A cautionary tale of risk management, practice-led research and relational aesthetics

In this chapter I explore the relationships between creative practices and the institutional mechanisms in place that seek to regulate them. Although my focus is on practice-led research and not on the art that - through little gestures - is like an angelic programme, a set of tasks carried out beside or beneath the real economic system, so as to patiently re-stitch the relational fabric (Bourriaud, 2002: 36), a discussion around the processes by which seemingly marginal, always opportunistic creative practices within higher education are normalised presents opportunities to think through the future role of relational aesthetics within the academy. With relational art practices attracting the attentions of magpie academics and as more artists within the universities lay claim to the title 'researcher' I conduct what may seem an arcane exercise in producing a genealogy of British practice-led research that focuses on the performativity of policy and criteria. As such, and in the spirit of the textile metaphors running through relational aesthetics, this is perhaps an exercise in administrative detailing, a particular genealogical embroidery.