual art and related fields. It discusses the necessity for care and an ethics of care in teaching, research and engagement with the world beyond academia. It rejects the increasingly dominant managerial model of ‘relationship efficiency,’ in favour of a non-instrumental approach that emphasises generosity and enjoyment in our academic lives. In our experience, this has not been an easy model to pursue and the benefits and challenges of this approach are teased out through conversation. Challenges we have identified for our students have been revealed as equally applicable to us as academics, and we reflect on the lessons learned as working artists, as teachers, as researchers and as human beings.
