Lian Bell is an artist, activist, producer, and coach whose career has spanned theatre, visual art, project management, and cultural advocacy. As she approached the midpoint of her career, she enrolled in NCAD’s MA/MFA Art in the Contemporary World (ACW) seeking fresh perspectives, intellectual challenge, and a space to reflect on her practice. In this conversation with Programme Leader Francis Halsall, Lian reflects on her experience of the course, the value of interdisciplinary learning, and why she chose to continue onto the MFA pathway.
Francis Halsall (Programme Leader): Given your wide range of expertise, ranging from scenography (working in contemporary performance) to activism (your key role in #WakingTheFeminists) via art making, coaching and project management, I was particularly interested to talk to you about what the course has been like. What made you want to do the course?
Lian Bell (Graduating Student): Having spent more than 20 years working in the arts, I realised that if I wanted to continue working in the arts, I needed to keep it interesting for myself. Going from project to project is great because you get rabbit holes to go down, but it’s very goal-driven. I thought it’d be interesting to go back and have time to think without the sort of end project deadline in the same way. But also, I was in my mid-forties. Having a chance to meet a whole load of people that I wouldn’t normally particularly meet, who were in their 20s and 30s, who just live in a totally different world, was really valuable.
So, I’m not quite the eldest person in the group, but almost. What I liked about the group and about the course in general is that it’s open to people who are coming from all different backgrounds as well as places in the world. There’s such a big cross-section of people with really different knowledges and experiences that you get to tap into and have chats with.
I originally studied theatre studies and Italian at Trinity, but then went to Central St. Martins art college in London and did a master’s in scenography. Actually, that course was like Art in the Contemporary World, ACW: it’s got a title that doesn’t really tell you anything about what it is. The scenography course was a bit like a cross-section of visual-led performance, live art or installation art. And it involved people coming from lots of different cultural backgrounds. So, this time, I also knew I wanted something that was sort of across art forms.
FH: Have you found a home for that in ACW then? Because it seems that we have lots and lots of students throughout the history of the course who have, if not the exact same profile as you, then certainly similar insofar as they don’t necessarily sit in specific artistic pigeonholes. Perhaps that is the very nature of contemporary art, that it can involve anything.
LB: Yes. Visual art is clearly the backbone of ACW, and it’s the kind of landing pad for it, which is important and interesting. But I think what’s helpful is that the course team understand that people are coming to it with different sets of knowledge, interests and understandings. I came to it knowing quite a few people who’d done it in the past, mostly people who were also based in the performing arts to some degree, but also printmaking and photography. There’s a fluidity of experience which is open and welcoming and really helpful. We can use our time to test out where our practice sits, or maybe expand or shift things to revivify them.
FH: we encourage everybody who comes onto the course to think of it as a generative space and themselves as having a practice, and what they’re going to do is situate that practice within the coordinates of contemporary art practice and theory. But what that practice is, is very much open. So, there are students like yourself working alongside musicians, broadcasters, researchers, curators, painters, dancers and so on. But I think you’re right, the grounding for things is the discourses of contemporary art.
There are two pathways through ACW: the MA, where you do the core coursework and then write a thesis; or the MFA pathway, where, after the core coursework, you take another academic year to kind of think about an expanded research/ practice project. Having done the core coursework, you decided to do the MFA. What was your thinking around that?
LB: I found the core Key Theories seminar in particular really valuable. But I think in the nicest possible way, I know I’m not an academic, and the idea of writing a straight-up thesis wasn’t very attractive to me. One of the things about coming to the course was that I wanted it to be useful and interesting.
I was very free with some of the assignments and went: ‘Yeah, okay, you’ve asked for this, but maybe I could do something slightly off to this side here that suits what my interests are a little bit better.’ And pretty much all the time, the answer was yeah, sure, go for it. I also wanted a bit more time to be in the thinking, student space and really dig into things, test myself and see what happened. I found a kind of community amongst the other people in the course. We may or may not stay in touch forever, but we’ve now got some kind of shared language to bounce things off.
FH: Thank you so much, it’s been a pleasure working with you!
Email postgraduate@ncad.ie to find out more about MA / MFA Art in the Contemporary World at the National College of Art and Design
Image credit: Red & Grey
