The Interview as Convergent Point - between qualitative research and performance art (original) (raw)
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Face to face: relational aesthetic experience in performance art
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Since its emergence, performance art has impacted the longstanding notion of visual art as only object-based and within the traditional institutional spaces. Despite not having grown the same popularity of other visual art forms, and not having an easily understandable or all-encompassing definition, it is undeniable that performance art relies, for its very existence and manifestation, on the encounter between at least two people. After a short contextualisation and introduction, the article departs from a definition of performance art by selecting two guiding key words, experience and people. It unfolds possible meanings of the former, drawing concepts also from psychological aesthetics and positive psychology, and prepares the ground for the latter. It then widens the term audience to include public, particularly with regard to performance art presented in open spaces, which therefore offers two exciting dimensions: complete accessibility and possibility of intervention. These are manifestations of liveness, one of the topics of audience research in the performing arts. Recovering the initial word experience and drawing from the most recent research in performance studies, the article moves onto discuss the prospect of liveness as experience, not as a monolithically ontological quality of performance art, but as a lively and contingent dimension of the intersubjective relationship. Introducing the metaphor of kōan for spontaneous performance art, the article moves onto applying the interesting kōan/satori cognitive schema from recent research, to put forward a possible explanation for the mechanisms of resistance to performance art or its potential overcoming. The article ends with some suggestions for future research.
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Books included in this cutting-edge series centre on global and embodied approaches to performance and technology. As well as focusing on digital performance and art, they also include the theoretical and historical context relevant to these practices. The series offers fresh artistic and theoretical perspectives on this exciting and growing area of contemporary performance practice, and includes contributors from a wide range of international locations working within this varied discipline. Titles in the series will include edited collections and monographs on issues including (but not limited to): identity and live art; intimacy and engagement with technology; biotechnology and artistic practices; technology, architecture design and performance; performance, gender and technology; and space and performance.
Journal of Art Historiography, no 23, Dec 2020, 2020
This critical introduction explores the case for establishing the artist interview as a critical genre. It examines the status of artist interviews in relation to author interviews and the fields of oral history, art practice, art criticism and art history. The interview’s performative nature is emphasised, and the supposed ‘authenticity’ of the artist’s voice questioned. The potential existence of multiple variants of the ‘same’ interview problematises the artist interview’s status in archives – which is the original interview? A link is made between artist interviews and feminist methodologies, based on valuing the embodied nature of speech. Researching interviews goes to the heart of artists’ involvement in writing art history: the extent to which their words should be valued and trusted. This is an introduction to the co-edited issue 'The Artist Interview – An interdisciplinary approach to its history, process and dissemination', guest edited by Lucia Farinati and Jennifer Thatcher, Journal of Art Historiography, no. 23, Dec 2020, https://arthistoriography.wordpress.com/23-dec20/ Keywords: artist interview, biography, oral history, Audio Arts, performativity, transcription, archive, dialogic practices
Being Here Now: Performance, Presentness and the Opening to Wonder
Rachel Gomme PhD thesis, 2019
This thesis focuses on the experience of ‘presentness’ in the performance context, drawing on theoretical investigation, case studies and research through practice to consider how performance can invite the spectator into awareness of bodied co-presence in a shared space of being. Following Serres and Sheets-Johnstone, it argues that sensing and animation are primary in the subject’s awareness of her own being, and key to a sense of presence-in-the-world. Performance, encouraging attention to its own present moment, can offer a privileged context for this bodily awareness of being. Phenomenology is proposed as a key mode of analysis of the performance experience of both performer and spectator, as well as central to my concern in practice with bringing awareness to a shared present moment. Case studies from my own and other artists’ practice are informed by engagement with philosophical analyses of co-presence (Lévinas, Irigaray, Nancy), considering how particular forms may invite sensory attention to the spectator’s own being as well as to the performance. Analysis of one-to-one performances, and durational performances involving materials, investigates whether and how these modes can invite spectators into a sense of being-present-with, and/or self-presence. The central performance element in the submission raises the question of how mind and materials ‘think’ together, and how conceptual ideas may be advanced through practical thinking, as well as vice versa. This reflection is taken up in a consideration (following Sheets-Johnstone and Ingold) of how moving allows us a sense of being in the world, how thinking operates on multiple levels, in body as well as intellect, and how ‘thinking’ may be apparent in the movement of working with materials, and in the moving body itself. Finally, it is argued that by inviting the spectator into this sensory, bodily enmeshed apprehension of being-in-the-world, performance can return us to the space of everyday wonder.
Performing phenomenology: Negotiating presence in intermedial theatre
Foundations of Science, 2011
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Listening Through Performance: Identity, Embodiment, and Arts-Based Research
This chapter addresses identity construction from the perspective of a researcher of the global North studying research participants of the global South. Because identity is enmeshed in epistemic systems, I draw attention to the inherent difficulties of listening to subalterns without rethinking one's own positionality and deeply held memories and meanings. In this chapter, I lead the reader through three examples of performance ethnography in which my own identity was called into question through embodied and participatory research focused on Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank. I demonstrate the way in which my own Jewish-American identity, at first an obstacle, later becomes a guidepost to understanding the way dominant epistemologies continue to oppress and occlude Palestinian voices.
Performance as embodied thinking": Interviewing Marilyn Arsem
Revista Científica/FAP, 2023
Resumo: Marilyn Arsem, artista da performance e ex-professora da School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (SMFA), fala sobre as suas experiências e aprendizados nos seus mais de quarenta anos de contato com a prática e o ensino da performance, seja institucionalmente, seja em workshops mundo afora. Ao acompanharmos as suas reflexões, é possível compreender um pouco mais acerca do próprio processo criativo e criador de Arsem, os quais, em nosso entendimento, partem muito mais de um ímpeto genuíno de investigação e experimento com o real e na tessitura do momento presente do que em criar performances cujos desenvolvimentos e objetivos finais já estejam, de certo modo, pré-concebidos.
Introduction: The Performance-within, Creative Authenticity, and Practical Knowledge
Alone among the elements that constitute the stage's semiotic field, the body is a sign that looks back. 1 An iconographic image in Ingmar Bergman 's Persona (1966) is that of the film's protagonist, Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann) in the role of Elektra. This image occurs early in the film, positioned as the inciting incident in the story of Vogler and her decision to reject her career as an actress and the use of spoken language; theatre, speech, and lying are all effectively renounced. Depicted in a close-up in a dark wig and with stylized make-up, and engaged in the performance of her role, Vogler abruptly stops speaking (and acting). We see her face as she turns away from the lights in the background (and presumably from an audience seated beyond a proscenium arch) and toward the camera. The gap between the visage of Elektra and the uncertainty in the eyes of the actress is emphasized; there is confusion, a slight sense of wonder and displacement. There is a momentary resolve to resume the performance, and the face turns away from the camera and back toward the lights and unseen audience;