Abstract

This paper offers the thesis that practice-led research in art and design should propose changes to those relations of knowledge that currently ensure the integrity of practice and the neutrality and objectivity of theory. I assert that the 'common ground' of theory and practice can be located within a structure of identification that binds the practitioner to the analyst or theorist of practice. I offer an example of one theorist who has instituted a game with this structure of identification of theorist and art object, a game that is necessarily limited by conditions for the 'practice of theory' in the humanities. A way beyond these limitations is suggested in a discussion of Lars von Trier's film 'The Five Obstructions'. This film makes a series of displacements of the integrity of practice within the forms of identification that structure the engagements of Lars von Trier and Jorgen Leth