[-empyre-] the extents of learning experiences/practice as a means towards academic self-criticism

[I. J.]

Hello again,

I would like to return - with delay (for which I apologize) - to two of Gabriel's questions posed earlier this week that I have not yet answered, and also refer to Johannes's and Magnus's latest posts:

>
Do you also extend this question to the moment of performance itself?
Can being on stage be a learning experience, instead of the
application of the outcomes of another process (e.g. scriptwriting,
rehearsal, etc )?

>

I do. But what is needed so that the moment of the performance itself can be a learning experience, I think, is openness - or, what I sometimes like to call, "being in the moment": being aware of and in constant reaction to what is actually happening then and there, on stage. I am interested in the idea of the structure (a script of some sort) that can give "the gift of the event along with its indecidability" (to extrapolate Alain Badiou's expression). The structure means determinacy, coherence, and consistency,  but it is a structure with soft, provisionally defined boundaries. It ensures that the essentially indeterminate event – a set of possible outcomes, by (mathematical) definition – is unforeseen (it is perceived as impossible, in Derrida's notion of impossibility, as that which is possible only by virtue of being seen as impossible) until the very moment when it springs into being.

I am also interested in departures from the script enabled by the script. In my playwriting practice, which I see as another form of theorizing, I try to make room for silences and empty spaces within language, meant to challenge performers to "fill in" the gaps during the performance. And I'm interested in creating open texts that call for the questioning of established reading practices and open the way for the exploration of new ones. So I pay a lot of attention to the arrangement of words on the page. There are, of course, many writers who do that. Erik Ehn and Mac Wellman come immediately to mind.  

So what I think can first and foremost be learned in the moment of the performance is another way of knowing that breaks away from teleology. In this way, for me at least, performance becomes a kind of "training center" for my more traditional theoretical work, in which I am also seeking to stay away from/undo teleological thinking.

>
I believe this concern also connects to Magda’s questions about the
validation of practice within academia. In that sense, at this point,
do you feel inclined towards any of the three different approaches
outlined by her?

>

I would say I'd be inclined towards a version that combines the three approaches Magda outlined. Something in this sense:

             For me, art is not the end of theory and method ... (and the dots are important here) but it is an opportunity for the questioning and renegotiation of existing ways of knowing and for articulating/reimagining  the subjective experience/materiality of the times we live in. 

This formulation, I feel, opens art both towards a metatheoretical, self-reflexive dimension (along the lines of what Johannes interestingly defined as practice-based research as "a means to critique one's own practice-led" and - theory-based, I would add - research, "perhaps render it ad absurdum"), and towards what Magda called in one of her earlier posts "the new context which isdefined by the changing character of production which becomes biopolitical production invested in production of subjectivity". This, for me, is art that calls into question and negotiates both its conditions of existence and its conditions of possibility within institutionally-defined boundaries and against the background of an ever-shifting socio-cultural context - in other words, in precarious situations (and here I understand precarity as intimately linked to life under late(r) capitalism).  

>
Yes, ad absurdum...I am not sure what to do with that at present, but
a position which I think lends weight to such an approach, comes from
a program of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts which has, “...made
artistic research in a university context itself the object of
study....[where]... artistic research can be defined as a
methodological investigation of artistic practice or as
praxis-generated research situated within contemporary culture.
Artistic research operates in a methodical manner, is problem-oriented
and eclectic. It has its own grammar that is derived from its own
interferences and spaces for negotiation, which are constantly being
re-constituted through praxis...as a space for negotiation, a space in
which action-reaction are fundamental modes of working and where
openness and indeterminacy are not seen as flaws of the system, but as
advantages. ” [1].

>

Magnus, thanks for bring this to our attention. I am quite taken by this approach to artistic research, especially to the part highlighted above. I wonder what concrete forms this approach can take  - in other words, what the products of this kind of artistic research would look like. And are these products to be discussed under the rubric of aesthetics, still? Is talk in terms of aesthetic value relevant as far as they are concerned?

To push this question one step further: What is the relation between artistic research and the category of aesthetics?  

best wishes,

Ioana


________________________________
 From: Gabriel Menotti <gabriel.menotti at gmail.com>
To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au> 
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 5:04 PM
Subject: [-empyre-] myths of conservation / the extents of learning experiences
 
>myth […]: the opening of a space that allows one to create
>rituals of understanding around the social space,
>around pervasive epistemological-ontological
>constructs; [IOANA JUCAN]

I was not familiar with Dominguez’s ideas, and now I’m wondering if he
also considers the more normative dimension of rituals, as well as
those myths not about transformation, but about conservation (nature
as an ever-returning cycle both in pagan legends and in the abrahamic
Ecclesiastes, etc). This trope seems particularly central to some
stories about eternal punishment (such as Sisyphus’ and Prometheus’),
in which there is a sort of endless feedback cycle leading nowhere (or
forever-denied transformations/ deterioration).


>How can I make of my performance-making practice a learning
>experience (that materializes in some kind of knowledge
>acquisition or understanding) rather than an application of the
>theoretical outcomes of my research? [IJ]

Do you also extend this question to the moment of performance itself?
Can being on stage be a learning experience, instead of the
application of the outcomes of another process (e.g. scriptwriting,
rehearsal, etc )?


>(How) am I to justify my art practice in relation to
>my theoretical research and demonstrate its
>relevance to the latter? [IJ]

I believe this concern also connects to Magda’s questions about the
validation of practice within academia. In that sense, at this point,
do you feel inclined towards any of the three different approaches
outlined by her?

Best!
Menotti
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