A Lover’s Discourse

A summary: Perez, Victoria. About Research in the Arts: A lover’s Discourse.

Prologue

Victoria Perez commences by foregrounding the birth of an artistic research (when one does not know yet) as a most fragile moment, whereto insufficient attention is drawn.

Bearing in mind the artist’s subjectivity and focusing on “the specific features of the creative moment at the moment of its birth” she is willing to look for parameters “to guide one towards research”:

• the time and places of creation
• the phases one goes through
• working progress
• moment of creation as a whole: emotions, moods, upheavals
• individual work and dialologue with others

In order to reapproach research processes Perez suggest to focus “on artistic subjectivity at research’s moment of birth and on its relationship with the object of study by comparinng it with a lover’s relationship with his loved one.” Thus the object of study becomes the subject of study. This perspective can turn away from criteria for research plan that are influenced by commerce, e.g. productivity, competitiveness, innovation.

The analogy of the lovers:

• give-and-take bond
• both parts undergo transformation
• passionate relation
• researching subject is face-to-face with subject of study

A. Affirmation – the intractable, or: the desire to research, beyond success or failure

What is affirmed as a value is not the end result or the potential of success, but the desire of the researching subject to work with the materials of the subject matter, “to apply oneself to them without trying to guess at the outset what the effort might yield.”

This suggests different work-economics. The process is judged by means of subjective parameters:

• researcher’s level of dedication
• the extent to which hum gives it hums full and heartfelt attention
• hums skill at generating a relationship with the subject-matter
• the quality of the dialogue set up

C. The Catastrophe, or: radical questioning of the value of the research (and opportunity to strip it down to the basics)

“The catastrophe is the tragic moment in the research”, when the artist thinks that hum is in a dead end, that there are no more words, that hum does not know how to question the object, that hum is going to give up.

Perez regards this as a necessary phase that will occur at some point in a creative process, “wherein the research comes under questioning down to its very foundations”; and as an opportuunity for the researcher to get rid of the nonessential.

She urges us to take advantage of this moment:

• allocating a time during which the artist will require more time alone in order to step back from the problem and look at it from farther away
• a confidant (tutor) who will help the student to map out the research done up to that moment
• work-showing sessions, during which the group will contribute to selecting the materials that they will carry on with.

U. I Want to Understand, or: reflection and reflexivenes in research

Perez distinguishes between

• an “inherent kind of reflection”, which resides within the materials (the subject-matter and the researcher’s body) and is expressed by a “private language” developed by both of them
• and reflexivity, which can take place “in a subsequent reflexive moment, when we step back from [the materials] and our own activity through communication”. To achieve that one needs to alternate between modes of working, use different languages to express the subject-object relationship and share with others.

C. Connivance, or: communication needs over the course of the research project

Discussions between peers can often be more fruitful than the ones with tutors. By “collective mentoring” “the group of students help one another to formulate and solve problems”. Their common ground is not a common subject-matter, but their being in a relationship with a research-subject.

C. Contacts – when my finger accidentally…, or : the ways of thinking inherent in artistic practices

The moment when the researcher and the object of study come into contact creates a very specific kind of thinking: “an embodied one; one that is inherent to the materials.” The researcher dives into the materials, wants to know their mechanisms, deconstructs them and reassembles them in a different way. This type of thinking occurs “directly within and from the materials being handled, within and from the own body.”

E. Errantry – the ghost ship, or: research above and beyond the concrete products that it generates

The work of art is one of the ways of making a reasearch project known. It’s not the only goal nor the end of a research. The researcher finds that some initial questions lead to others. That way a continuous stream of research is created.

W. Waiting or: daily life placed at the service of the object of research

“Over the time of the research project, the object is capable of colouring all the world’s other contents, causing reality to be interpreted by reference to itself.” “Although the type of perception is constant, the flashes of inspiration come at the oddest moments.”

W. Waiting, or: daily life placed at the service of the object of research

• the object is capable of colouring all the world’s other contents (researcher’s non-research, personal life), causing reality to be interpreted by reference to itself
• the flashes of inspiration come at the oddest moments

E. Expenditure – exuberance, or: the transgressive power of research lies in its being an end in itself, rather than a means to an end

The researcher invents “a multiplicity o methods and technics or getting the materials to speak and respond to her […] there is no other more highly prized, goal beyond the object and the relationship with it that transforms both oject and subject.”

G. Gossip, or: the difficulty of dealing with the singular mature of artistic research

The object of study is totally singular; so is the relationship between artist and object and the ways of communication invented throuout this relationship. Categorizing the object by means of pre-existing labels, names and models could eliminate the artist’s desire and limit hums prespectives.

U. The Unknowable, or: the importance o recognizing the object of study’s inexhaustible nature

The inexhaustible nature of the object: the artist could realize

• that this nature broadens and enriches the angles of study
• that the object of study is unknowable, which might paralyze the research

Thus the artist must also devote hums attention to this phase of the research project when hum focuses on sharing it or making it public.

I. Induction – show me whom to desire, or: the doses in which the student receives information

No love is original. Love is learned.

“Those catalysts that cause one to focus on a specific object […] are not, in the context of a study programme, solely the lecturers or tutors, but all the materials (documents, texts, artistic works) that a student comes into contact with.”

I. The Informer, or: the tutor’s delicate role

Informer —-> tuter: “functions as a bridge between the individuality of the relationship between the researcher/object of research pair and the research community”; “is required to perform a difficult balancing act between the act of sparking the imagination that will reinvent the object and helping place that totally individual research on common ground that can be shared by other researchers in the same field of study.”

S. Silence. No answer, or: the resilience that the object must have so that the researcher can readjust and reinvent her tools

Occasionally the object of study does’t answer. This silence could benefit the researcher:

• as a symptom of the inadequacy of the researcher’s communication with the object —-> the researcher focuses again on hums tools and considers what hum must do so as to move forward with the research
• the silence signals first and foremost this resilience’s function as a driver of the research project’s development. It continues for as long as there is a set problem to solve
• it signals the unencompassable process of knowledge —-> the researcher realizes that what hum doesn’t know is so much greater than what hum knows

R. Ravishment, or: the destabilization of the positions of subject and object

Who choses the object of study? The researcher is fascinated by the object of study, thus it turns into an energetic subject that makes certain decisions/acts neccesary —->

• the authors “I express” turns into “the subject of study suggests, indicates or even compels the researcher to carry out”
• “destabilization of the notion of author and style, in so far as the centre of action shifts from subject to object”

R. Reverberation, or: reciprocity between subject and object within the research project

Research: dialogue between researching subject and object of study, which fosters knowledge that transforms the intellectual, the physical and the affective body.

• mutual relation —-> the materials affect the subject and vice versa
• the answers that emerge during research are physically taken into the researchers body
• the subjectivity is transformed in a real way by what it knows —-> more intensive type of research

S. Signs – the uncertainty of signs, or: artistic research as a science o the concrete

A private language must be invented or a precreated language must be adapted to the particular and specific features of the subject of research.

Artistic research is a “science o the concrete” (Levi-Strauss)

• the objects specific qualities give sense and substance to the research project
• the ways that the features show up, the details that reason could disregard, the relationships that are ormed between them, are keys or constructing a meaning and trying to create a new language

I.L.Y. I-Love-You, or: research as an active and mindful echange with the world

“I speak so that you may answer” (R. Barthes)

The subject is made of materials that need to be activated, because they can indeed answer (in accordance with their own laws).

How can I make you talk to me? The questions relate to the materials themselves. Generating a flow of communication translates in this case to moving ahead with the research.

Research reveals itself as “a period of intensity, of full vitality in a relationship o the subject with the whole world around her that goes far beyond a calculatio of end goals.”

T. Truth, or: artistic practice as a subversion of discourses

Love is blind Love opens hums eyes wide

common sense hums own clear-sightedness

There arises the absolute originality: the moment when the consideration of the object is radically different from how others view it or what common sense would dictate. Therein lies research’s potential to transform the world, to revolutionize conventional wisdom.