• Arlander starts the text with this question: “What would be artistic research

in the performing arts?”

It’s a big question and will leave us with a forest of further questions.

 

• ‘…challenges us to look at artistic research in terms of knowledge production rather than artistic excellence.’ This is a good observation and begins us to move away from the subjective word “quality” of specific artistic productions and leads us to a place where wider philosophies outside of the arts can used to describe them. A bigger framework of knowledge not specific to the arts is at play here.

 

• I enjoy the way Arlander is approaching the text from an academic point of view and then a specific artist point of view

 

1. ARTISTIC RESEARCH AT THE THEATRE ACADEMY

– THE FIRST FIFTEEN YEARS OF COMPLETED

RESEARCH PROJECTS

 

• ‘First, the idea of artistic work as equivalent and parallel to historical, sociological or pedagogical research was emphasized.’ This is an important change in the mindset of research in the arts

 

• There is a shift here between being a master artist and a master of artistic research

 

2. NOTES ON METHODOLOGY OR

WHERE DO YOU START?

 

• ‘Research is a normal part of artistic work in many areas and research methods should preferably be developed from working methods, not imposed on an emerging field from the outside.’

This is an excellent observation that many, or most, artworks are not simply born from the artists mind and delivered in front of audiences but rather they have their own body of research attached to it already. Developing dramaturgies is research in it’s own right; ‘Research “from the inside”’

 

• ‘Art practice qualifies as research when its purpose is to broaden our knowledge and understanding through an original investigation.’ Henk Bordorff

 

• Mika Hannula, Juha Suoranta and Tere Vadén talk about the artist themselves being the tent pole of research. Using the metaphor of scientific research they highlight the prickly nature of subjectivity within artistic research. Weave of artistic research.

 

• 1) presenting the research context and delineating the problems, 2) credibility and explanations, 3) the internal coherence and persuasiveness of the research, 4) the usability, transferability and novelty value of the results and 5) the meaning and importance of the research results to the artistic and research communities.

Question: Does creating practical artist work suffer if only viewed from an artist research lens? What about actual audiences? How do they fit into these 5 points?

 

• PERFORMING LANDSCAPE AS A METHOD

• Question: Does the ephemerality of performance work make it harder to pin down within the context of research practice? If the performance changes in front of audiences, what is the impact upon the research?

 

3. HOW DOES AN ARTIST ENCOUNTER A PHILOSOPHER’S TEXT?

 

• What is the role of a philosopher? They ask questions of the world we live in, they sometime force us to look at things from a different angle. They make us think in different ways. Artists are philosophers – this needs to be addressed in this text. Does it make you a philosopher because you are quoted in a book?

 

• For my own work, I never start with philosophers, I start with fellow artists – They did this thing, I want to achieve the same feeling I felt when I experienced that. Afterwards – when the questions are asked during the developing of projects are when philosophers can get involved.

Artists- Primal creativity- Idea- development – questions- philosophy

 

4. PERFORMING LANDSCAPE IN THE AGE OF BREATH

 

• I feel like Arlander is using the example of the breath in the research of Irigaray as a device to explain practice as research within Arlanders own practice. I like the fact that this comes from n artist but the main  message and is lost slightly for me. It’s interesting that Arlander references that making the work came first and then drawing on parallels to Irigaray came second. We must make art first before we can research it. We must practice art. We must treat research as art at times, and art as research . There is a fluidity at play here.

 

• I enjoy the way Arlander has found further purpose from their work, specifically Year of the Monkey – Tomtebo & Day and Night of the Rooster, through researching breath in Irigaray’s research. Ideas fuel ideas is something I like to work with in my own practice.

 

• If I were to use Irigaray’s research on the breath in my practice I might look at my performance work Sync where I use a pre-recorded soundtrack of my own breath and sync my physicality (cheast, lips, mouth) to the pre-recorded soundtrack. The detachment creates a void that becomes almost spiritual in the sense that I am both sincere in my action of breathing and insincere in my knowledge that I am deceiving the audience in some way.