Artistic Practice as Research

“interrogating the boundaries of practice-as-research“

A summary: Naccarato, Teoma. “Artistic Practice as Research: A Genealogical Account”

Introduction

• the doing of research is itself a practice
• Karen Barad: we know because we are of the world; onto-epistem-ology: the study of practices of knowing in being

In order to separate and sustain the boundaries of different research fields we keep excluding voices and knowledges. In the case of practice as research in universities, “advocates must account not only for what constitutes knowledge in practice-as-research, but also what nowledges are excluded —-> onto-epistem-ology + ethics:

• “an appreciation of the intertwining of ethics, knowing and being”
• “since each intra-action matters […] because the becoming of the world is a deeply ethical matter.”

What is (not) practice?

At what point is an activity elevated to the status of being an (artistic) practice? At what point does someone’s activity no longer qualify as an (artistic) practice?

Repetition, duration and mastery are seen as factors of establishing a “successful” practice. But how much of these factors and according to whom?

What happens when practices are disciplinary, i.e. “self-regulatory systems wherein cause and effect between objectives, behaviours, and outcomes are not predetermined or distinquishable”?

The assessment procedures of various practices work to define *which practitioners can claim to have this practice and *how this practice is different than the other practices. mutual constitution of boundaries <—-> boundaries in shifting relation

The Practice/Theory Trap

The roots of separating theory from practice are to be found in Cartesian metaphysics. René Descartes believes that the subjective, sensory perceptions derived in human experience, memory, body, movement cannot be trusted. This doubt regarding experiential knowledge consequently leads to doubt regarding embodied practices. The binary between body and mind, abstract and concrete expands to “practices of objectivity in the hard sciences versus subjectivity in the soft research of the arts and huumanities.”

“If phenomenal processes such as vision, memory, body , and movement cannot be trusted, what is the relationship of these processes, if any, to constructions of knowledge?

Entangled practice: Positivism and Phenomenology

“[…]it is critical to remember that ‘[discourse] is not what is said; it is that which constrains and enables what can be said. Discursive practices define what counts as meaningful statements,’ and likewise, what constitutes a meaningful contribution to knowledge within a given frame of reference.”

Linking to Foucault’s idea of Disciplinary Power “[…]practices and theories are inextricably entangled through the disciplinary effects of power that regulate the boundaries of disciplinary discourse from within. The disciplining of ‘ways of speaking and seeing’ is not a matter of determinism and prohibition, but rather involves continual processes of discursive constraint, through which particular practices contribute to the salient knowledge of a discipline – thus gaining the status of being a practice, or even, a practice that is research.”

The discourse of PaR

Practice as Research

Practice is what artist have in common with other forms of acadmic study and research.

What differentiates practices that are research, from those that are not?

Research: Robin Nelson “outlines three categories of research: personal, professional, and academic”. Investigation is what they have in common; “only academic research requires that you must establish new knowledge.”

When artistic PaR is combined with academia the imperatives of academic research become the imperatives of artistic PaR.

“PaR advocates invest the discourse of PaR – and also themselves as upholders of PaR – ‘with the effects of a power which the West since Medieval times has attributed to science and has reserved for those engaged in scientific discourse’.”

Evaluating PaR

Principles (organization, evaluation, presentation, productivity) of one research culture are transfered onto another, in this case artistic PaR. This transfering of values implies that certain knowledge (that is in accordance with certain principles) is designated as academic knowledge and is separated from other forms of knowledge (that emerges from “alternative” methods of research or is articulated in “alternative” modes).

PaR as/and Research

“The concept of practice-as-research, when differentiated only cosmetically from research itself, can act as a strategy to recruit outlying practitioners into the frame of dominant and centrist discourse, such that these new ‘allies’ – including many artists – willingly reinforce, rather than destabilize, the status quo of what counts as knowledge.”

“From an idealistic standpoint, the encounter of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies with critical and counter-methodologies, such as feminist, indigenous, and artistic practicesas-research, has potential to destabilize the boundaries of cultures of research. In turn, this destabilization may lead to unfamiliar ethico-ontoepistemological entanglements – in other words, ‘new worlds,’ in which other(ed) knowledges becomes visible.”