Insider, outsider or cultures in-between : Ethical and methodological considerations in intercultural arts research (original) (raw)

2016, The Routledge International Handbook of Intercultural Arts Research; pp 115-125 (2016)

Remembering is a realization of belonging, even a social obligation (Assmann, 2008: 114) Can we learn to listen? Or to allow silence to speak to us? Can we visualize the space among us and inhabit it with our memories? These are among the questions raised by, and embedded in, my recent participatory art project 'lo scarto', which evolved through the relational dynamics within the group. It was informed by the Reciprocal Maieutics Approach (RMA Dolci, 1973), a pedagogic process based on collective exploration of individuals' experience and intuition. This enabled intersubjective exchange, the activation of history and memories, and the construction of a narrative related to the current intercultural process taking place in Italy. My creative process is here discussed as research as art practice, in relation to socially engaged and dialogic art, and communicative memory, to act as an interface in an intercultural society. Research As Art Practice In Context As an artist and a researcher, my creative process can be defined as 'Research As Art Practice'. According to Busch (2009) contemporary art is often characterised by an explicit recourse to philosophical or sociological theories, and scientific research and process that "critically analyses both the commodity aspect of artworks and their purely aesthetic impact, as well as the power structures of the art world" (Busch 2009: 1) resulting in interdisciplinary and socially engaged artistic research. My ongoing investigation into the 'interchange' (Cologni, 2004) of artist and audience/participant, based on the co-functioning of self and other (Merleau-Ponty, 1962), and the perceptual, psychological and social dynamics within it, is manifested in participatory and collaborative events, sculptures, drawings and workshops. The live encounter in the form of dialogue is central to the construction of meaning. In particular in my production platform Rockfluid ii my approach was also in-disciplinary "not only a matter of going besides the disciplines but of breaking them" (Baronian, Rancière and Rosello 2008: 2). I have recently focused on processes of memorization in the present and in relation to space/place, through for example 'Spa(e)cious' and 'lo scarto' discussed below. Research as art practice is a natural development from the art practice as research paradigm that emerged in the 1990s, defined as the context where the produced artworks also produced (often critical) knowledge (Busch, 2009), of which my piece Diagrammi (Venice Biennale, 1999, Cologni 2000) is an example. The art research debate grew and intertwined with movements in contemporary art, allowing research in the arts and an evolution of the relationship between theory and practice (Busch, 2009; Sullivan, 2005). These are interwoven in research as art practice, which through different manifestations acts through many registers, and has a wider impact in society because it talks to-while engaging with-different audiences to share the transformation taking place from ideas to artworks, from raw matter to specific constructs, from subjective needs to shared meaningful actions. My artistic research within the Anti Ocularcentric Discourse (Cologni, 2004; Jay, 1993), a critique of the vision-centered western cultural context, is filtered through my own experience as a transnational artist within a now rapidly changing multi-ethnic European continent (Risse, 2004; Checkel and Katzenstein, 2009). The Council of Europe issued the following statement about