The Articulate Arts Researcher
Workshop
Tandil, Argentina
June 2017
Led by Vida L Midgelow
Professor in Dance and Choreographic Practices, Middlesex University, UK
‘Human beings do not exist on the ‘other side’ of materiality,
but swim in an ocean of materials’ (Tim Ingold 2011:24)
This short course will consider the underlying methods of Practice as Research (PaR) and explore the processes of the Creative Articulation Process (CAP) (Bacon and Midgelow 2014). It asks: What can be discovered and shared in and through practice as research that other approaches do not reveal? What might otherwise be lost or remain silent? What modalities of knowledge and ways of working are at play in this research? How can these modalities be made evident, and therefore shareable, in line with the responsibilities of researchers to make their research available to others?
Whilst the methods of PaR remain contested, there are shared understandings of this approach to artistic practice emerging that cohere around concepts of praxis. In this short course I propose how we can develop artistic research through emergent processes are that subjective, material, situated and curatorial. Through these processes PaR enables us to rethink art making as research, revealing how it encompasses ‘the work of the feet, as well as the hands and the head’ (Ingold 2011:16).
This outlook will be supported through the use of the Creative articulation process (CAP). A particular interest of CAP is how we effectively bring the subjectivity of the researcher into the frame of the researched. Through a series of strategies drawn from somatic practices and the felt sense, CAP supports the development of performance works and related materials in ways that build upon such subjective and embodied positions.
Through openness and curiosity our materials and materiality-in-motion become the basis for research.
Course Contents
The course will include:
- Daily warm-up and focusing exercises for the bodymind as drawn from somatic practices and improvisation
- Shared selected readings and debates around keys issues in Practice as Research
- Exploring through embodied material thinking and creative processes
- Working together to generate and reflect on artistic work
- Experimenting through individually developed projects
- Using (self) curatorial and articulation processes
Aims and learning outcomes;
The course aims:
- to enhance understanding of Practice as Research as a materially embodied research mode
- to introduce the ‘Creative Articulation Process’ as a tool for Practice as Research
Teaching
The course will be taught through a group workshop and shared discussion. Throughout participants will develop a (individual) new work and test out experiments in articulation through this work.
Throughout we will share our ideas and practices with each other in the spirit of collective learning and experimentation.
Assessment
A short presentation/installation of selected fragments of the practice developed through the course and its articulation. This sharing of your work should also demonstrate in what of processes introduced through the course has facilitated changes to your established ways of working.
Bibliography
Core texts
Bacon, Jane and Midgelow, Vida (2014) Creative Articulation Processes (CAP). Choreographic Practices, Vol 5/ No 1.
Ingold, Tim (2011) Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. Routledge. London and New York
Journal of Artistic Research: http://jar-online.net
Selected background reading / viewing
Allegue, L., Jones, S., Kershaw, B., & Piccini, A. (eds.) (2009). Practice-as-Research in Performance and Screen. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Barbour, K. (2011). Dancing Across the Page: Narrative and Embodied Ways of Knowing. Bristol: Intellect.
Barrett, E. & Bolt, B. (eds.) (2007). Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. London: I.B. Tauris.
Biggs, M. & Karlsson, H. (eds.) (2010). The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts. London: Routledge.
Borgdorff, H. (2012). The Conflict of the Faculties – Perspectives on Artistic Research and Academia. Leiden: Leiden University Press.
Freeman, J. (2010). Blood Sweat and Theory: Research Through Practice in Performance. Libri Publishing.
Nelson, R. (2013). Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Prerequisite
Participants should have experience of making artistic work in performance or related fields, and be comfortable with exploring through movement (although no particular or extended dance technique training is required).