Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices 9789087909956, 9789087909963, 9789087909970

Table of contents :
Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1. WAYS OF FRAMING Introducing Creative Arts Research
2. WAYS OF KNOWING AND BEING Navigating the Conditions of Knowledge and Becoming a Creative Subject
3. WAYS OF LOOKING AND LISTENING Stories from the Spaces Between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Knowledge Systems
4. WAYS OF ANALYSING From Reverie to Reality
5. WAYS OF BEING-WITH Finding a Way to be with the Work
6. WAYS OF PROPOSING Art as Proposition: From the Darwin Translations
7. WAYS OF ACTING AND REFLECTING Researching and Writing the Screenplay
8. WAYS OF CONSTRUCTING Epistemic, Temporal and Productive Aspects of Design Research
9. WAYS OF PERFORMING Perspectives on Performance and Performativity
10. WAYS OF DECONSTRUCTING Risks, Imagination and Reflexivity
11. WAYS OF LEARNING FROM CREATIVE RESEARCH A Postscript
INDEX

Citation preview

Creative Arts Research

EDUCATIONAL FUTURES RETHINKING THEORY AND PRACTICE Volume 35 Series Editors Michael A. Peters University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Editorial Board Michael Apple, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA Miriam David, Institute of Education, London University, UK Cushla Kapitzke, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Australia Mark Olssen, University of Surrey, UK Fazal Rizvi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Linda Tuahwai Smith, University of Waikato, New Zealand Susan Robertson, University of Bristol, UK Scope This series maps the emergent field of educational futures. It will commission books on the futures of education in relation to the question of globalisation and knowledge economy. It seeks authors who can demonstrate their understanding of discourses of the knowledge and learning economies. It aspires to build a consistent approach to educational futures in terms of traditional methods, including scenario planning and foresight, as well as imaginative narratives, and it will examine examples of futures research in education, pedagogical experiments, new utopian thinking, and educational policy futures with a strong accent on actual policies and examples.

Creative Arts Research Narratives of Methodologies and Practices

Elizabeth Grierson Laura Brearley Treahna Hamm Lesley Duxbury Robyn Barnacle Peter Downton Lisa Dethridge Emma Barrow Kipps Horn Lyndal Jones

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia

SENSE PUBLISHERS ROTTERDAM/BOSTON/TAIPEI

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-90-8790-995-6 (paperback) ISBN 978-90-8790-996-3 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-8790-997-0 (e-book)

Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands http://www.sensepublishers.com

Printed on acid-free paper

Cover Image: Life River Reflections Through Totems, Acrylic, Treahna Hamm, 2004.

All Rights Reserved © 2009 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD .........................................................................................................................vii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS..............................................................................................ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................xiii

1. WAYS OF FRAMING Introducing Creative Arts Research ......................................................................1 Elizabeth Grierson and Laura Brearley 2. WAYS OF KNOWING AND BEING Navigating the Conditions of Knowledge and Becoming a Creative Subject...................................................................................................17 Elizabeth Grierson 3. WAYS OF LOOKING AND LISTENING Stories from the Spaces Between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Knowledge Systems ............................................................................................33 Laura Brearley and Treahna Hamm 4. WAYS OF ANALYSING From Reverie to Reality ......................................................................................55 Lesley Duxbury 5. WAYS OF BEING-WITH Finding a Way to be with the Work ....................................................................65 Robyn Barnacle 6. WAYS OF PROPOSING Art as Proposition: From the Darwin Translations .............................................75 Lyndal Jones 7. WAYS OF ACTING AND REFLECTING Researching and Writing the Screenplay ............................................................97 Lisa Dethridge 8. WAYS OF CONSTRUCTING Epistemic, Temporal and Productive Aspects of Design Research ..................111 Peter Downton

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CONTENTS

9. WAYS OF PERFORMING Perspectives on Performance and Performativity ............................................129 Elizabeth Grierson, Emma Barrow and Kipps Horn 10. WAYS OF DECONSTRUCTING Risks, Imagination and Reflexivity..................................................................149 Elizabeth Grierson 11. WAYS OF LEARNING FROM CREATIVE RESEARCH A Postscript ......................................................................................................165 Elizabeth Grierson and Laura Brearley INDEX ................................................................................................................................. 175

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MICHAEL A. PETERS

FOREWORD

This collection of essays that emerges from a shared multidisciplinary project at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2006 examines the diversity of creative arts research in terms of its methodologies, practices and guiding philosophies. Taking a lead from Martin Heidegger, the editors frame the collection through consideration of ways of framing, knowing and being, looking and listening, analysing, being-with, proposing, acting and reflecting, constructing, performing, deconstructing, and learning. This wide-ranging ingenious metaphoric device allows the editors and contributors to emphasise a set of fundamental questions concerning epistemologies—ways of knowing, and ontologies—ways of being, and the relations between the two. The lead authors and editors, Elizabeth Grierson and Laura Brearley, refer to Heidegger’s notion of “gathering” and to his proposition “Questioning builds a way ... the way is one of thinking” as a means of linking the different chapters and providing the conceptual space within which to recognise the diversity of practices that count as creative arts research practices. Heidegger’s rich metaphorical philosophical language anchors an endeavour to narrate (and to use narration and narratology) to articulate the diverse ways of conducting creative arts-based research. Heidegger’s notion of “the way”—explicitly mentioned in “On The Way to Language” and developed in “the way of thinking”, “the way of being” and “the way of art”—metaphorises a “path”, a meditative thinking that is open, tolerant and respectful of “what is” and overcomes the dualistic thinking of subject/object, self/ world that characterises modern Cartesianism and the overly rational and calculative mode of thinking that characterises it. Heidegger himself explains that “the way” resonates with Eastern traditions that emphasise authentic ways of relating: The word ‘way’ probably is an ancient primary word that speaks to the reflective mind of man. The key word in Laotse’s poetic thinking is Tao, which ‘properly speaking’ means way (Heidegger, 1959, p. 198). The metaphor of the path in Heidegger’s thinking also gels with “clearing”, “gathering”, and “sheltering” and develops a poetic philosophical language that can enact “being-historical thinking”. Gray (1970) comments in his discussion of Heidegger’s (1954a) famous invocation of the essence-meaning of the “fieldpath” (Der Feldweg): The path itself spoke to him, as he writes, encouraged him to decipher the thoughts in the books he found too hard to comprehend. The field path taught him to conceive of thinking itself as a path, and of man’s brief career in time likewise as a path. . . . the field path spoke to him, not he to the field path (pp. 227–28). vii

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Heidegger (1999), as he says in Contributions to Philosophy: enacts a questioning along a pathway which is first traced out by the crossing to the other beginning, into which Western thinking is now entering. This pathway brings the crossing into the openness of history and establishes the crossing as perhaps a very long sojourn, in the enactment of which the other beginning of thinking always remains only an intimation, though already decisive (p. 3). The scholarly intuitions of the lead authors are perfect not only in term of choosing Heidegger’s metaphors to frame and theorise the collection but also because Heidegger’s “path of thinking” about art remains one of the most profound on the place of art in modernity, the triumph of the aesthetic conception of art, and the value of the aesthetic experience. The Heideggerian framing of the collection is the basis for a consideration of the politics of methodology and creative research in the age of knowledge capitalism. The individual essays that follow pick up on a number of themes: gathering as a way of framing the project (Grierson and Brearley); becoming a creative subject (Grierson); relations between Indigenous and Western knowledge systems (Brearley and Hamm); sustainable research design (Duxbury); the researcher’s involvement with her work (Barnacle); the relation of art and text (Jones); writing the screenplay (Dethridge); forms of design research (Downton); performing and performativity (Grierson, Barrow, Horn); deconstruction of creative arts research discourses (Grierson); learning from creative research (Grierson and Brearley). This is both a substantial and innovative set of essays that grows out of active engagement with arts practice, pedagogy and research throwing new light on a range of issues that bring artists, designers, and performers into conversation with one another. This collection is authentic, it speaks to the reader, it raises many questions and it theorises methodologies and practices of creative arts research in ways that the art student, the teacher, the practitioner, and the lecturer will find both philosophical, interesting and methodologically insightful. The collection is to be welcomed as breaking new ground and it will have a deserved readership beyond the confines of the academic art-based community. REFERENCES Gray, J. (1970). Splendor of the simple. Philosophy East and West, 20(3), 227–240. Heidegger, M. (1959). An introduction to metaphysics (R. Mannheim, Trans.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Heidegger, M. (1971). On the way to language. New York: Harper & Row. Heidegger, M. (1999). Contributions to philosophy (From Enowining) (P. Emad & K. Maly, Trans.). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Dr Robyn Barnacle is a Senior Research Fellow in the Graduate Research Office, RMIT University, Melbourne. She is a scholar of research and research education, focusing specifically on alternative approaches to research, research education policy and practice, and ontological accounts of learning. Her work is published in internationally recognised top tier journals and has also been included in numerous edited books on research and higher education. Robyn also teaches in the area of research education, both as supervisor and co-ordinator of professional development programmes. Her PhD was on the nature of thought, drawing on the phenomenological hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger. Dr Emma Barrow recently completed her PhD at RMIT University, Melbourne, and is a Research Assistant with the RMIT Design Research Institute. Emma is an artist who works with film, sound, land art, drawing and painting. She has worked collaboratively in Europe and with Aboriginal people in Australia on research projects focusing on issues of social histories, the environment, concepts of identity, and the historical context of racial marginalisation in contemporary society. Her work has led to research projects in Indonesia, Turkey, Jamaica, the South Pacific and USA. Her current practice and academic interest is in the transference of meaning through creative expression. Dr Laura Brearley is Associate Professor of Creative Research in the Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, and Research Director of the Indigenous Deep Listening Project at the Design Research Institute, RMIT University, Melbourne. Prior to her appointment at Monash she was with the School of Education, RMIT University, where she coordinated the postgraduate Koori Cohort. Active in the field of education for thirty years, Laura specialises in creative approaches to research and culturally inclusive teaching, learning and research practice. For many years she has worked closely with members of Indigenous communities in Australia and has developed strategies of working in the spaces between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge systems. Laura is a singer and song-writer, and incorporates her music into her teaching and research. Dr Lisa Dethridge teaches at the School of Creative Media, RMIT University, Melbourne, and has taught at the American Film Institute; the University of California, Los Angeles; New York University and the Australian Film, TV and Radio School. Lisa has a PhD in Media Ecology from New York University, has written for film, TV, print and the web in Australia and the USA. She has worked with studios and networks including Fox, Warner, Working Title, MTV, CBS, NBC, CNN, Granada, SBS, the Australian Film Commission and ABC Australia and written for magazines and journals including Vogue Australia. She is author of Writing Your Screenplay (Allen & Unwin, 2003).

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Dr Peter Downton is Professor of Design Research, School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University, Melbourne. His research interests include the nature of enquiry in and through designing; the production of knowing and knowledge through designing and making; the role of models in thinking; and the relations of people to their physical environment. He currently supervises PhD research into aspects of designing. He is author of Design Research (RMIT Press, 2003), Studies in Design Research: Ten epistemological pavilions (RMIT Press, 2004), and Mark Burry, Michael Ostwald, Peter Downton and Andrea Mina (Eds.) Homo Faber: Modelling architecture (Archadia Press, 2007). Dr Lesley Duxbury is Associate Professor and Programme Coordinator of Postgraduate Research at the School of Art, RMIT University, Melbourne. She has held solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Perth and Sydney, and has been included in more than fifty selected group exhibitions in Korea, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia, including National Gallery of Australia and National Gallery of Victoria. Her work is held in all major public collections in Australia. She has published papers in several refereed conference proceedings, the online journal PAN: Philosophy Activism Nature and a chapter in Thinking Through Practice: Art as Research in the Academy (Informit e-Library, RMIT Publishing, 2007). Dr Elizabeth Grierson is Professor of Art and Philosophy, Head of the School of Art, RMIT University, Melbourne, and Adjunct Professor AUT New Zealand, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts UK, World Councillor of International Society of Education through Art, executive of Art Education Australia, and Deputy Chair of Australia Council of University Art and Design Schools. She has a PhD in the philosophy of education, serves on several international editorial boards, and is executive editor of ACCESS: Critical Perspectives on Communication, Cultural & Policy Studies. Elizabeth speaks and publishes widely in philosophy of art and education, aesthetics, culture and globalisation. Publications include A Skilled Hand and Cultivated Mind (co-authored, RMIT Press, 2008), Thinking Through Practice (co-edited, RMIT Press, 2007), The Arts in Education: Critical perspectives from Aotearoa New Zealand (co-edited, Dunmore Press, 2003), and author of many book chapters, catalogues and journal articles. Dr Treahna Hamm is a Yorta Yorta woman from Murray River region, Victoria Australia and a member of the Stolen Generation. In 1996, she received the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Heritage Art Award; in 1999, the Missio International Art Award in Germany; and in 2007, she was one of thirty Indigenous artists in /Culture Warriors/ exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia. Her Possum Skin Cloak was worn by the Senior Elder of Canberra who performed the Welcome to Country at Australia’s National Apology ceremony, 13 February 2008. Treahna recently received her doctorate, which explored how artwork reveals individual narratives as well as the total community experience.

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Dr Kipps Horn is a Senior Lecturer and Program Director of the BA Music Industry at RMIT University, Melbourne. His doctoral research in the field of ethnomusicology investigated fifty years of rebetika music-making in Melbourne. His current research interests involve traditional music of the Greek diaspora and improvisation in the performing arts. Recent publications include contributions to Ties to the Homeland: Second generation transnationalism (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007), Aesthetics and Experience in Music Performance (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005), and Fifty Years of Rebetika Music Amongst the Greek Diaspora in Melbourne, Australia (Common Ground Publishers, Victoria, Australia, 2001). Dr Lyndal Jones is a Professor in the School of Media and Communications, RMIT University, Melbourne, and an artist who focuses on context, place and empowerment through long-term projects involving performance and video installation. She has received a ‘Keating’ Fellowship (1993–1996), represented Australia at the 2001 Venice Biennale and held a survey exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, in 2008. She completed her PhD in 2005. Her works have been in major exhibitions throughout Australia, Europe, Asia and USA. Her current project, The Avoca Project: Art, Place and Climate Change addresses climate change action.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book represents the input of many people. We wish to thank the community of scholars from the Schools of Art, Education, Creative Media, and Architecture and Design at RMIT University, who contributed to the devising of the Creative Research Strategies course from which this book grew. Also we acknowledge the postgraduate students whose creative projects gave us much insight into different ways of approaching creative research. We thank all the authors for their insightful texts and willingness to have their artworks reproduced, and gratefully thank Treahna Hamm for granting permission to reproduce the image of her painting, Life River Reflections Through Totems for the front cover. We thank the contributions of Clare Leporati for the manuscript layout and design, Virginia Grierson for compiling the Index, and Bronwyn Hughes for her support throughout the process of writing the book. Our thanks to Professor Michael Peters for including this book in his series and compiling the Foreword. No project of this scope can be done without institutional resources and thus we acknowledge the financial support of the Intervention through Art programme of the Design Research Institute at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University. We acknowledge the community of creative researchers whose work inspires and strengthens this emerging field. Finally, as lead authors, we thank our partners Nick and Terry for their enduring support.

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1. WAYS OF FRAMING Introducing Creative Arts Research

AIMS

It is proper to every gathering that the gatherers assemble to coordinate their efforts to the sheltering; only when they have gathered together with that end in view do they begin to gather. (Martin Heidegger, Logos, cited in Krell, 1999, p. ii) This book acts as a “gathering” of sorts. It assembles a range of narratives and case studies of creative research projects and methodologies from a creative community of educational practice in a university setting. The praxis of creative research is our starting point for thinking through the materiality of practice to locate sustainable methodologies through which such practice can be systematically investigated. The purpose of the book is to present a diversity of arts-based and arts-led research projects and methodologies; to critically reflect upon the projects; to examine methodologies appropriate to such research; and to incorporate diverse voices and narratives of researchers in this field. Successful outcomes of research require identifiable methodologies and practical methods, which will be discussed later in this chapter. The pedagogical aims of this collection are to position creativity and creative research as an authentic and robust condition of knowledge, and to reveal how researchers in this field navigate their material to scaffold their research projects. The book comes from a collective pedagogical event of devising a Creative Research Strategies course for creative arts researchers. This occurred at RMIT University, Melbourne, in 2006, when a group of academics came together on a common pedagogical project from the Schools of Art, Creative Media, Architecture and Design, and Education. The challenge was to activate the politics of difference across these four academic schools, each with its particular lineage of practice and historical attachments to specific pedagogical approaches. It was incumbent upon us to grapple with the diverse frameworks and allow difference its place and scope. One day we were sitting around the table navigating a strategy for conceptual cohesion in this space of difference, and Elizabeth Grierson brought Heidegger into the conversation with his, “Questioning builds a way. … The way is one of thinking” (Heidegger, 1999a, p. 311), suggesting “Ways of …” as the conceptual thread. For us all, the concept took flight.

E. Grierson and L. Brearley, Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices, 1–15. © 2009 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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A feature of our methodology in bringing together the different voices from four schools was to activate what Wenger (1998) calls communities of practice. This model of educational work registers the significance of practical knowledge through working together with “reciprocal rights and responsibilities between different knowledge partners; and institutional routines, regimes, and strategies” (Peters & Besley, 2006, p. 29). Through this methodology a discursive and interdisciplinary educational practice was made possible within a collaborative model of course development for creative arts research. In Heidegger’s terms a gathering process was at work in assembling multiple voices and building the knowledge practice as a way of sheltering. This same gathering process of working together in a creative community continues to be at work in devising this book and collating the different narratives of enquiring, constructing, performing, knowing and being. There are several ways of talking about what this book both is and is not. It is a collection of voices, but it is not a mimetic replication of the RMIT creative research course. As a book it has another disposition with a life of its own, and yet its pedagogical principles of multiple ways of knowing resemble those in the course. It is gathering different perspectives together as a way of dwelling in, and furthering, the knowledge field of creative arts-based and arts-led research, but it is neither prescribing a particular methodology nor is it closing down the potential of difference. It is bringing Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives and voices together in the one text, but is not limiting the cultural narratives to one voice or one way of being. With each narrative speaking from a different time, place and lineage, it is aiming to open methodological strategies and intent to enable diverse researchers to find place and purchase for their own creative arts projects. AUTHORS

The project’s gestation reflects its own form of narrative combining the work of the two lead authors and diverse educators in the creative research field, its methodology coming from communities of practice. As Head of Research in an art and design department of a New Zealand university in the late 1990s to mid 2000s, Elizabeth Grierson worked with arts educators to develop postgraduate research programmes and research methodology courses for postgraduate study. At the time there was a paucity of material to assist the creative researcher, particularly in the area of methodology, and the politics of academic scholarship was demanding something be done to fill the gap. This is where the idea of the book was born. Then with an appointment to the School of Art at RMIT University in Australia, in 2005, Grierson became involved with a new community of arts researchers in the College of Design and Social Context, and with Laura Brearley from the School of Education pursued the project with renewed impetus. Through this collaboration, with each researcher bringing different perspectives and strengths to the project, the proposal went through further iterations and, with a contract secured, the book grew into its present form.

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Grierson and Brearley were integral to the devising of the Creative Research Strategies course⎯they also contributed to the learning and teaching processes through lectures and seminars, working together and with other colleagues. Both draw their vision from the transformative pedagogical potential of the creative arts in their own academic scholarship and research. Elizabeth Grierson brings her experience as an art historian, artist and art educator to the narrative encounters of creative research and methodologies. With a PhD in the philosophy of education on the politics of knowledge in visual arts, her work brings theory and practice together as she weaves her narratives and practices drawing from continental philosophies and poststructuralist perspectives to enhance issues of creativity, identity, difference, site and subjectivity. With a PhD in management using a creative arts model of enquiry, Laura Brearley led the Indigenous creative arts researchers at the School of Education. The establishment and development of a cohort of Indigenous researchers grew directly out of her own work in arts-based research and multiple ways of knowing. Her interest in working at the epistemological edges of the academy was congruent with the oral tradition of storytelling and the significance of language, identity and country, which has characterised the knowledge systems of the Indigenous peoples of Australia for tens of thousands of years. Members of the Indigenous community heard about the research being undertaken, which made room for Indigenous ways of knowing, and the numbers within the cohort of Indigenous researchers grew. This group of students aptly became known as the Koori Cohort of Researchers. This collection includes other creative arts scholars who were involved in the Creative Research Strategies course at various stages of its life. Lisa Dethridge was one of the original team members during its planning and development, then taking an active coordinating and lecturing role. Robyn Barnacle, Peter Downton, Lesley Duxbury, Kipps Horn and Lyndal Jones have participated actively in the course; and doctorate candidates, Emma Barrow and Treahna Hamm contributed their first-hand doctorate experiences to lectures and seminars. Each of these scholars brings to the book their particular ways of witnessing the processes of creative research. In this book, with reference to Heidegger, we could say that the authors are working together as a community of practice as they “assemble to coordinate their efforts to the sheltering” (Heidegger in Krell, 1999, p. ii); and as Heidegger reminds us, as they come together in this way, there is a beginning to the gathering. AUDIENCES

In light of changing social and political conditions in the first decade of the twentyfirst century, this is a pertinent time to be undertaking this work. The traditionally defined categories of various art forms and practices are shifting as divisions between the arts and economic life are blurring. Fine art, photography, theatre, music, design, dance and film, for example, can no longer be thought of in the old disciplinary terms as global circulations of digital, visual, audio and kinaesthetic forms and practices cross borders of historical habitus to intervene in cultural and economic lives. 3

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Artists, designers, audiences, writers and readers coalesce as the boundaries between subject and object blur and education opens its practices to wider domains of knowledge. The book is written for those readers who are seeking to be part of those wider domains and those with an interest in creativity as a condition of our times. It is for those practitioner-researchers finding ways to articulate and critically reflect upon embedded practice as a mode of research and to establish a methodology appropriate for their project; and for those educators in the creative arts, design, architecture, media, communications, education, social sciences and humanities tasked with supportive roles. It is for those who are seeking a way to critically reflect upon creative practice as research; for those wanting to establish systematic methodologies that can sustain research questions and themes; and for those in management and governance in universities, communities, government and research funding bodies. Ultimately in demonstrating how artists and creative researchers think, imagine, act and design through practice it is finding a way to legitimate the creative arts as a knowledge field equal to, but different from, the sciences within those settings. The collection is aiming to activate the relations between writer and reader in the making of new knowledge, but is not intending to be didactic or over-declarative. It is opening the scope of creative research to further discussion and invention, but is not limiting its scope of readership. In the processes of gathering its call is to be accessible for an audience both within and beyond the academy as it carries an invitation to engage with readers and writers at close proximity and distance, those in times and places near at hand and as yet unknown. RESEARCH

The Politics of Methodology Confirming the traditional methodologies of research in the social sciences and scientific disciplines there is a global return to empirical research and cognitive, rationalist or instrumentalist approaches to knowledge formulation. This move is consistent with the globalised spread of economic rationalism and managerialism evident in institutions of higher learning with their input-output accountabilities attached to quantifiable measures of investment and funding. Yet it is clear that vested attention to pragmatic and instrumentalised approaches to research may not be suiting the best interests of those in the creative fields of making, performing, inventing. There is a growing need for the articulation of research methodologies appropriate to creative arts practice and diverse cultural knowledge systems. There are inherent challenges to be faced via the methodological approach and choice. In this book, themes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations, and issues of identity, difference, knowing and being trace through the text as the politics of creativity find form through actual projects and practices. Creative practice⎯the practical work of the practitioner-researcher⎯can be identified by its application and commitment. There are many modes of enquiry such as working through art or aesthetics, musical composition or performance, screen writing or filming, movement or dance, design or digital storytelling and combinations of these. Thus the actual 4

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projects within these pages go beyond empirical case studies; they act as creative narratives or carriers, and through them there is a naming and revealing of diverse methodologies. To name methodologies appropriate to creative arts projects is to establish a way of claiming alternatives to the more orthodox social sciences or scientific research paradigms. This value is often overlooked in the sheer struggle of grappling with the research questions and available information. Methodologies for creative arts research identify as arts-based and arts-led, or design-based and design-led practitioner research, embodied practice, narrative and heuristic enquiry, grounded and action research, performativity and phenomenology, ethnography and autoethnography, hermeneutics, constructivism and participatory enquiry, reflectivity and reflexivity, propositional practice, critical and discourse analysis, archaeology and genealogy, poststructuralism, deconstruction and Indigenous deep listening. Projects may work with one or combinations of these. Methodology should not be confused with method; a difference exists. The method is the functional aspect of the research including the organising of materials and media, files and data, timelines and timetables, the division of the chapters, mechanics of performance or exhibition practice, the techniques and arrangements of material: the doing rather than the asking what, why and how we do. On the other hand methodology is the “how” of research, the organising system through which researchers make use and sense of data and ideas, engage critically with theories and literature, reflect on material practices and actions, ask questions and seek answers to weave research in a cohesive and systematic way. Through the selection of methodology the researcher becomes a political voice. Methodology is never neutral neither is it word-packing to justify the artist-writers’ deepest thoughts. The chosen methodology declares as it discloses. Methodology is the systematic procedure through which to organise research and base its presentation. Like the skeleton on which to build the anatomy of the project, it reveals the epistemological and ontological DNA. The use of methodology is not an idea in itself, but a contextual framework, to which the project can adhere and through which it builds. The selection of methodology will dictate the kinds of questions to ask and therefore the kinds of answers and outcomes. The methodology contains the limits and holds the research strands in place as the researcher weaves the textures of new knowledge. The Politics of Creative Research The focus of research is broader than the strictures of any educational setting. Research is about innovative thinking and practice, about making and testing assumptions, performing, proposing, speculating, asking questions and paving the way for new questions or propositions to be made next time. It is about the illumination of new knowledge around an identifiable theme and question, engaging with the known in new ways, constructing, proposing and testing assumptions, with an implicit recognition of the process of analysing systematically to make new discoveries and add to the stock of knowledge in the creative economies of our 5

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times. Research discovers more about ourselves as human subjects, and the ecologies of earth, world and beyond are reevaluated and revealed, even transformed, in new light. Research involves many ways of knowing or epistemologies. For creative artists the intuitive may work with the empirical, embodied and experiential through material practices and creative innovations. In practices of visual or fine arts, architecture or design, performance or music, dance or film, creative writing, digital media, screen writing or sound, the notion of testing assumptions or presenting and testing hypotheses may be quite foreign. Creative arts-based and arts-led projects involve imagination, invention, speculation, innovation, risk-taking. New knowledge is made possible through the materiality of practice itself. Such practices can be of the most challenging order intellectually and technologically, the most revealing and moving emotionally, the most embodied physically, or the most disquieting politically. Often they expose the cutting edge of imaginative ideas and new forms of thought as they reveal uncertainties in the human condition or subvert known systems of language, text and social practices. The interest in courses and degree programmes in the creative arts is growing globally. In Australia, where the PhD is accepted as the terminal degree in creative arts practice, academies are aware of the need to drive recognition of this model of research (see Duxbury, Grierson & Waite, 2007, 2008; Barrett & Bolt, 2007; Australia Learning and Teaching Council, 2009). The practice-based doctorate is also the accepted model “in a number of other countries such as Britain, Finland, New Zealand and Japan” (http://creativeartsphd.com). There are new investments of attention to creativity and the power of creative knowledge to build stronger economies and establish regional and urban identities. That we inhabit an increasingly applied world of interdisciplinary and practical knowledge is no longer in doubt. As the relations between different forms of knowledge define our present terrain we are obligated to broaden our understanding of knowledge as a relational site to inspire something more than a primary economic agenda. The creative arts, particularly in frontier technologies of new media and digital formations, are being linked to growth and development for local and global economies. As well as the extraordinary expansion of media landscapes there is exponential growth of cities calling for design as a core of urban thinking, planning and practice. It would seem that the creative arts are well positioned to enhance innovation in such economies. However the terms “creativity” and “innovation” have become so over-used in the globalisation of knowledge transfer that they cease to have much meaning in the communities of practice that claim creativity as their defining métier. The American writer, Richard Florida positions creativity in the economic development of cities and regions as a kind of revitalisation model of social and cultural life. Florida opens Cities and the Creative Class with this premise, “Cities are cauldrons of creativity” (2005, p. 1), reinforcing the sort of hype that underscores creative economies. This may be so, but the creativity with which this project engages is the very creativity that is too easily bypassed in the firing of these economic cauldrons. Thus we are concerned to return the discourse to the creative practitioner-researchers themselves. We trust that the ways of thinking and 6

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creating within these pages will serve to identify a sustainable creative spirit as a “will to power”, to use Frederic Nietzsche’s term for the creative drive and its eternal return, and to find methodologies appropriate for the calling forth of affective, imaginative and perceptual measures of creative knowledge and action. New Challenges While globalised technologies and commercial interests may open the field of the creative arts to new possibilities they also bring new challenges of the “how to” of research in the selection of research questions, and the application of appropriate methodologies and approaches. The fine arts, music, dance, performance, screen or design practitioner needs to consider a different sort of methodology from that of the more empirical paradigms usually associated with social sciences or educational research. The creative practitioners engage technologies, materials, aesthetics and ideas, and the integration of practical, theoretical and philosophical contexts through creative art processes for exhibition, performance or display, as well as constructing an accompanying written exegesis, website, CD or DVD. In a sense there is a doubling of thinking and action. They need both the creative and technological know-how for the creative research production as well as the linguistic and theoretical acumen to write critically engaged and well-considered text. The emphasis is on the making of art image, object, artefact, film, performance et al, coupled with the interpretations, strategies and paradigms by which critical reflection, examination and analysis can take place. One of the challenges of the book is to illuminate the voices of Indigenous researchers and present methodologies appropriate to Indigenous practices and sensibilities. The incorporation of Indigenous ways of knowing into research raises vital questions about issues of representation, voice, ethics, the construction of knowledge and the nature of research. The active role that members of the Koori Cohort are playing within the academy illuminates many of the epistemological, methodological and ontological issues that have been central to the Creative Research Strategies course. Their contribution to the course as guest lecturers and active participants in the seminars has been a living example of Denzin and Lincoln’s statement that “it is time to dismantle, deconstruct, and decolonize Western epistemologies from within” (Denzin, Lincoln & Smith, 2008, p. ix). Through multi-vocal narratives this book incorporates Indigenous ways of knowing as a way of enabling the politics of difference in the voices of the researchers themselves. Throughout the political and social processes of colonisation, Indigenous voices, traditions and practices have been silenced, destroyed or omitted too often from authorised history and development. Today Indigenous voices are nudging aside imperialist preoccupations and dominant ideologies in the values and traditions of knowledge to enable new and revised perspectives. In this context we witness the invigoration of methodologies such as oral story telling and testimonies, revisioning and remembering past histories as well as envisioning possible futures, performing and affirming embodied cultural practices, and reclaiming traditional languages and social formations. In her work, Decolonizing Methodologies, Linda 7

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Tuhiwai Smith speaks of the need for “negotiating and transforming institutional practices” (1999, p. 140) to ensure that Indigenous research design is deemed as legitimate and sustainable. Smith argues that the term “research” is inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism. She writes, “The word itself, ‘research’, is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary” (1999, p. 1). These words are the opening quotation of the Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies, which Smith co-edits with Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (2008). In their preface, Denzin and Lincoln argue that research does not have to be a dirty word if we think through the implications of connecting Indigenous epistemologies with theories of decolonisation, post-colonialism and the emancipatory discourses of critical theory and pedagogy (Denzin, Lincoln & Smith, 2008, p. ix). The political nature of the theory and practice of research and the inherent issues of representation, epistemology and self-determination are key concerns within critical Indigenous enquiry (Swadener & Mutua, 2008; Mayer, 2008; Grande, 2008: Bishop, 2008). Russell Bishop articulates a discourse of proactive theory and practice known as Kaupapa Maori which resists “the hegemony of the dominant discourse” (2008, p. 439), characteristic of the imperialist research condemned by Linda Tuhiwai Smith. Within a Kaupapa Maori discourse, Bishop contends that power is shared, culture counts, learning is interactive and dialogic, connectedness is fundamental to relations and a common vision exists (Bishop, 2008, p. 445). The significance of respect and reciprocity in relationships within Indigenous research is articulated in Bishop’s research (Bishop, 2005; 2008) and also in the recent work of Joe Kincheloe and Shirley Steinberg who argue, “As indigenous peoples tell their stories and rethink their histories, it is the duty of critical multilogical historians to listen carefully and respectfully” (Kincheloe & Steinberg, 2008, p. 147). They advocate for respectful listening as well as for complex ways of seeing, contending that such approaches lead to understanding and transformative practice. They claim that critical exploration of the ways in which knowledge is produced and legitimised and the construction of just and inclusive contexts for academic research are features of transformative practice (Kincheloe & Steinberg, 2008, p. 148). There is a great deal of richness in learning from Indigenous ways of knowing to inform research practice. Kincheloe and Steinberg make the important point, however, that Western researchers need to be vigilant to avoid a new wave of exploitative appropriation of Indigenous wisdom. To avoid this, they need to “adhere to a strict set of ethics devoted to self-determination of indigenous peoples; an awareness of the complex, ever evolving ways that colonialism oppresses them; the inter-cultural nature of all research and analysis of indigenous knowledge; and the dedication to use indigenous knowledge in ways that lead to political, epistemological, and ontological changes that support the expressed goals of the indigene” (Kincheloe & Steinberg, 2008, p.14).

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FRAMING THE PROJECT

Ways of … We are framing this project as “a way” with each chapter opening up different ways of thinking, questioning, and engaging strategically with the overall theme of creative arts research methodologies and practices. In The Question Concerning Technology (1999a), Heidegger addresses “the way” when he writes: Questioning builds a way. We would be advised, therefore, above all to pay heed to the way, and not to fix our attention on isolated sentences and topics. The way is one of thinking. All ways of thinking, more or less perceptibly, lead through language in a manner that is extraordinary (Heidegger, 1999a, p. 311). There are different forms of language, voices and textures as each researcher gives account of a research project, a contextual concern, a creative practice, a scholarly and academic journey. Heidegger saw thinking as a way of revealing, when not closed by heightened, teleological, means-end, instrumentalist discourses. Of thinking, at the start of Building Dwelling Thinking he writes, “As soon as we have the thing before our eyes, and in our hearts an ear for the word, thinking prospers” (Heidegger, 1999b, p. 343). In this essay Heidegger draws a relationship between building and dwelling as a way of “being”. Throughout this collection we find there are similar relationships between the building of projects and the “being” of particular researchers. Thus we could say the researchers in this collection are prospering in their disclosures of creative knowledge as they find a way of dwelling as creative subjects. The chapters unfold through Ways of Knowing and Being; Ways of Looking and Listening; Ways of Analysing; Ways of Being-With; Ways of Proposing; Ways of Acting and Reflecting; Ways of Constructing; Ways of Performing; Ways of Deconstructing, concluding with Ways of Learning from Creative Arts Research that reiterates and forecasts, reminding us of the importance of opening the field of qualitative methodologies to wider narratives of enquiry. Starting the book with this chapter, Ways of Framing: Introducing Creative Arts Research provides scope for outlining the project’s gestation and pedagogical position. Elizabeth Grierson and Laura Brearley introduce the aims, authors and audiences, define methodologies and position the creative research field. Chapter Two, Ways of Knowing and Being poses a series of questions to focus on the (un)knowable. Sub-titled Navigating the Conditions of Knowledge and Becoming a Creative Subject, the chapter brings knowing and being together in the frames of experience. Elizabeth Grierson considers the constitution of the “creative subject” through the process of research. She engages a genealogical methodology and is careful to “pay heed to the way of language” (Heidegger, 1999c, p. 412), enabling multiple voices to speak through her text. As she traverses the landscape of research, acknowledging the embodied nature of the journey, she calls on Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and the poetic texts of Hélène Cixous to activate 9

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language in the discourses of creativity, the self or subject, and experience. Here the author is also the artist keeping the physicality of the research process alive through her photographic images of walking rough mountain terrain, experiencing “the abyss and its shores”. This chapter shows how methodology matters as the text crafts the methodological journey. A narrative of the author’s doctorate project traces through the text as the reader travels with her from Brighton to Mykinos and follows the scaffolding of her project, with the discourses of experience finding their place and purpose. The voice engages a questioning way to put research to work navigating the conditions of knowledge to become a creative subject. These navigations do not presume fixed conditions, nor do they proclaim a self-contained presence. Ultimately, through telling her narratives of experience, Grierson emphasises that the research subject is being constituted through the process of research in “the knowledge one is forming, the language one is speaking”. In Chapter Three, Ways of Looking and Listening: Stories from the Spaces Between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Laura Brearley and Treahna Hamm use multiple voices to describe their experiences of incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing into research practice, and the inherent richness and challenges of such practice. They describe the underpinning theory of the ways in which they use the Indigenous concept of “deep listening” as a research methodology and as a way of creating community. Deep listening draws on all of the senses and can be used as a research methodology in its own right or can be integrated with other research methodologies such as narrative enquiry, action research, auto ethnography and arts-based research. When applied as a research methodology, it means taking the time to build relationships. The core of deep listening is respect and reciprocity. In this chapter Treahna Hamm uses narratives, paintings, poetry and possum skin cloak making to illuminate the ways in which she incorporated deep listening into her doctoral research. The chapter features work created by Treahna for the Biganga Exhibition held in 2006 at the Melbourne Museum during the Commonwealth Games. Through the creative projects they reveal the workings of the eight moments in research of Denzin and Lincoln (2005), who map the moves from the privileging of positivist and scientific research paradigms to culturally situated approaches of the multi-voiced and uncertain present. The focus of this chapter is on emancipatory models of research that seek to make a difference and the appropriate methodologies through which such research can be undertaken. Print media artist, Lesley Duxbury explores her own PhD project in Chapter Four, Ways of Analysing: From Reverie to Reality, in which she asks some fundamental questions regarding sustainable research design. She explores the distinction between art as research and professional art practice and suggests that there are differences between the ways in which traditional research and art practice as research are undertaken and understood. She examines the ways in which art practice as research is imagined, created and encountered and the process of reverie and imagination in the development of creative work. The roles of self and consciousness within that process are discussed from a phenomenological perspective. She suggests that engaging in reverie is a significant process in following the impulse generated by the not yet known. 10

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Openness to the flow of ideas and associations while remaining alert and receptive is a characteristic of the reflective practice of artist as researcher. A creative arts researcher combines engagement with materials and sustained engagement with ideas leading to the construction of new realities and the creation of new experiences. Lesley Duxbury describes her methodological processes of preparing to undertake a series of artworks on the theme of weather and how it may be interpreted. Her preliminary research includes investigation of primary resource material, reading, art making and walking. She argues that new knowledge is gained and meaning made through the encounter between the artwork and the viewer. The nature of this relationship invites the viewer into a state of reverie and consciousness. In a phenomenological sense, the processes of interpretation and construction of the artwork are ongoing. In Chapter Five, Ways of Being-With: Finding a Way to be with the Work, Robyn Barnacle works through a Heideggerian approach on the role of things and the status of the researcher’s involvement in the work. Ultimately this chapter is seeking an alternative model for understanding the relation between research as idea and research as material work. The chapter identifies the contradictions of undertaking and describing creative practice through conventional empirical models of knowledge generation. It proposes a model for undertaking creative research from a hermeneutic-phenomenological tradition in which being in the world comes before knowing the world and in which knowledge production is framed as a process of materialisation. Robyn Barnacle explores what differentiates a research project in the creative arts from other disciplines and challenges the definitive account of knowledge generation proposed by scientism or positivism. She describes an approach to creative arts research, which combines the Heideggerian concept of “being-with” and John Law’s account of material semiotics. In the proposed model, epistemology is in the service of ontology rather than the other way around. It contests the Cartesian definitive account of certainty and proposes instead a dialogue between researcher and researched, focusing on how something works and what it does. Creative arts research within such a model transcends the dualisms of doing and thinking, mind and body and becomes a confluence between artist, artefact and its particular social, historical and spatial context. Barnacle argues that an understanding of research on its own terms can be generated through a process of “letting happen” in which the creative researcher is always already open to the possibilities of being. Lyndal Jones brings a different perspective to the creative arts research field in Chapter Six with her Ways of Proposing: Art as Proposition. In a poetic and inventive way she gives an account of her research in From the Darwin Translations playing always with the relations of art and text as she weaves her narrative. The work is transgressive in that it provides a counter argument to the notion of the proposition, taking it beyond “the binary oppositions of form and content, mind and body and the illustration of intention”. For this researcher the propositional is a methodological way of presenting new ideas as invitations rather than absolutes. Jones traces her artistic practice over many years as she discloses her primary interest in inviting artists and viewers “to have the courage to become increasingly sensitive to the 11

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effects of artworks on our thoughts and feelings as individuals and as social beings”. She takes the reader with her on a journey in time and place to 1983 and to China, acknowledging always “the embrace of the mystery of outcome”. She sustains this way of writing through a sequence of actions and creative research projects through the decades of the 1990s and 2000s, including encounters with Charles Darwin, that allow the reader to be part of her writing and research process. In this Jones is, as she says, “evoking a world where the viewer is implicated, involved; where that viewer also experiences themselves moving both literally and imaginatively, where there is an actual sensual experience to be had”. She is also succeeding “to lighten intention”, as she puts it, and to bring artist or author and reader or viewer together in the “accumulation of moments” of her narrative encounters. In Chapter Seven, Ways of Acting and Reflecting: Researching and Writing the Screenplay, Lisa Dethridge considers what it means to reflect on and engage reflexively with screenwriting as a creative research pursuit. The combination of rational analysis and imaginative reflection is a challenge for the researcher whose project is to write a screenplay and produce an analytical exegesis to situate the creative work in the professional culture of screenwriting. She calls this “the dual research process” and notes that the methodologies she discusses are relevant to the writing of film scripts, storytelling, animation, computer games and performance. Showing how the screenwriter works between the demands of academic research and industry contexts Dethridge presents case studies from the Spaghetti Western, the Romantic Comedy, War Movies and the Road Movie to stress the need to mobilise the imagination or vision of the writers in their creation of worlds while holding to the dual focus of screenwriting structure and technique, and also relating to the demands of production and consumption. The research methodologies of acting and reflexively engaging reveal a demanding process of navigating the disparate needs and requirements of the industry as well as captivating audiences. Positioning the screenplay as “a kind of blueprint for action”, Lisa Dethridge offers some practical advice for moving between the imaginative screenwriting and exacting exegesis writing processes. There is a demand for continual relations between the two coupled with an awareness of the need for reflexive understanding of the mutual relationships in which the researcher is embedded. In Chapter Eight, Ways of Constructing: Epistemic, Temporal and Productive Aspects of Design Research, Peter Downton presents the voice of a design practitioner-researcher who works through issues of research for design; research about designing as an investigative activity; and research conducted through the processes of designing. This chapter presents an account of Downton’s practice as a maker of design objects and his practice as a researcher. He describes and distinguishes between the concepts of research for design, research about design and research through design. He examines ideas about the embodiment and transmission of design knowledge through his practice of creating design objects known as “pavilions”, describing in depth the construction and epistemological implications of two pavilions, the “Music Bridge” and “The Pilgrim Temple of 12

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Canonic Desires”. He argues that the process of making and designing these two models reveals the kinds of knowledge employed by the designer-maker. Within the chapter, the exploration of epistemology embedded and revealed within his pavilions is underpinned by a theoretical examination of design knowledge drawing on the theory and practice of architects, design practitioners and the philosopher Karl Popper to show how designerly knowledge is produced and where it resides. In Chapter Nine, three authors combine, Elizabeth Grierson, Emma Barrow and Kipps Horn, to examine performance and performative methodologies in music, dance and filmic projects. Ways of Performing: Perspectives on Performance and Performativity presents an amalgam of voices from researchers and supervisors in music, performance, dance and film. The chapter begins by discussing the proximal relations between performance and performativity, drawing together their modes of enactment including their potential for place-making, embodiment, participation and communication. The role of performativity is disclosed through the case studies of projects presented by researchers, Richard Frankland and Andy Baylor whose musical work is known to Australian audiences, and Emma Barrow whose art practice is focusing on film work with an Indigenous dancer; with Elizabeth Grierson and Kipps Horn in the role of supervisors. Through her research Emma Barrow is working collaboratively with Indigenous artists of Larrakia heritage in the Darwin region in Australia’s Northern Territory. Her work is co-produced with her Indigenous partners and it is at the intersections of varied perspectives that she finds the acts of cultural translation occurring. Levels of reciprocity with others and reflective engagements with the creative and scholarly potentials are characterising each of the performative projects—evident also in the supervisor-candidate relationships in this chapter. Ways of working with Indigenous projects by Indigenous and non-Indigenous performers, artists and scholars are informing these projects. Ultimately the ways of relating, perceiving, exchanging, participating and understanding become apparent through the exigencies of practice where the potential for transformation lies. The authors note, “In this transformative state, sharing and integrating knowledge and experience creates the potential for performers and audience to bring about social, political and cultural recognition and change.” In Chapter Ten, Ways of Deconstructing: Risks, Imagination and Reflexivity Elizabeth Grierson “constructs a discourse that examines discourses”. With the politics of knowledge in mind, she investigates methodologies and theories of poststructuralism and deconstruction, relating them to creative arts research and revealing the inherent risks in such procedures. Informed by her enquiries into the politics of knowledge in art and education, Grierson “raises questions about institutional thought, organisational limits, and ways of archiving and analysing the discursive formations of which Michel Foucault speaks”. She is seeking to demystify poststructuralism and deconstruction within the applied field of creative research by activating counter-readings in theory and practice. The potential for a Derridean play of difference, or différance, reverberates through the text with its images from Grierson’s own creative archive of painting and photography.

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Ultimately she is engaging in a radical critique of the present as she calls for an activation of the politics of difference in creative research. The book concludes with Ways of Learning from Creative Research: A Postscript in which Laura Brearley and Elizabeth Grierson review the challenges and defining moments in the preceding texts, and let the voices of their experiences speak through a final poetic and critical text. They reiterate the project’s commitment to linking reflexivity and creative action as a process of developing a critical consciousness, and make some predictions for the future of creative arts-led and arts-based research as a way of concluding. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices is a timely outcome of a dynamic educational project as our educational futures are being shaped by the creative knowledge economies of which we are a part, and it is here that we see our responsibility. Today creative arts researchers are performing the functions of creative worker for local and global economies, transmitting technological, material, cultural, social and historical information through aesthetic means—a realm of affective knowledge operating on many levels of creation and reception in a fast changing world of global connectivity and interdisciplinary merging and exchange. As artists, designers, and other arts practitioners produce artefacts, images, music, sound and performative text, so they interrogate and enliven their practices with active engagement in the social, the cultural, and the political. Theirs is a specific knowledge domain with aesthetic, material, cultural, social and political dimensions. The creative economies depend upon creative thinkers. Thus as educators in the creative arts field we need to bring to the fore the narratives of those creative researchers in order to legitimise their practices within and beyond orthodox methodologies. As a gathering of researchers the text weaves these dimensions. Each author bears witness to their practical and theoretical placements within the field of qualitative research as they identify and name methodologies for creative artsbased knowledge. Ultimately the project opens the notion of creative methodologies to a wider arena by incorporating epistemological, ontological, geneaological and aesthetic concerns to meet the needs of cultural difference in our globalised educational futures. REFERENCES Australia Learning and Teaching Council (2009). CreativeArtsPhD. Future-proofing the creative arts in higher education: a scoping project for quality in creative arts research training. Australia, online http://www.creativeartsphd.com Barrett, E. & Bolt, B. (Eds.). (2007). Practice as research: Approaches to creative arts enquiry. London: I.B Tauris. Bishop, R. (2008). Te Kotahitanga: Kaupapa Maori in mainstream classrooms. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln, & L. Tuhiwai Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 439–459). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

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WAYS OF FRAMING Cixous, H. (2000). Preface. In S. Sellers (Ed.), The Hélène Cixous reader (pp. xv–xxiii). London and New York: Routledge. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.). (2005). The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publiations Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln Y. S. (2008). Preface. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln, & L. Tuhiwai Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. ix–xv). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Duxbury, L., Grierson, E. M., Waite, D. (Eds.). (2007). Thinking through practice: Art as research in the academy. Melbourne: RMIT Publishing, Informit e-Library http://search.informit.com.au Duxbury, L., Grierson, E. M., Waite, D. (Eds.). (2008). Thinking through practice: Art as research in the academy. Melbourne: The School of Art, RMIT University (hard copy). Florida, R. (2005). Cities and the creative class. London: Routledge. Grande, S. (2008). Red pedagogy: The un-methodology. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln, & L. Tuhiwai Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 233–255). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Heidegger, M. (1999a). The question concerning technology. In D. F. Krell (Ed.), Basic writings: Martin Heidegger (pp. 307–341). London: Routledge. Heidegger, M. (1999b). Building dwelling thinking. In D. F. Krell (Ed.), Basic writings: Martin Heidegger (pp. 343–363). London: Routledge. Heidegger, M. (1999c). The way to language. In D. F. Krell (Ed.), Basic writings: Martin Heidegger (pp. 393–426). London: Routledge. Kincheloe, J. L., & Steinberg, S. R. (2008). Indigenous knowledges in education: Complexities, dangers and profound benefits. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln, & L. Tuhiwai Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 135–157). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Krell, M. (Ed.). (1999). Basic writings: Martin Heidegger. London: Routledge. Meyer, M. A. (2008). Indigenous and authentic: Hawaiian epistemology and the triangulation of meaning. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln, & L. Tuhiwai Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 217–233). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Peters, M. A., & Besley, A. C. (2006). Building knowledge cultures: Education and development in the age of knowledge capitalism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Smith, L. T. (2001). Decolonising methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Dunedin, NZ: Zed Books, Room 400 & University of Otago Press. Swadener, B. B., & Mutua, K. (2008). Decolonizing performances: Deconstructing the global postcolonial. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln & L. Tuhiwai Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 31–45). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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2. WAYS OF KNOWING AND BEING Navigating the Conditions of Knowledge and Becoming a Creative Subject

MAPPING THE QUESTIONS

What are the modes of existence of this discourse? Where does it come from, how is it circulated; who controls it? (Foucault, 1977a, p. 138). The aim in this chapter is to consider creativity and creative research as a condition of knowing and being, and to see how researchers may navigate the epistemological, ontological and genealogical implications of their project. Fundamental to this project are questions, such as: How am I constituted as a creative subject through the process of research? Where lie the limits of my knowing? How do I hold to my methodology as I construct the project? Does methodology matter? And, where am I in the text? These are the kinds of questions researchers ask as they work through practice to explore, experiment, experience, construct, discover and analyse the discourses of their subject. New questions continually arise through the exigencies of practice as creative arts researchers engage with the forms their discoveries are taking in the contexts, lineages and genealogies of their practice. Implicit in the processes or events of knowing are inevitable reflections on processes of self-making through creative actions and activities as one is mediated by, and opens up to one’s research process to the point that one “becomes” a subject. Through this discussion I seek a genealogical methodology to discover more about the question of research and the question of being or becoming a creative subject. Multiple voices are speaking through the text calling forth other dimensions of my/our/your/their subjectivity. The play of pronouns through the text reveals the multi-layered speaking voices of subject, object, author, writer, reader, artist, viewer, in singular and plural, as we (us two or more, you, me, they, he, she, it, one and I) gather “various modes of saying” and witness “a hearing that embraces all apprehending” (Heidegger, 1999, pp. 409, 411). Sometimes the author speaks: but what is she saying and who is she? For what purpose is “the saying itself”? … and then we hear from Heidegger, “Before we think any further in this direction, let us once again pay heed to the way to language” (1999, p. 412). As we pay heed to the way, and “follow the trail of language” (p. 412), we find there are traces of the writer’s narrative voice articulating a space, my space, of enunciation and telling tales of a doctorate research project. It was mine; and travelling with me through E. Grierson and L. Brearley, Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices, 17–31. © 2009 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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time and text was a concern with processes of legitimation in art and self as subjects, and a scrutiny of the politics of difference in the exigencies of creative practice. DISCOURSES OF CREATIVITY

Creativity comes from the Latin word creare: to grow, to bring (something) into existence, to make new, giving rise to the concept of creativity as a state or process of growth, flux, change, transformation, making something original, or rearranging certain conditions to revisit, renew or reinvent (Grierson, 2007, p. 1). If one is to undertake creative work there is an implication of new appearances as a fundamental characteristic of the process. This might mean inflecting the old with innovative characteristics or expressions, discovering new relationships, or working through practical action to invent, intervene, imagine or perform an idea, artefact, image, dance, sound or performance. One might ask if this also applies to other disciplines such as the sciences or engineering? After all, the practical pursuits of making and doing are implicit in many fields. However there is a particular kind of making and doing that is at stake in the realm of creative arts as a formalised research practice in the academic setting. It has the components of aesthetics and the potential always of making-new as a defining characteristic; taking intuitive leaps as it engages with its lineages of practice. Thus discourses of creativity are, by implication, generative. The concept of “discourse” follows Michel Foucault’s definition of discourses “as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault, 1994, p. 49). To understand creativity as a form of communication and knowledge transfer in the present times one must consider the knowledge cultures of globalisation, and the way knowledge is produced and exchanged (see Peters & Besley, 2006). New political and social attention to creativity characterises the early twenty-first century with its global knowledge economies and neoliberal frameworks, frontier technologies of information and communication, fast movement of capital and knowledge exchange, and the constitution of the individual as a market subject. Cultural and creative industries take their place as an identifiable category of economic investment and market focus. Within these global conditions the concept of creativity remains tied securely to neoliberal discourses of the political, social and economic subject whereby the word “creative” is used in variable contexts to mean innovative, entrepreneurial, digital, interactive, networked, and often loosely interchanged with globalised knowledge itself (Grierson, 2007, p. 1). Within these discourses where do the creative arts lie? Creative researchers work with imagination and insight, engaging knowledge of the histories of their field, as well as skills and technologies of practice as primary research tools. As they imagine, construct, read, write or perform, they work creatively with materials, technologies or bodies (abstract or physical), situating creative moments within the genealogies of practice, and revealing something about the world and themselves in the process. As they construct discourses of creativity they are constructed by those same discourses. In a sense, and following Foucault, their bodies carry the 18

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imprints of their actions: “The body – and everything that touches it: diet, climate and soil … manifests the stigmata of past experience and also gives rise to desires, failings, and errors …” (Foucault, 1984a, p. 83). It would seem researchers are embodied in the discourses of knowing and being as they stand before their research subject.

Figure 1. Across the Chasm. Photo. H. Grierson. 1980 METHODOLOGY MATTERS

The body is the inscribed surface of events (traced by language and dissolved by ideas), the locus of a dissociated self (adopting the illusion of a substantial unity), and a volume in perpetual disintegration. Genealogy, as an analysis of descent, is thus situated within the articulation of the body and history. Its task is to expose a body totally imprinted by history and the process of history’s destruction of the body (Foucault, 1984a, p. 83). 19

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Research is a vast terrain. When standing on the ground of my research, starting the trek across the detritus of unrelated data, how do I stay on track? There are many luring side paths. Without a clear idea of the methodology we can stumble or lose the way, fail to recognise signals and signposts, or worse perish during the journey and never reach the destination. The methodology is like the compass when in the mountains; it indicates orientation. As I stand and look across the chasm it is the compass that can give the bearings on presence as well as absence of foothold. The challenge is to find the methodology appropriate to the particulars of a project, to question constantly, and to recognise overt or covert appeal to a taken for granted worldview and problematise obvious answers. The idea of worldview is akin to Foucault’s notion of “discourse”. The dictionary definition of discourse privileges written or spoken communication, but in the Archaeology of Knowledge (1994) Foucault takes the idea of discourse to a wider terrain when he posits, “discourse is a complex differentiated practice, governed by analysable rules and transformations (Foucault, 1994, p. 211). He also states, “discourses are composed of signs; but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things. It is this more that renders them irreducible to the language (langue) and to speech. It is this ‘more’ that we must reveal and describe” (1994, p. 49). Thus the process of creative arts research seeks the “more” in the discourses of its occurrence, opening the horizons of disclosure to reveal new potentialities in the lines of enquiry. How do we seek systematically, apply our bodies to this historical task? There is a politic to the selection of methodology. Nothing can be assumed or seen as neutral or appealing to generalised factors of common sense when research material is on the agenda for analysis. As the researcher applies his or her craft, sifts the data, and sorts out what to include and exclude, the difference between method and methodology becomes apparent. The former, method, is the way the work of research is undertaken step by step in the way we engage tools, time and technology; and the latter, methodology, is the systematic way we apply the methods through a sustained and well-articulated process to engage, examine, interrogate and keep the focus. It is the methodology that drives the research and foregrounds the questions in shaping the process. Method is functional action; methodology is a set of principles through which to sustain reflection and analysis allowing us to address the research questions in a systematic way. Always there is a questioning of the what, how and why of the project in relation to the nub of the problem or theme under investigation; this I call the coat hook of the project, the place to hang the properties of ideas, to gather them together in order to test and question. Martin Heidegger wrote, “Questioning builds a way. We would be advised, therefore, above all to pay heed to the way, and not to fix our attention on isolated sentences and topics. The way is a way of thinking” (Heidegger, 1977, p. 3). Working through a questioning way, we can move the research into new thought and new modes of practice, and enliven discursive possibilities as a way of revealing rather than representing the knowledge field. The researcher’s task is to find the way.

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There are many ways. The range is vast in the creative arts, from narrative, constructivist and participatory enquiry, to action and grounded research, ethnography, archaeology or genealogy, deconstruction, discourse analysis, Indigenous deep listening, performativity, hermeneutics, phenomenology or heuristic processes; and then there are the positivist and empirical methodologies more suited to the sciences. Contributing to the determination of the methodology are a number of considerations including the project aims, the particular subject under examination, the epistemological frameworks of the field, the questions framing the project, and the politics of the researcher, including the researcher’s ability or willingness to expose his or her own lineage of beliefs and habits to the test of analysis, to engage what Foucault calls, a “permanent critique of ourselves” (1984b, p. 43). TITLES AND TEXTS MATTER

One cannot speak the same type of language or use the same literary form on every occasion or for every scene. … Amongst my languages there is one I prefer, though I shall not say which (Cixous, 2000a, p. xvi). In framing my PhD project, The politics of knowledge: A poststructuralist approach to visual arts education in tertiary sites (Grierson, 2000), I selected carefully each word for the title to ensure it declared the methodology and provided a ready coat hook upon which to gather the subsequent body of knowledge. Throughout the text the language was of a type or literary form that performed its questioning in a way appropriate to the occasion. In aiming to construct a critical history of the present terrain of the politics of knowledge in visual arts in higher education, I worked with a Nietzschean sensibility and specific theoretical frameworks from Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Derrida to find the methodological procedures appropriate to the task, keeping in mind Heidegger’s call to questioning as a way of thinking. The construction of my research project was substantially text-based with the inclusion of images of artworks under discussion. Each chapter was a textual engagement with the archives of my subject—discourses of art and institutional practices. There was a relational process of theory and practice at work to create texts that had an artefactual presence. Texts: they are a form of language, remembering and inscribing. Hélène Cixous speaks of language as “a memory in progress” (2000a, p. xxi); and then says, “So writing then? Yes, it is, from this chorus of songs of the whole of time, making a new song stream forth. Sometimes this is called a style. … Affair of the ear: it is enough to accord with language for it to deliver its secrets” (Cixous, 2000a, p. xxi). Language as a living, breathing artefactual poetic of the writer is at stake here. The relations of theory and practice are at stake here. This is an area for discussion and analysis in my doctorate thesis where I address the interrelationships of theory and practice as a generative and performative potential. I make this point because many in the creative arts, in a devotion to privilege material practice over theoretical or textual enquiry, presume that text-based work is somehow less creative that arts practice. However the processes of crafting language and performing text is as 21

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material as the process of crafting clay or paint or metal, or working with musical notation or choreographed movement; the challenges to one’s language can be as potent as the challenges to one’s selection of appropriate media in art, or rhythms and movements in dance or music. Text performs one’s subjectivity as it reveals one’s political orientation. I am advocating here a palpable recognition and affirmation of the politics of difference in knowledge practices, rather than substantiating one mode of knowledge through the double negation of the other. Through engaging poststructuralist theories and methodologies to interrogate questions of judgement, and aware of the politics of language, I set out to disclose the dominant principles at work in the discursive formations of visual arts in higher education, historically and in the present. The project engaged with institutional premises and assumptions in historical and contemporary discourses of art and education, asking questions of the defining structures and practices that register difference as a cultural and political need within those discourses. SCAFFOLDS MATTER

These apparently unconnected texts are in fact related; they share the same hearth; the source of their motives, and of their desires, is the same. All of them speak of the search for the limit, the regret of the limit … This limit has several ‘sites’ and names … (Cixous, 2000b, p. 28). The design of the project matters; it needs structure to keep the data in place, to search for and test the limits, address the questions, build the argument. How to scaffold effectively was a question I asked myself in 1998 during my PhD journey, which had brought me thus far from The University of Auckland in Aotearoa New Zealand to the British south coast where Regency architecture marks the urban spaces and pebbles dress the beach. At the University of Brighton, Faculty of Art and Architecture, my small office in the School of Historical and Critical Studies, known as SHACS, was providing unaccustomed quiet space to pursue my research on the politics of knowledge in art. Across the road stood the opulent Royal Pavilion, designed by John Nash, with its oriental architecture and unabashed face of epicurean delights awaiting the British aristocracy during the reign of King George IV, only to receive later disapproval from Queen Victoria—and this was in spite of the Brighton water’s reputation as a cure-all, for there the custom of seaside bathing had first found fashion. British art, architectural and social history were presenting endless interest and a viable source of distraction, as I sought to construct the anatomy of my project. Never far away my escape route to the faculty library and the ten-minute bus ride to the bookshop at the University of Sussex. The cold winter winds so often blew in from the English Channel bleaching the broken West Pier and across the old red rooftops, at the back of SHACS, I listened to the seagulls wheeling and crying in the way seagulls do, and thought of home. Alone, isolated, it would be fair to say I was in academic crisis as I sought to unearth processes of legitimation of knowledge in the economies of art and institutional practice. This was not an easy task as the textual architecture and scaffolds felt insecure. Mykinos and the Greek Islands suggested an alternative 22

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from the chill of England in December, but there too I found the wind was whistling in from the sea. The homely doors and blue shutters along the grey and white paved lanes were closed for winter. I retreated with my friend into the one smoke-filled taverna down by the port, sat amongst Greek men playing backgammon and listened to the donkeys, laden with produce for the locals, in the cold outside. What I was experiencing was a strange dislocation of place but I was never far, I felt, from the anchorage of my subject. In 1996 when I began my doctorate journey, I was committed to opening discourses and exposing layers of discursive practice in art by sifting and sorting the knowledge archives, to lay them bare⎯“their regulatory meanings prized from their shell” (Grierson, 2000, p. 134). The research was grounded in my experiences as an artist and art educator. My interest in working with methodologies and theories of poststructuralist French and German writers took me specifically to Foucault’s genealogy as a methodology, to reveal the normalisations and marginalisations that determine the subject art, as well as the self or human subject, in the field of art and art education. Patience was required to sift and sort the data. Of genealogy Foucault writes, “Genealogy is grey meticulous, and patiently documentary. It operates on a field of entangled and confused parchments, on documents that have been scratched over and copied many times” (1984a, p. 76). Around me the thesis was taking shape. I had devised the scaffold of chapters as Sites, from Foucault’s demarcation of knowledge as a spatial field. This became my defining structure. In a paper in 2005 I explained, “When lost here is a palpably physical metaphor to return to, of walking across a landscape and planting a pole into the ground to mark the carefully selected archaeological site, then to start digging into the ground for evidence of power relations in the discourses and their layers of discursive practices” (Grierson, 2005, p. 30). It was not a search for origins, nor a “search for descent in an uninterrupted continuity” (Foucault, 1984a, p. 83), but a revealing or disclosing of data in the layers of my subject as I traversed and mined the terrain. Planting poles began with the Introduction, identifying the discourses of interest and summarising the text-to-come; then Narrative Sites, giving room to declare my space of enunciation and tell my experiential narrative as artist and art educator upon which to build the research; Theoretical Sites, positioning poststructuralist theories and methodologies through Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and JeanFrançois Lyotard; Institutional Sites, conceptualising sites of tertiary education as cultural and political texts, and constructing a genealogy of institutional practices of visual arts; Historical Sites, tracing defining characteristics that comprise the orders of discourse in my subject; Curriculum Sites, locating canonical conditions of classicism and modernity, which legitimated and authorised the disciplines of art and art history, and raising questions of the legitimation of difference in pedagogic practices; Sites of Culture and Identity, in which the politics of art, identity and difference come under scrutiny, with particular attention to discourses of bicultural pedagogic practices in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the neoliberal subject of market forces; Global Sites, bringing the focus to local and global politics, and considering influences of globalisation on art and cultural practices, historically 23

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and in the present; and finally a short Postscript, in which I confirm the Nietzschean sense of affirmation and validation of the struggle, acknowledging the importance of rigorous scrutiny of the politics of difference in the discourses of art and art education to inform a critical history of the present.

Figure 2. Walking the Terrain. Photo. Elizabeth Grierson. 2006

Through a questioning way it was becoming clear that normalising conditions of discourse demand our attention in the creative arts, and that micro or macro processes of governmentality generate a state of normalisation, constituting a marginalisation at one and the same time. Foucault speaks of these processes as “dividing practices” (Foucault, 2001, p. 326). I was aware now that the way to unearth these politics in the discourses under examination was to consider the politics of difference and the way difference works through the discourses of art, institutional practices and the human subject. Foucault explains that he does not look underneath for some hidden truth of a universalised subject; what he does is “try to grasp discourse in its manifest existence, as a practice that obeys certain rules—of formation, existence, 24

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co-existence—and systems of functioning. It is this practice, in its consistency and almost in its materiality, that I describe” (Foucault, 1989, p. 46). Thus the interrogations of discourses of art as a subject, as well as the self or subject being constituted through art practices, was to lead me to the manifest existence of a wider politic of knowledge. DISCOURSES OF THE SELF OR SUBJECT

I wonder: when writing, am I transgressing? … Am I transgressing by writing what I am writing? Or by not writing what I am not writing? Or both? What law(s) am I transgressing? (Cixous, 2000c, p. 97). It is easy to become lost in the philosophical, theoretical, empirical, material or creative investigations; too many imponderables. Throughout the process of research a question keeps appearing: “Where am I in the text?” (Grierson, 2005, p. 29). But how does this “I” appear, we may ask? And Hélène Cixous may answer, “We are not ‘pure’ I. A gesture dictated by humility, and which recalls us to humility” (2000a, p. xviii). We are more than one. Throughout the process of constructing a critical history of the present conditions of my subject I was aware that the question of subjectivity is at play during the process of research. While constituting the subject of my project, I too was being constituted as a research subject—and I was not singular. Poststructuralist methodologies put the unified subject into question. As Mark Poster (1994) points out: The question of the subject or the self has been a central issue of contention for intellectual movements in the twentieth century. Psychoanalysis, surrealism, existentialism, structuralism, and most recently poststructuralism have sought to differentiate themselves from prevailing positions by putting into question their formulations of the self. The point of disagreement has to some extent been remarkably consistent: the position under attack is said to present a doctrine of the self that is too centred, too unified, too rationalist, in short too Cartesian (Poster, 1994, p. 53). With the methodology of archaeology and genealogy, from Foucault, as my guiding compass I was interrogating the conditions of subjectivity in art, and in educational practices of art’s pedagogy, by identifying specific and historically contingent practices, dismantling the Cartesian self, deconstructing metanarratives of art and its historical practices of (de)legitimation, and the bolstering of meaning making relations in the aesthetic practices of the art object, as poststructuralist questioning pervaded the text. Foucault was my guiding theorist through this process as I crafted an anatomy of legitimating systems in art and subjectivity, constructing a discourse that could problematise discourses, opening them for scrutiny, and putting assumptions to the test. Whereas Foucault’s early concerns were with the power/knowledge equation, his later project was to examine, “The different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects” (Foucault, 2001, pp. 326–327). This provided the theoretical and conceptual ways for a questioning

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of the artist as a self-proclaimed site of intuitive and original knowledge, and considering the artist as a function of discourse. Working with the theories and methodologies of poststructuralism there is renewed attention on the subject as a process of becoming. Foucault is concerned with how a human being transforms him or herself into a subject (Foucault, 2001, p. 326). This moves us away from the Western Enlightenment narrative of the progress of an a priori human subject, already established in its essence through the cause of reason, and coursing through history with the pre-set goal of transcendence of the spirit to a utopian endpoint. Foucault’s way moves us towards an understanding of the process of self-constitution through the discursive practices of the constituting discourses. In considering these questions I turn again to Michel Foucault, who poses, “At any historical moment, what kinds of conditions come into play in determining that a particular subject is the legitimate executor of a certain kind of knowledge?” (Foucault, in Faubion, 1998, p. xiv); and it is clear that, following Foucault, it is the conditions constituting the discourses that I must unearth and describe, as I interrogate the present conditions of how the subject art, and how the self as a creative subject, are produced through the knowledge practices of our cultural institutions. Foucault’s work shows that the human subject undertakes a recognisable process of self-constitution. It is a form of self-regulation taking place through the discursive processes of governmentality (the governance of self and others) or regulation of society, and is different from the assumed and essentialist subject of liberal discourses of humanist thought with emphasis on autonomy and identity springing from an essential human nature. In Technologies of the Self (1988), Foucault writes of the management of individuals, “This contact between the technologies of domination of others and those of the self I call governmentality” (1988, p. 19). Foucault confessed his interest “in the interaction between oneself and others and in the technologies of individual domination, the history of how an individual acts upon himself, in the technology of the self (1988, p. 19); and elsewhere he speaks of “a pattern of conduct … (which) commits an individual … to a certain mode of being, a mode of being characteristic of the ethical subject” (Foucault, 1997, p. xxxviii). Thus, speaking of the way human beings turn themselves into subjects, Foucault’s “technologies of domination” (1988, p. 19) act as external regulators of the human subject as well as internal regulators on the self as a subject. If we apply this process to artists in the field of art, there is an argument to say that, as artists and arts education practitioners authorise their creative processes and outputs, they are implicated in this process of self-regulation. Thus they are regulated by the governance of creativity, just as they self-regulate as creative subjects. DISCOURSES OF EXPERIENCE

I go, we go. On the way we keep a log-book, the book of the abyss and its shores. Everyone does. My books are thus like life and history, heterogeneous chapters in a single vast book whose ending I will never know. The difference 26

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indicated in the genres of the books I write reproduces the eventful aspect of a life in our century. A woman’s life into the bargain (Cixous, 2000a, p. xvi). The process of my PhD research was based in my experiences as an artist, art educator and art historian, yet within these experiences, I was problematising any assumptions of a pre-given self as I was becoming aware of a self-governing process. The question of the “I” of myself as an agent of experience is open to question. Authorship can be at stake for creative arts researchers who are working through narrative diaries and material practices, and also for those researchers who are dealing with analysis of the creative arts domain and working with performative texts. Where then does authorship lie? Foucault suggests that the author-function works as a “founder of discursivity”, positing that such authors “are unique in that they are not just the authors of their own works. They have produced something else: the possibilities and the rules of formation of other texts” (Foucault in Schrift, 1994, p. 186). There is a move away from the declarations of essentialism, with truth as the voice of our essential human nature (see Nietzsche, 1956). The move is towards a model of human thought that takes present conditions as the starting point and traces the archives of the past from the ground of the present terrain to examine the layers of discursive processes that make up the power relations of a particular knowledge at a given time. In this process the discursive narratives of experience play a part in the constitution of knowledge and self as a knowing subject. Subjects of the arts and education (human subjects and disciplinary subjects of knowledge) are constituted through what is said and what is done in the name of knowledge of these fields, thus the process of research is as ontological as it is epistemological. Part of the ontological, or genealogical in Foucauldian terms, is the way the subject, the researcher, experiences their domains of knowledge, and the way they and their knowledge project discursively relate and come into appearance. The word experience derives from Latin, expiriri (to test, to try, to prove) and Greek, peirô, pera and peraô (crossing, passage, beyond). There is a sense of trial and movement here; something active and participatory. The value of experience has long been recognised as crucial for the creative arts practitioner. However when the conditions of creative practice are situated in the research environment then the truth claims that are made in the name of experience are exposed to question. In his work on systems of punishment, Foucault shows how the classification of the individual exercises a “mechanics of power” over individuals to make them behave a certain way until they become “docile bodies” and thus useful to society (1977b, p. 138). Thus their experience is mediated by the systems of governance in which they are situated. This same process of regulatory power is exercised in educational research and in the creative arts, in spite of researchers’ and artists’ claims for freedom and independence from regulating devices. There is an official practice in research within which the researcher is already implicated.

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Figure 3. Experiencing the Abyss and its Shores. Photo. Elizabeth Grierson. 2006

In telling the narratives of experience the connection to methodology becomes paramount in determining how to tell the narratives. If the methodology is phenomenological then the narratives could be told through the embodied processes of experience in the moments when knowledge of something in the world becomes present to consciousness. If it is genealogical then the narratives would be constructed through sifting and sorting the data and debris in the archaeological digs in the bodies of knowledge of the life-world, with its many voices and layers and positions in the conditions of their existence. If it is performative then the researcher will thread traces of text and experience as an enfolding or interweaving construction. In writing this chapter I am reminded of Foucault’s thesis that “the local and the particular ... are always inserting their differences” (McHoul & Grace, 1995, p. 2) as I situate my narrative voice, tracing experiences in the discursive practices of my exploration. There was a time as an artist and art educator when I became 28

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politicised—or was it simply becoming aware of something, one knows not what? Perhaps it was as a young student at university when the gendering of knowledge and social attitudes became apparent to those of us who questioned. These narratives and those narratives do not attempt to advance any historical causes but perhaps they mark a particular space of enunciation within the discourses under construction in this text. CONCLUDING WITH DISCURSIVE PRACTICES

(T)here is no knowledge without a particular discursive practice; and any discursive practice may be defined by the knowledge that it forms (Foucault, 1994, p. 183). In this chapter my aim has been to navigate the conditions of knowledge in research and to explore ways of knowing as one becomes a creative subject within and through the knowledge one is forming, the language one is speaking. There is always the search for legitimation in journeys of experience, as they mitigate and dictate, situate and constitute, perform and enunciate their function in discourses and concrete practices. Through this process the researcher self-regulates while negotiating irregularities in the archives of self and the knowledge field. So it is not enough to say that the subject is constituted in a symbolic system. It is not just in the play of the symbolic that the subject is constituted. It is constituted in real practices—historically analysable practices. There is a technology of the constitution of the self which cuts across symbolic systems while using them (Foucault, 1997, p. 277, in Olssen, 2006, p. 153). Thus the formation of the subject is occurring through the processes of social and cultural practices, material practices, textual practices, embodied, discursive, aural and kinaesthetic practices that exist in sites of difference. This subjective position, this person, this self, is not pre-given before the research takes place; it is in the practices of the research itself that the creative subject is being constituted. “For Foucault, the self is constituted discursively and institutionally … (through) technologies of power and practices of self”, explains Olssen (2006, p. 32). The implications of both of these mechanisms have been running through my texts in this chapter as I have sought to construct a critical history of present conditions in our ways of knowing and being through processes of research. The technologies of power are at work in the institutional practices of putting research to work; and the practices of self become apparent through “the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects” (Foucault, 1985, p. 208). The narrative voice tracing through the text echoes the questions and ways of thinking in the archives of one doctorate project. The language carries its memories and does not seek its mastery. Tracing through the narrative there is the implicit problematisation of norms, the dismantling of assumptions and legitimation of the radicality of a questioning way, as art, societal and institutional practices are put to the test. Thereby the researcher opens the horizons of disclosure to bring a rigorous and poetic scrutiny to the present by navigating the conditions of knowledge and 29

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becoming a creative subject. And in apprehending the self, myself, I hear Cixous (2000a, p. xxii) speaking on the hither side of being: My kingdom is the instant, and of course I am not its queen, only its citizen. I always work on the present passing … REFERENCES Cixous, H. (2000a). Preface. In S. Sellers (Ed.), The Hélène Cixous reader (pp. xv–xxiii). London and New York: Routledge. Cixous, H. (2000b). First names of no one. In S. Sellers (Ed.), The Hélène Cixous reader (pp. 25–33). London and New York: Routledge. Cixous, H. (2000c). The art of innocence. In S. Sellers (Ed.), The Hélène Cixous reader (pp. 93–104). London and New York: Routledge. Faubion, J. D. (Ed.). (1998). Michel Foucault: Aesthetics, method, and epistemology (R. Hurley et al., Trans.). Essential works of Foucault, 1954–1984 (Vol. 2). New York: The New Press. Foucault, M. (1963/1994). The archaeology of knowledge. (A. Sheridan Smith, Trans.). London: Tavistock Publications. Foucault, M. (1977a). What is an author? In D. F. Bouchard (Ed.), Michel Foucault: Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected essays and interviews (pp. 113–138). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Foucault, M. (1977b). Discipline and punish (A. Sheridan, Trans). London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1984a). Nietzsche, genealogy, history. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault reader (pp. 76–100). London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1984b). What is enlightenment? In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault reader (pp. 32–50). London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1985). The subject and power. In H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the self. In L. H. Martin, H. Gutman, & P. Hutton (Eds.), Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault (pp. 18–49). Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press. Foucault, M. (1989). Foucault live: Interviews, 1966–84 (J. Johnston, Trans.). In S. Lotringer (Ed.), Semiotext(e). New York: Colombia University. Foucault, M. (1997). The ethics of the concern for self as a practice of freedom. (R. Hurley & others, Trans.). In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Michel Foucault: Ethics, subjectivity and truth, the essential works of Michel Foucault 1954–1984 (Vol. 1, pp. 281–301). London: The Penguin Press. Foucault, M. (2001). The subject and power. In J. Faubion (Ed.), Power: The essential works 3. London: Penguin. Grierson, E. M. (2000). The politics of knowledge: A poststructuralist approach to visual arts education in tertiary sites. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy thesis, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. Grierson, E. M. (2005). An art educator’s narrative: Where am I in the text? In J. Brandon (Ed.), Te Whakatere: Navigating through the arts in the pacific (pp. 29–37). Proceedings of the ANZAAE Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Art Educators Conference, Palmerston North, NZ. April 18–21, 2004. Palmerston North: Massey University College of Education. Grierson, E. M. (2007). Creativity and the return of a political will: Art, language and the creative subject. In Creativity, enterprise, policy–new directions in education. Proceedings of the 36th Annual Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA) Conference, Te Papa Museum of NZ, Dec. 5–9, 2006. Retrieved Oct. 25, 2008, from http://www.pesa.org.au/html/04papers.htm Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology and other essays (W. Lovitt, Trans.). New York: Harper & Row.

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WAYS OF KNOWING AND BEING Heidegger, M. (1999). The way to language. In D. F. Krell (Ed.), Basic writings: Martin Heidegger (pp. 393–426). London: Routledge. McHoul, A., & Grace, W. (1995). A Foucault primer: Discourse, power and the subject. London: UCL Press. Nietzsche, F. (1887/1956). The genealogy of morals. Garden City: Anchor Books/Doubleday, Doran and Company Ltd. Olssen, M. (2006). Michel Foucault: Materialism and education. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Peters, M. A., & Besley, A. C. (2006). Building knowledge cultures: Education and development in the age of knowledge capitalism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Poster, M. A. (1994). Critical theory and poststructuralism: In search of a context. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. Schrift, A. D. (1994). Reconfiguring the subject: Foucault’s analytics of power. In R. Miguel-Alfonso & S. Caporale-Bizzini (Eds.), Reconstructing Foucault: Essays in the wake of the 80s (pp. 185–199). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Rodopi.

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3. WAYS OF LOOKING AND LISTENING Stories from the Spaces Between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Knowledge Systems

INTRODUCTION

Laura and Treahna I am troubled because our institutions are conservative and they confine our voices and our imaginations more than we know. Unwittingly we become our own gatekeepers, representatives of an institution, and not devotees to the sacred world of the imagination. To me the willingness to change and be changed, to remain always open is a defining principle of intellectual life (hooks, 2003, pp. 169, 192). If “rage is not enough” as Ginnie Oleson, the feminist researcher contends (Oleson, 2005, p. 236), how do we perform justice? Where do we begin?’ (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005d, p. 1124). How might we make a difference against the backdrop of the dispossession and marginalisation of Indigenous people? What would it look like to create spaces in the academy for research incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing without appropriating or colonising? How might we engage in different ways of seeing and listening to each other? In this chapter we tell some stories from our experiences of looking and listening in creative research practice. Our stories give our perspectives of how it feels to work within the academy in the spaces that lie between Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of knowing. We also provide a theoretical underpinning of our work together. The chapter reveals some of the journey we are taking with a group of ground-breaking Indigenous researchers in the university system. Our project has become known as the Koori Cohort of Researchers. Koori is the generic name for Aboriginal people from the South East of Australia. The research students in the programme are artists, musicians and educators, well-respected in their community. The Koori Cohort currently has seventeen Indigenous students who are doing their Masters and PhD programmes. More are waiting to join and a Senior Elders Project is also being developed. The Koori Cohort of Researchers has attracted some willing staff keen to work at the boundaries of methodological and epistemological knowledge. They share an interest in challenging the system to stretch its edges and to reframe, rethink and E. Grierson and L. Brearley, Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices, 33–54. © 2009 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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include. Together the Indigenous and non-Indigenous members of the Koori Cohort and Friends of the Cohort have been questioning at the deepest levels what a university is and what it might become. As part of their research degrees, students are co-creating artistic and musical improvisations across different art forms. These experiences are building crosscultural relationships and generating creative forms that transcend discipline boundaries. In our work as academics and as artists, we are exploring the connections between multiple ways of knowing and Indigenous wisdom in an academic context. What has emerged from this on-going dialogue between Indigenous and nonIndigenous scholars and artists using this approach to research is a recognition of our shared interests and concerns, as well as our differences. Respectful listening, community-building and reciprocity lie at the heart of this work. We work in a complex and paradoxical terrain. The project has its own rhythms and we work within a different concept of time. We are taking time when there is none to take. We know we are not aligned with the dominant economic discourse, yet we are building communities in competitive environments. We are looking for ways in which universities and communities of Indigenous people can collaborate to encourage creative arts research which makes a difference in people’s lives. We work with multiple ways of knowing and polyphonic text. Our work together is underpinned by our shared understanding of the importance of relationship, our connection to each other and to the earth. We would like to begin by introducing ourselves. Laura I am a singer, a songwriter and an academic. I use music and art in my research. I am part of the academy but on its edges. Much of my time has been spent challenging its gate-keeping conventions. I did my own PhD in the conservative environment of a Faculty of Business using creative research. Finding my own voice as a creative arts researcher has involved learning as much about the world of research as about myself. I work in the cracks between systems. I teach Creative Research Methods at the university and edit a journal on creative approaches to research. I spend most of my time working with Indigenous research students. The students do not have time to waste. They go to funerals all the time. The average life expectancy of an Indigenous man in Australia is fifty-three. There is a sense of urgency in their research. One of the first generation of students to join the Koori Cohort of Researchers was a highly respected artist called Treahna Hamm. She has just finished her PhD using her art to explore storytelling from individual and community perspectives. Treahna has taught me a great deal about deep and respectful listening. Treahna is my student, my teacher, my colleague and friend.

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Treahna I’m a Yorta Yorta woman from the Murray River region in South Eastern Australia. Life has many meanings to me. I am a member of the Stolen Generation but I was fortunate to be reconnected to my homelands at a young age. I’m an Aboriginal woman; I’ve got German heritage in my adopted family, English heritage in my adopted family and a Celtic name. There are many dimensions to me as a person. In my research journey, I have had some profound and affirming experiences, which have led me to trust my intuition and act on my inner knowing. I have learned to trust the internal and external guidance that I receive and to respect the signs and symbols that sometimes go beyond rational understanding. I have sat around kitchen tables and out bush on endless occasions listening and talking to Elders to find out more about my family and community. There are times when cultural knowledge is given subtly which can involve a whole story of places and people. Everything that I produce is like little pieces of my soul from different experiences that I’ve had. I love creating art and connecting myself, my art and my family together. That’s the basis of who I am. My journey in life has been like putting up these pieces of my soul on the wall of a gallery. Art is always a risk. This is part of my journey and something I have learned to endure. Through my art, my role is to be a conduit of healing for Indigenous people to regain strength, to follow an artistic journey in their lives and to portray their messages. Most important is to build bridges of understanding and acceptance between cultures. The best aspect of creating is that it connects people together in so many ways. THE PLACE WHERE METHODOLOGIES MEET

Laura Knowledge is produced and acquired through collaborative processes. No individual, group, community, or nation can justifiably claim ownership of all knowledge. What constitutes valid knowledge, and how such knowledge should be produced and shared internally and globally, is still a subject of intense debate. It is important that there is no academic closure on this subject (Sefa Dei Hall & Rosenberg, 2000, p. 3). I think it was a mixture of naivety and courage that first led me to work with Indigenous research students. I was asked to take on an Indigenous doctoral student, Mark Rose, who was almost out of time for completion of his doctoral programme. The demands on him from his community were enormous and his commitment to his people had taken precedence over his study. He had worked with nine other supervisors before he came to me. Through my arts-based PhD in the Business Faculty, I had earned a reputation of being on the edge methodologically. It was probably desperation that led them to matching us up in a supervisory relationship.

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Mark had extraordinary stories to tell. He was the son of the member of the Stolen Generation. His father, Geoff Rose, had been stolen from the Framlingham Mission in south-west Victoria when he was six years old. Up until two years before his death, Geoff Rose never told his family that he was Aboriginal. Uncle Banjo Clarke was one of the Senior Elders who helped with Mark’s reunification with his people forty years later. He told Mark that he would carry to his grave the sound of the screams that Geoff Rose made as he was being abducted. Mark and I found a way of working together that felt like a partnership. We started our work together by documenting the story of his discovery of who he was. We used a process of oral storytelling, recording and transcribing to begin the journey. This became the first chapter of Mark’s PhD, which he called “The Crucible of Consciousness”. Here are some excerpts from Mark’s story: On the day of his abduction, Geoff was playing boats in a stream that ran close to the hut in which he lived. The Elders reminisce how as children, they all had their designated hiding places, which they practised and rehearsed, should a trail of dust from a motor vehicle herald the dreaded welfare police. Geoff was too preoccupied with the game he was playing, and didn’t make it to his hiding spot in time. Auntie Gracie accompanied Geoff and the welfare operatives into Warrnambool in an attempt to plead his case, but accepting that there was no hope, she asked if she could purchase sweets for the next stage of his trip to Melbourne. When she emerged from the shop there was yet another cloud of dust, for she had been duped. The welfare used the distraction for a clean getaway and drove off. The dust and the sweets in her hands were her last fleeting contact with Geoff, no farewell and no closure for either of them. Geoff spent the next eleven years in the Menzies Boys Home… What was stolen by that one solitary act was more than the physical person. Also abducted on that cold windy day at Framlingham was his emotional, cultural and spiritual selves. Geoff Rose was rendered a virtual fringe dweller in both worlds. His abduction made him neither black or white, just abandoned, confused, and isolated… I also had something abducted from me. My father’s choice to conceal his Aboriginal heritage stole from me my own authentic identity for almost forty years (Rose, 2003, p. 9). Mark’s research was strong and important and immediately relevant to the needs of the community. We both bent and stretched and trust between us grew. He introduced me to Indigenous standpoint theories and I introduced him to multiple forms of representation and to narrative enquiry. There was a lot of overlap between the two systems of thought. Both forms of knowledge were inclusive and made room for multiple voices.

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Figure 1. Indigenous Narrative Methodology. Rose. 2003

There was a big celebration on the night of Mark’s graduation. A Senior Elder said she could feel the Ancestors very close. They were dancing. Word got around of the successful completion. The Koori grapevine is an amazing thing. Other Indigenous students wanted to join the research programme. They had heard there was a way of doing research in which there was room for Indigenous voices and multiple ways of knowing. Treahna Hamm was one of the first students to join us in the Koori Cohort. The numbers have grown from seven, to eleven, to fourteen, to seventeen. They are looking after each other. Several Senior Elders are waiting to join who want to use research degrees as a framework for documenting and disseminating stories. They want to work collaboratively with groups of Indigenous teenagers and young adults to pass on the stories. It is the community way. We have found that a key factor in the success of the programme is telling stories and listening deeply. The students have taught us about a concept appearing in many Aboriginal languages, which describes a process of deep and respectful listening to build community. In the Ngungikurungkurr language of the Daly River it is called Dadirri (Ungunmerr, 1999). In the Yorta Yorta language of the Murray River, it is Gulpa Ngawal. 37

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We use this concept as a research methodology and as a way of being together. Deep and respectful listening has been central to the process of building trust. It is not an easy journey. The pressures on the students are enormous. There are many reasons not to trust. Even so, it is central to the work we are doing together. It is my belief that the rebuilding of trust lies at the core of recovery. DEEPENING UNDERSTANDING THROUGH ART-MAKING

Treahna Some of us will need to find a space ‘in between’ where both the knowledge of our elders and the knowledge of our colleagues or professors may enter, live and be voiced (Holmes, 2000, p. 50). Doing my PhD has not been easy. There has been a massive void in Western education about paying respect to Indigenous cultures. In my research I am bringing my Ancestors and Elders and future generations with me. I have felt the pressure of balancing two lives. We need to do our research as a group because it reflects who we are as a community. We need the group to keep each other strong. Everyone, no matter who they are, has something to say and to bring to us. When we hear the profound words of others, it like an anchor in our lives. We can relate. A few words can tell us many things. What I experienced in my research is that nothing is clean cut and nothing has a definite answer. You have to experience certain things and ask questions in order to gain knowledge. I have still got a lot of learning to do. What I think is just a drop in the ocean, and unless you’re with other community members and Elders, you can’t really make sense of your own world. There’s a strengthening of the bond we have when we get together. There’s a sharing of stories. Our stories and our art promote a growth of understanding and a continuation of our culture. They promote dialogue. They help people to cope and to heal. They create bonds between individuals and communities through the linking of identity, land, people and places. Cultural integrity and respect lie within the heartland of Indigenous learning. Art comes back to who I am as a person, intuitively, and the things I feel that are important for me to do and say and create. There’s a drive with finding out and with creating. It is an extension of who I am. It leads me down this path to find out more about myself. Going deep within myself is a point of pure creation, where there are no words. There is no sound, no smell, no touch, just the personal experience. My people are there Guiding me Waiting there to fill me With special gifts Of knowledge Of creating 38

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Of giving and receiving Of love It’s total in wonderment and life’s blood Running through my veins Experiences of my family Like the river of the past, the present and the future

Figure 2. Billabongs. Acrylic. Treahna Hamm. 2007

Incorporated into my work is a continuing line of stories and experiences which encompass past, present and future. The Possum Skin Cloaks I make have been developed through cultural teachings. Previously I have worked with two artists to recreate the two existing possum skin cloaks which exist in Victoria. The method of recreating the cloaks began by viewing the Yorta Yorta cloak in the museum, collected from Maidens Punt in the 1850s. At that time, only five cloaks were known to exist in the world, as people were buried in them. The possum skin pelts incorporated into my work are imported from New Zealand, as possums are a protected species in Australia. The contemporary medium and the adaption of techniques continues the line. Biganga was a major exhibition at the Melbourne Museum in 2006 during the Commonwealth Games. The Biganga Exhibition at the Melbourne Museum included old photos of family relations who were wearing the cloaks from around the 1850s. As Indigenous artists we are part of a long line of history. In the first possum skin cloak I made, I told the story of how the great river, the Murray River, Dhungala, was created by Baiami when he sent his old woman down from the high country with her yam-stick and her dogs, to journey across the flat and waterless plain. The Murray River is central to our identity and our culture. I’ve heard the Elders talk about how healthy the Murray River was in the 1950s and 1960s. They say you could look into the water and see the crayfish, mussels and other fish too. Now the river runs a lot quicker than it should because of the irrigation. It’s practically been reduced to a large uncared for ditch in places and abused for mainstream economic purposes. With every year the river and its banks are desecrated. So too are my people’s stories relating to the river. They disappear as the River shrinks. The Elders say: If the river is unhealthy then our people are unhealthy. I can understand that.

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Figure 3. Creation of the Murray River. Process of Making the Possum Skin Cloak. Photo Collage. Treahna Hamm. 2006

Stories and experiences have fed into my knowledge about myself, my community and my homelands. Making art helps me to go deeper inside myself and make sense of things. I am glad that I am able to live my life as an Indigenous woman. I have the responsibility of sharing my stories and experiences through my art. I have experienced my culture in its purest and rawest forms. I know my Ancestors are around me. It’s a support system. Some artists talk about the process of creation as emerging from a dream-like or trance-like state. I think that this creative state is important to nurture, to continue to develop and grow. To me, the finished work is not as important as the actual creating and learning. Once a work is finished my interest dissipates. My focus and attention shifts to the next work. Over the years I have developed a philosophy that by drawing people to my artwork through aesthetic means, I hope that a subtle understanding of the cultural story can begin to be appreciated. If the viewer has a link to the artwork through their life experience, even if it is minimal, then I think the work has served its purpose and the aesthetic value is transcended between lives and cultures. These special gifts between people remain unsaid most of the time. Art contains a 40

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universal language transcending boundaries, borders, policies, academia and government departments. No one can tell me how to do my art and portray my life visually. There is no right or wrong way to do art. It allows the freedom for personal insight of self-discovery and meaning. My role through my art is to be a conduit within this process of healing for Indigenous people to regain a certain strength, to follow an artistic journey in their lives and to portray their messages in their artwork. Most important is to build bridges between cultures through understanding and acceptance of both ways through deep and respectful listening. We live our culture every day. It is so important to us. We can’t step away from it. In my research are the sounds of the river and the songs of the birds who are my Ancestors. If you listen deeply you will be able to hear them. AN EDUCATION FOR US ALL

Laura One way forward in this debate is to think about research as a cultural practice that is generated by and through the intersection with other cultural practices, and that knowledge can therefore be understood as ‘situated’. Situated knowledge is no longer decontextulaised and removed from the social and cultural relations in which it is embedded (Wolmark & Gates-Stuart, 2002, p. 2). The space between Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of knowing is not all sweetness and light. It is tortuous terrain at times and the learning can be painful. The year after Mark Rose’s successful completion, a group of Indigenous students undertook a Research Methods weekend intensive alongside eighty other nonIndigenous students. I was not coordinating the course but I had been asked to facilitate some of the sessions within it. Over that weekend I had my first glimpse of how stretched I would feel at times straddling different worlds. I also saw how much there was to unlearn. In one session, I was facilitating a discussion with the whole group and the issue of power in research relationships was raised. The dynamics between students and research supervisors was discussed, as well as the power relationship between students and the university system as a whole. A number of students made contributions to the discussion, including two members of the Koori Cohort. I thought it was a fruitful and inclusive conversation. It takes courage to name some of the underpinning dynamics of our academic system. At the beginning of the next session, which I was also facilitating, a colleague asked me, “Laura, would you please try and prevent the Indigenous voices from dominating this next session?” I was so stunned by the comment I felt winded. From my perspective, there had been no domination. The Indigenous voices had simply been audible in the group, an occurrence that was only too rare. As soon as I could, I left the building and walked around the block. I found myself crying. It took me a few moments to realise I wasn’t sad; I was angry. I had had a taste of what racism looks and feels like, something my students live with on a daily basis all their lives. 41

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I learned a lot that weekend. The students hung around together for solidarity and I hung around with them. I witnessed some of the experience from their perspective. There was no acknowledgment of the traditional owners of the country at the beginning of the event. A string of guest presenters spoke about their own research approaches. Epistemological assumptions were everywhere. Egos abounded. A keynote speaker told the story of his career including an anecdote that he had read every book in the library by the time he was thirteen. One of the Koori students said to me afterwards, “He was a bit of a show-off wasn’t he?” It was true. The assessment was in the form of a 6000 word essay. There was no provision for oral presentations or alternative forms of representation. I found myself giving an alternative commentary in hushed tones. I was scared the students would be so put off, I would never see them again. In subsequent years, we have done things differently. We work in smaller groups now made up of Indigenous and non-Indigenous musicians and artists. The groups feel safer. There are provisions for multiple forms of presentation and assessment. Students still complete their research proposal at the end of the process. All the university requirements are met. The difference being that it is done now in a culturally inclusive way. There are opportunities for relationships to develop. We make the time to listen more deeply to each other. STORIES STEM FROM THE LAND

Treahna SF

Stories stem from the land. They stem from belonging. They stem from being an individual within a community. Telling stories is something that I do. It’s something that helps me understand my work and other people. We’re desert people, we’re river people, we’re coastal people. Our stories and our art promote a growth of understanding and a continuation of our culture. They promote dialogue. They help people to cope and to heal. They create bonds between individuals and communities through the linking of identity, land, people and places. Figure 4 Creation of the Murray River (detail)Possum Skin Cloak Treahna Hamm 2006

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As an indigenous woman oral history and culture take precedence. We listen to the stories of our families, culture and Elders, which emanate from within us. We live our history. The stories told from past generations of cultural experiences are part of us and we are part of our Elders and Ancestors and the land. With my studies have come strong cultural messages. I have received signs and symbols with each of the exhibitions and projects that I have undertaken. Without my study I know I would have still had the experiences in my mind and felt connected but I would not have had the opportunity to document my experiences for others to learn from. Figure 5. Creation of the Murray River. Possum Skin Cloak. Treahna Hamm. 2006 DEEP LISTENING IN THE SPACES BETWEEN

Laura Na na ka maku; ho ‘oolohe ka pepeiao; pa’ a ka waha. Observe with the eyes, listen with the ears, shut the mouth (Benham, 2007, p. 514). Deep listening draws on senses other then what is heard (Ungunmerr, 1999). The practice of deep listening invites us into ways of learning and knowing. It is a generative form of listening, which opens a space for something new to be created (Scharmer, 2009). As a research methodology, deep listening is congruent with the storytelling approaches of narrative enquiry and feminist research (Atkinson, 2007; Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007; Clandinin & Connelly, 1999; Clanadinin, 2007; Chase, 2005; Borland, 2007; Oleson, 2005; Cavarero, 2000), as well with the co-creative practices of participatory research and the first-person, second person and third person structure of action research (Torbert, 2001; Reason, 2001). It also aligns with the deep self-awareness of autoethnography (Ellis, 2004; Ellis & Berger, 2001; Bochner & Ellis, 2002) and the creative voices in arts-based research (Sullivan, 2005; Finley, 2005; Pink, 2004, 2007; Brearley, 2008). Deep listening brings together the postmodern principles of multiple ways of knowing (Richardson, 2007, 2001, 1997; Denzin & Lincoln, 2005; Denzin, 2003; Tierney, 1999; Tierney & Lincoln, 1997; Jipson & Paley, 1997) and the culturally inclusive practices articulated by Indigenous researchers (Smith, 2005, 2001; 43

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Bishop, 2005; Benham, 2007; Heshusius, 1994, 1996; Holmes, 2000; Sefa Dei, Hall & Rosenberg, 2000). Otto Scharmer (2009) contends that a kind of deepened presence gives access to greater levels of authentic awareness, new dimensions of power and a clearer direction. It bridges inner experience and collective experience in creative, nonlinear ways. Indigenous scholars George Sefa Dei, Buff Hall, Dorothy Rosenberg (2000) write that those of us who “wish to work with, learn from, and interact with Indigenous knowledges while based in dominant institutions must transform our way of understanding knowledge, learning and teaching … Indigenous knowledges are not learned in isolation from the Earth or from other people” (p. 7). We need to recognise that “knowledge is produced and acquired through collaborative processes” and that “no individual, group, community, or nation can justifiably claim ownership of all knowledge” (p. 3). Taking the time to invest in relationships lies at the heart of deep listening. The building of community is predicated on the development of mutual trust. The building of trust is slow work and needs to be attended to in an on-going way over a sustained period. Slow as it is to build, trust can be quickly and irretrievably lost. Deep listening is underpinned by the concepts of community and reciprocity. Deep listening changes people. Russell Bishop acknowledges the impact we have on each other: Simply telling stories as subjective voices is not adequate because it ignores the impact that the stories of the other research participants have on our stories. Instead (as researchers) we need to acknowledge our participatory connectedness with the other research participants and promote a sense of knowing in a way, which denies distance and separation and promotes commitment and engagement (Bishop, 1996, pp. 23–24). From our experience in the Koori Cohort of Researchers, we have identified some core characteristics of deep listening: – Time is invested in relationships and the building of trust; – Our understanding of ways of knowing is broadened and deepened; – Creativity is embedded into the way we learn and live our lives; – A quality of care infuses our relationships and our work with each other; – We look after each other, collaborating and co-creating within a community of practice; – Respect underpins our relationships with each other and with the earth; – We share a sense of service to the community and to future generations. Deep listening means researching with integrity and bringing to research a sense of responsibility to the stories being told (Atkinson, 2001). It means listening and observing the self as well, and in the context of using it as a research methodology, it means bringing a sense of integrity to our roles as researchers. Deep listening is a liberation from the self-interest and competition that dominates much of our culture. It is an invitation into living our life in new ways, more openly and with deeper respect for each other and our world.

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THE DEEP WATER OF CREATIVITY

Treahna Generally the goal of research is to describe, interpret, or explain phenomena, but if the desire to see enquiry as having the capacity to change human understanding, then our sight needs to be set on a bigger picture. … This quest for understanding sees individual and social transformation as a worthy human enterprise for ‘to know’ means to be able to think, and act and therefore to change things. … The process of making art and interpreting art adds to our understanding as new ideas are presented that help us to see in new ways (Sullivan, 2005, p. 74). I suppose we really don’t know how deep the water is that we’re wading in. I think we’ve got ancestral memory within us. It’s something that I can’t talk about too much because, when you’re dealing at that level, there’s so much intuitive depth with reading cultural and spiritual messages. When learning with the Elders, the discovery and the finding out are all part of the journey. What I have experienced is that nothing is clean cut and nothing has a definite answer. You have to experience certain things and ask questions in order to gain knowledge. As an Indigenous Australian, in my experience, alignments with family and culture are where the spiritual and physical connect to form a timeless, untouched and profound space. In this space, my artistic self can relate to the diversity of sensory images, emotions, touches, smells, tastes and sounds. They are life’s signposts into the realm of self-knowledge and meaning making. I have a curiosity, and our Elders see that. It might take many months before we can look back to see where we’ve come from and realise what we’ve learned. It’s part of their guiding and part of our learning. Nothing is given to us straight out. I have got a lot of learning to do. What I think is just a drop in the ocean, and unless you’re with other community members and Elders, you can’t really make sense of your own world. Creativity is organic and raw. It is deeply connected with the earth as a living body. It is a place which is the source of who I am and my most inner thoughts and feelings as an artist. It encompasses knowing, belonging and a cultural awareness. It is a profound experience of having a sense of belonging. This space brings together aspects of the physical and spiritual worlds connected within my being. It is made up of senses, which are latent within my body and spirit until my creative voice is ready to be put into form and expression. Creativity is a profound experience. It consumes your whole body and spirit though an in-depth spectrum of feeling, emotions and thought. On occasions this process is so intense that physical layers seem to peel away. It is like going on a new adventure with all my senses and emotions to explore meaning. Some artists talk about the process of creation as emerging from a trance-like state. I think that trance-like state is the closest thing that I’ll ever get to a dreaming. The finished work is not as important as the actual creating and learning. There’s a strengthening of the bond we have when we get together. There’s a sharing of stories. When we are weaving together, even though the stitches are the same, there’s an element of self that goes into the stitches. No matter what we 45

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create, and whether you remember the conversation, or something that’s come up culturally, the main thing is to be creating and learning at the same time. COLLABORATIVE AND RESPECTFUL STORYTELLING IN RESEARCH

Laura Indignenizing the narrative corrects the stereotyping and mythologizing of the native. It promotes the use of alternative research designs and creative presentation formats. It takes ownership of the sociological, cultural, psychological and educative roots of traditional Indigenous ontology and epistemology (Bishop, 1996, p. 528). One of the ways Treahna and I have approached our collaborative learning has been by undertaking research which is “underpinned by connectedness” (Bishop, 2005, p. 116). This kind of collaborative work is characterised by an absence of the need to be in charge (Heshusius, 1996, p. 627). We learn from and with each other through the stories and experiences we share. We tell a lot of stories in ways that invite emotional engagement and meaning making. “Stories are the way humans make sense of their worlds”, writes Carolyn Ellis (2004, p. 32). They open the way for new meanings, questions and avenues of enquiry (Bochner & Ellis, 2002). Carolyn Ellis and Art Bochner’s autoethnographic approach to research reveals knowledge through shared storytelling that is evocative, emotional and complex. The telling of subjective stories in ways which invite emotional engagement is a characteristic of this kind of work. The Indigenous researcher Russell Bishop is a strong advocate for collaborative storytelling. He contends that research needs to be underpinned by connectedness and the principles of participatory and cultural consciousness (Bishop, 2005, p. 116). He supports Barbara Thayer-Bacon’s advocacy for a “relational epistemology”, which is constructed by people who are in relationship with each other (Thayer-Bacon, 1997, p. 245). A relational approach to research highlights many dimensions of who we are and how we relate to our world. Ways of looking and listening within a relational epistemology invite us to transcend the need to separate and distance ourselves from each other (Heshusius, 1994, p. 627). We need to move from an alienated mode of consciousness that sees the knower as separate from the known to a participatory mode of consciousness. Such a mode of consciousness addresses a fundamental reordering of understandings of relationship ‘between self and other (and therefore of reality), and indeed between self and the world, in a manner where such reordering not only includes connectedness but necessitates letting go of the focus of self’ (Heshusius, 1994 in Bishop, 2005, p. 15). The idea that we do not learn in isolation from each other is shared by Indigenous researchers George Sefa Dei, Buff Hall, Dorothy Rosenberg: Indigenous knowledges are largely oral, passed on through the generations by women and men who have the trust of the elders of the community. 46

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Indigenous knowledges are not learned in formal educational settings, nor are they earned in isolation from the Earth or from other people (Sefa Dei, Hall Rosenberg, 2000, p. 7) Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2001) is a strong contributor to the field of decolonised research. In her seminal book Decolonising Methodologies, she articulates the questions that need to underpin our enquiry, “Whose research is it? Who owns it? Whose interests does it serve? Who will benefit from it? Who has designed its questions and framed its scope? Who will carry it out? Who will write it up? How will the results be disseminated?” (Smith, 2001, pp. 9–10). In more recent work (2005), she has mapped cultural values from her Mäori tradition with researcher guidelines identified by Indigenous researcher Fiona Cram (2001). Here is a summary of some of them (Smith, 2005, p. 98; Cram, 2001, pp. 35–52): Table 1. Cultural values in research Cultural Values (Smith, 2005) Aroha ki to tangata Manaaki ki te tangata

Titiro, Whakarongo … körerö

Kaua e mahaki

Researcher Guidelines (Cram, 2001) A respect for people – Letting people define their own space and meeting on their terms This value underpins a collaborative approach to research and enables knowledge to flow both ways. It acknowledges the researcher as learner and not just a data gatherer or observer. Looking and listening (and then maybe speaking). Looking/observing and listening in order to develop understandings and find a place from which to speak. Sharing knowledge and being generous with knowledge without being a show off

The idea of “Kaua e mahaki” is a powerful one. It cuts rights through the culture of display and competition prevalent in the dominant culture of the academy. MAKING CONNECTIONS IN RESEARCH

Treahna Artist’s studios and other such places used for the creation and critique of new knowledge are theoretically powerful and methodologically robust sites of enquiry. In practitioner research, the artist-theorist can be seen as both the researcher and the researched (Sullivan, 2005, p. xix). I feel a connection to my Ancestors and old people through the physical and the spiritual. They have brought into being the symbols and signs within the landscape so that we do not forget who we are and where we have come from on our life journey. From the symbols and signs I make sense of my belonging to this land and my people. This verifies the faith I have within my identity and culture.

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Figure 6. Murray River. Photo. Treahna Hamm. 2006

Artists and musicians are connected We share a heightened sense We absorb silence We absorb sound We absorb colour It’s conscious and subconscious at the same time And there’s the interplay between the two Improvisation is a word that artists can use as well There is no set structure We find a space The senses pull us in and down into that space Improvisation emanates from our hearts Down our arms Through our hands And out our fingers It all happens at one time Beneath the activity There is always the space inside. Culture lives within us. No matter how much they have tried to take away from the Aboriginal community, it continues and survives. Due to the determination and diligence of Elders to learn cultural practices from their parents or grandparents, culture has continued through all the hardships. The narrative discourse of Elders deserves respect. There are important messages and symbols within their stories. Disconnection from culture does not mean identity or cultural experience is lost

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forever. Symbolism and meaning can be interpreted along with cultural teachings. We need to be in touch with the community in order for learning to take place. Aboriginal philosophies are lived. They are not just words. They are part of a lifestyle which opens up the possibilities of the seen and unseen, the physical and spiritual connections. To me writing about experience is not as important as the actual experiences themselves. We move between worlds that may seem to be opposing but connections can happen at any time. There is a transcendence of experience bringing it all together. Indigenous learning is active. It is lived. Cultural activity cannot be put to one side for months and then taken up again. It survives in people’s minds and in their perceptions of the world. In thought people are connected culturally. This takes on a collective strength. I have been guided by my Elders to practice my culture everyday, even if it is only one stitch of a basket or one brushstroke of a painting. Cultural integrity and respect lie within the heartland of Indigenous learning and focus. This can be acknowledged in both spoken and unspoken ways. Knowledge in an Indigenous context may appear in a multitude of guises from spiritual, material or cultural symbols present within the landscape and from the Elders themselves. My life experience is submerged in culture. Culture is lived, thought about and experienced everyday. I am still learning the stories from the Old People, still experiencing elements of life which I am thankful for. RESEARCH THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE

Laura Does the story help others cope with or better understand their worlds? Is it useful, and if so, for whom? Does it promote dialogue? Does it have the potential to stimulate social action? (Ellis, 2000, p. 275). In their account of the evolution of qualitative research, Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (2005d) describe the development of research through a framework of eight overlapping moments. What Denzin and Lincoln call moments are the appearance of new sensibilities, times when qualitative researchers become aware of new issues. “Moments are appearances of new sensibilities, ruptures in the fabric of our own histories, in which we are irrevocably changed” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005d, p. 1116). The moments overlap and simultaneously operate in the present. They are not implying a narrative of progress or implying the cutting edge is in the present. Denzin and Lincoln contend there have been at least eight historical moments in qualitative research and that the ninth moment is lying just over the horizon. This approach to research incorporates new kinds of text which do not simply describe but which make a difference. It criticises how things are, imagines how they could be different and articulates a politics of hope. We are in a moment of discovery and rediscovery when “new ways of looking, interpreting, arguing and writing are debated and discussed” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005c, p. 20). This approach to research welcomes in the voices of the formerly disenfranchised (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000d, p. 1115). There is a valuing of 49

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storytelling and listening underpinned by an ethic of care and a recognition of the importance of dialogue (Bishop, 1998; Smith, 2001). In Denzin and Lincoln’s framework of qualitative research, the current moment of qualitative research with all its struggle and contestation will evolve into the eighth and ninth moments. According to their framework, some key features of the next moments are (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005d, pp. 1117–1118): – The reconnection of the social sciences to social purpose, the rise of Indigenous social sciences, the decolonisation of the academy. – A community with a sense of “interpersonal responsibility” (Mieth 1997, p. 93). – A new ethic, which is communitarian, egalitarian, democratic, critical, caring, engaged, performative, social justice oriented. – A moral obligation and responsibility by qualitative researchers to research participants, to people who engage with the research and to themselves. – A stance that is participatory, feminist, reciprocal and reciprocating. – The rise of multiple voices, some of them previously all but ignored by Eurocentric researchers, heralding a new era in qualitative enquiry. – A frisson of excitement, uncertainty, anticipation and unpredictability. We feel this frisson of anticipation and uncertainty on a daily basis. We are coperformers in each others lives (Mienczakowski, 2001) and are still making meaning of our work together and learning from it. We are challenging the assumptions of power and authority within the academy and asking the questions articulated by Pinnegar and Daynes, “Who owns the story? Who can tell it? Who can change it? What do stories do among us?” (Pinnegar and Daynes, 2007, p. 30). We feel something transformative is taking place as we make the space to listen to each others stories. The stories that lie at the heart of our research are helping us remember who we are as human beings. They are broadening our frame of reference. They are deepening our connections and building community. We are in the place of possibility described by bell hooks, “There are no closed systems … every system has a gap … in that space is a place of possibility” (hooks, 2003, p. 23). We know that looking and listening in ways which are both new and profoundly ancient, will help us co-create relationships and communities built on respect. The Indigenous leader Dr Lowitja O’Donoghue, who has made such a significant contribution to reconciliation in her lifetime, writes: Anangu says Ngapartji-ngapartji: we must give, each to the other. We must have genuinely reciprocal relationships in all dealings (O’Donoghue, in Parker & Power, 2001, p. x). New ways of reciprocal researching can emerge when we stretch beyond our previously held assumptions about looking and listening. Researching in this way involves reframing how we learn, how we come to know and what we value as knowledge.

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Treahna I believe that everyone has unique experiences in life. Through community connections and listening to the Elders’ stories, deep experiences can develop. My life experience is submerged in culture. Culture is lived, thought about and experienced everyday. I am still learning the stories from the Old People, still experiencing elements of life which I am thankful for. To bring back the significance of our People’s knowledge into the lives of others is vital for its survival. So much is there to revitalise. The past, present and future are connected through our lives. Our artwork, our stories and the way we live our lives link us to the Old People and to future generations. There is still a lot of learning to be done. There’s learning from the community, from art, from stories, from poems and from the moon. It is our responsibility. Laura The way we listen The way we see The way we relate Shapes what we value What we stand for And our sense of what is just It informs what we hope for What we dare What we risk In the face of our fragility In the knowledge of what we are working against and for We act.

REFERENCES Atkinson, R. (2001, November). Privileging indigenous research methodologies. Proceedings of the National Indigenous Researchers Forum. Melbourne, Victoria: University of Melbourne; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Atkinson, R. (2007). The life story interview as a bridge in narrative inquiry. In D. J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 224–245). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Benham, M. K. P. (2007). Mo’o lelo: On culturally relevant story making from an indigenous perspective. In D. J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 512–533). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Bishop, R. (1996). Collaborative research stories: Whakawhanaungatanga. Palmerston North: Dunmore Press. 51

BREARLEY AND HAMM Bishop, R. (1998). Freeing ourselves from neo-colonial domination in research: A Maori approach to creating knowledge. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11, 199–219. Bishop, R. (2005). Freeing ourselves from neo-colonial domination in research: A kaupapa Maori approach to creating knowledge. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 109–138). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Bochner, A., & Ellis, C. (2002). Ethnographically speaking: Autoethnography, literature and aesthetics. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira. Borland, J. (2007). Decolonizing approaches to feminist research. In S. N. Hesse-Biber (Ed.), Handbook of feminist research (pp. 621–627). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Brearley, L., & Darso, L. (2008). Vivifying data and experience through artful approaches. In A. Cole & G. Knowles (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples and issues (pp. 639–652). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Cavarero, A. (2000). Relating narratives: Story telling and selfhood. London: Routledge. Chase, S. (2005). Narrative inquiry: Multiple lenses, approaches, voices. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 651–679). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Clandinin, D. J. (2007). (Ed.). Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (1999). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Coles, R. (1989). The call of stories: Teaching and the moral imagination. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Cram, F. (2001). Rangahau Maori: Tona tika, tona pono—The validity and integrity of Maori research. In M. Tollich (Ed.), Research ethics in Aotearoa New Zealand (pp. 35–52). Auckland: Pearson Education. Denzin, N. K. (2003). Performance ethnography: Critical pedagogy and the politics of culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. (2003). The landscape of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.). (2005a). The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.). (2005b). Preface. In The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. ix–xviii). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.). (2005c). Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 1–32). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005d). Epilogue: The eighth and ninth moments—qualitative research in/and the fractured future. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research, (3rd ed., pp. 1115–1126). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Ellis, C. (1997). Evocative autoethnography: Writing emotionally about our lives. In W. Tierney & T. Lincoln (Eds.), Representation and the text: Reframing the narrative voice. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Ellis, C. (2000). Creating criteria: An ethnographic short story. Qualitative Inquiry, 6, 273–277. Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press. Ellis, C., & Berger, L. (2001). Their story/My story/Our story: Including the researcher’s experience in interview research. In J. F. Gubrium & J. A. Holstein (Eds.), Handbook of interview research (pp. 849–875). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Finley, S. (2005). Arts based inquiry: Performing revolutionary pedagogy. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 681–694). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

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WAYS OF LOOKING AND LISTENING Hamm, T. (2008). Reconnecting with family: Exploring individual and community stories of aboriginal identity through narrative and artwork. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy Thesis (in Education), RMIT University, Australia. Heshusius, L. (1994). Freeing ourselves from objectivity: Managing subjectivity or turning toward a participatory mode of consciousness? Educational Researcher, 23(3), 15–22. Heshusius, L. (1996). Modes of consciousness and the self in learning disabilities research: Considering the past and future. In D. K. Reid, W. P. Hresko, & H. L. Swanson (Eds.), Cognitive approaches to learning disabilities (3rd ed., pp. 651–671). Austin, TX: PRO-ED. Holmes, L. (2000). Heart knowledge, blood memory, and the voice of the land: Implications of research among Hawaiian elders. In G. S. Dei, B. Hall, & D. Rosenberg (Eds.), Indigenous knowledges in global contexts (pp. 37–53). Canada: University of Toronto Press. hooks, b. (2003). Teaching community: A pedagogy of hope. New York: Routledge. Hughes Freeland, F. (2004). Working images: Epilogue. In S. Pink, L. Kurti, & A. I. Afonso (Eds.), Working images: Visual research and presentation in ethnography (pp. 204–218). London: Routledge. Jipson, J., & Paley, N. (1997). (Eds.). Daredevil research: Re-creating analytic practice. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Liamputtong, P. (2007). Researching the vulnerable: A guide to sensitive research methods (pp. 1–22). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Mienczakowski, J. (2001). Ethnodrama: Performed research—limitations and potential. In P. Atkinson, A. Coffey, S. Delamont, J. Lofland, & L. Lofland (Eds.), Handbook of ethnography (pp. 468–76). London: Sage Publications. Mieth, D. (1997). The basic norm of truthfulness: Its ethical justification and universality. In C. G. Christians & M. Traber (Eds.), Communication ethics and universal values (pp. 87–104). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. O’Donoghue, L. (2001). In K. Parker & K. Power (Eds.), Kaltja now: Indigenous arts Australia. Canberra, ACT: Wakefield Press in association with the National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Tandanya. Oleson, V. L. (2005). Early millenial feminist qualitative research: Challenges and contours. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 235–279). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Pink, S. (2004). Introduction: Situating visual research. In S. Pink, L. Kurti, & A. I. Afonso (Eds.), Working images: Visual research and presentation in ethnography (pp. 1–12). London: Routledge. Pink, S. (2007). Doing visual ethnography: Images, media and representation in research (2nd ed., pp. 21–39). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Pinnegar, S., & Daynes J. G. (2007). Locating narrative inquiry historically: Thematics in the turn to narrative. In D. J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 3–34). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Reason, P., & Bradbury, H. (Eds.). (2001). Handbook of action research participative inquiry and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Richardson, L. (1997). Fields of play: Constructing an academic life. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Richardson, L. (2000). Writing as a method of enquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 923–948). California: Sage Publications. Richardson, L. (2001). Poetic representation in interviews. In J. F. Gubrium & J. A. Holstein (Eds.), Handbook of interview research (pp. 877–891). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Richardson, L., (2007). Reading for another: A method for addressing some feminist research dilemmas. In S. N. Hesse-Biber (Ed.), Handbook of feminist research (pp. 459–467). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Rose, M. (2003). Bridging the gap: The decolonisation of a Master of Business Administration Degree by tactical and pedagogical alignment with the capacity building needs of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy Thesis (in Education), RMIT University, Australia. 53

BREARLEY AND HAMM Sefa Dei, G., Hall, B., & Rosenberg, D. (2000). Indigenous knowledges in global contexts. Canada: University of Toronto Press Smith, L. T. (2001). Decolonising methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Dunedin, NZ: Zed Books, Room 400 and University of Otago Press. Smith L. T. (2005). On tricky ground: Researching the native in the age of uncertainty. In N. K. Denzin & Y. Lincoln, (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 85–107). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Sullivan, G. (2005). Art practice as research: Inquiry in the visual arts. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Thayer-Bacon, B. (1997). The nurturing of a relational epistemology. Educational Theory, 47(2), 239–260. Tierney, W. G. (1999). Life history’s history: Subjects foretold. Qualitative Inquiry, 5, 307–312. Tierney, W. G., & Lincoln, T. (1997). Representation and the text: Reframing the narrative voice. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Torbert, W. R. (2001). The practice of action inquiry. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research participative inquiry and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Ungunmerr, M. R. & Isaacs, J. (1999). Spirit Country: Contemporary Australian Aboriginal art. San Francisco: Hardie Grant Books. Wolmark, J., & Gates-Stuart, E. (2002). Research as cultural practice. Selected working papers in art and design (Vol. 2). Retrieved August 19, 2007, from http://www.herts.ac.uk/artdes/research/ papers/wpades/vol2/wolmarkfull.htm

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4. WAYS OF ANALYSING From Reverie to Reality

THE ART OF NOT KNOWING

Things become interesting to me without my knowing why (Eliasson, in Birnbaum, 2002, p. 25). Like the artist Olafur Eliasson, who made the above statement, the condition of not knowing is familiar to many artists and may even be considered to be a necessary condition for those who create (Refsum, 2002). This is not to suggest that artists create only in an unconscious or unthinking way, but what I intend to convey here is that there are gaps that cannot be accounted for in the intersecting network of ideas, thoughts, images and elements that make up the impetus for creating an artwork. These gaps provide opportunities for speculation and reverie and the possibility to include that which is not-yet-known. However in the context of academic research, which insists on a systematic enquiry, this position is quite contradictory. Creative work in many ways does not adhere to the objectivity of other disciplines and a methodology is difficult to determine if it cannot allow for the unpredictable or account for the intuitive that art often is, nor the ways in which it emerges out of a physical, often playful, engagement with materials and media. Then perhaps it is the role of artist-researchers to turn Eliasson’s statement around in order to challenge increasingly outmoded forms of enquiry. They can do this by entering into a sustained engagement with ideas, in order to construct new realities and create new experiences through innovative interpretations (Brew, 2001), which is essentially what the outcomes of research are: by not knowing, I become interested in things. Research through a creative art project takes into consideration not only the totality of the researcher’s art practice, but it may also include a complex nexus of auxiliary elements including the inevitable gaps between those elements. What I am thinking of here is the ways in which accumulated life information may influence the direction of the thinking and in due course shape the intentions and outcomes of the research. Artist-researchers, like most academic researchers, bring highly personal aspects to their research activities and when these are incorporated into a focused project they can lead to innovative outcomes. When an object of enquiry is combined with a particular set of materials, which can be both physical or tangible and conceptual, and mediated by the artistE. Grierson and L. Brearley, Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices, 55–64. © 2009 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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researcher this can result in a potent mix. Through a sustained practice over many years an artist becomes familiar with a particular medium or media and there are usually subjects that will inspire more than others. But inevitably there is another aspect to the project; an idea or a spark that emanates somewhere else and may have its origin in reverie, those fanciful, possibly impractical musings and preoccupations. I have selected the word reverie here because of its somewhat contradictory relationship to the word research. Traditional research, as a process of enquiry, incorporates rules and systems of procedures, whereas art practice can be a liberating activity in which rules or processes are lacking. Reverie could be considered to be unproductive, impractical and completely unempirical, all of which are considered to be vital in the context of research (Bachelard, 1960). However reverie is the perfect word to describe the origins of personal poetic imagery and memories, which are so often the basis for research through creative practice. REVERIE

We are, among other things, associating machines. Feed in an object (a smell, a word, an image) and it excites in the imagination a corresponding item (a feeling, a recollection, a hope) (Armstrong, 2000, p. 62). Reverie is often conflated with dreaming but there is, according to Gaston Bachelard a radical difference, which he says derives from phenomenology. He describes the sleeping, nocturnal dreamer as, “a shadow who has lost his self (moi)”, whereas the dreamer of reverie—a daydreamer—can “formulate a cogito at the centre of his dreaming self (son moi reveur)”. Reverie in this context is an oneiric activity in which a glimmer of consciousness subsists—the dreamer continues to be present and aware of his dreaming (Bachelard, 1960, p. 150). Reverie is at once an active and a passive state of being in which we allow ourselves to acquiesce to a flow of ideas and associations while remaining alert and receptive. As in the experience of traversing an interconnecting web we can be misled and be diverted into the wrong strand and find ourselves lost, which is one of the downsides of reverie. And it can be a slow process, so slow as to be barely perceptible and can be difficult to maintain amidst distractions. Sometimes, like a spark, reverie will lead to a sudden insight and then be gone before we could get a grasp of it, or by heading off along one thread the connections with others are broken. However, according to John Armstrong, when we are fully engaged and receptive to it reverie is “one of the central capacities of the mind [and] stands as an image of scientific procedure” (Armstrong, 2000, p. 72). This then could be interpreted as a way to connect it with the processes of research. Armstrong cites the mathematician Henri Poincaré who declared: If a new result is to have any value it must unite elements long since known, but till now scattered and seemingly foreign to each other, and suddenly introduce order where the appearance of disorder reigned (Poincaré, in Armstrong, 2000, p. 72). 56

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Thoughts, images and memories, long since relegated to the recesses of the mind can be recalled, reordered and given significance through reverie. The thoughts and propositions generated in this way are vital to creative undertakings. Reverie can transform a memory into a presentiment by filling in the gaps between what is remembered as a past event or thing and the extension of that memory into the present. In doing so a new image is formed in the imagination, which itself evolves out of reverie and is similar to it in many ways. But imagination is a more deliberate activity, which gives us the capacity to summon up images of the things we have not experienced (Armstrong, 2000). Using imagination we are able to formulate questions around the feelings or hunches generated by reverie: What if …? Or In what ways …? These are the kinds of questions that initiate research. ANALOGUE THINKING

One of the values of art is that it is not static and there is never a definitive answer. A simple question can inspire an artwork and the artwork in turn can generate questions, which, upon reflection can be transformed into understanding that in turn elicits further questions. This cyclical approach not only describes an aesthetic process of self-realisation but also describes a research process in the form of reflective practice (Sullivan, 2005). Artist-researchers who engage with such a reflective practice inhabit a space of possibility in which there is no distinction between the activities of making and those of thinking. By creating the conditions that make manifest the idea, an artwork becomes an invitation to construct meaning or a way of interpreting the world. In the context of a research project the artist-researcher draws upon a vast range of experiences and reconsiders them in the context of their history, theories and other related information along with the physical activities and processes that inform the practice. Through reverie and by making imaginative associations between such disparate elements the creative researcher is able to formulate the questions to be answered through the research project. The ways that the project is subsequently carried out are dependent upon other processes—those of making and physically manipulating materials—and through reflection. The idea that art is a physical and material activity through which the artist can generate new knowledge by engaging with materials and processes, is gaining ground in creative arts research. Art, it could be argued always produces new knowledge especially in the ways that it advances its own particular field. However, the distinction I will make here between art practice as research and professional art practice as a creative activity is in the ways that research through art involves a self-conscious reflection that is not necessarily a part of art practice for its own sake. If art practice is to be considered as research it needs to reveal its processes and illuminate the thinking that underpins the material manifestations and it needs to be experienced. Art as research requires a viewer. For the purposes of this discussion I am referring to visual art, although of course this can just as easily apply to all other arts such as sonic art or poetry: art needs an audience.

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These differences in approach to making art, between art as research and art as professional practice, could be considered to be the differences between a conscious and an unconscious artist or practitioner. The conscious artist, in the terms of a research project, is able to reflect on the making and what has been made and is able to contextualise it in terms of the question or questions to be answered and its epistemology. All art as research needs to be supported in some way usually through exegetical material and this can take the form of other images or artworks that reveal processes or as a text or a combination of the two. In this way new knowledge, be it experiential, perceptual, procedural, tacit or personal can be explicated through both textual and visual means and be communicated. A FLOOD OF BLUE SKY POURED…

My own research is an on-going speculative investigation into the ways in which atmospheric phenomena, or the weather, permeate our lives and condition the ways that we view the world. I do this through making work, using print media techniques, which emulates and recreates our experiences and perceptions of it. I am interested in the ways that the weather, as a quotidian occurrence, affects our lives so much and where this preoccupation might have originated. The research is informed by some very significant cultural changes that occurred in early nineteenth century in England that inspired artists and writers to place a particular significance on the representations of atmospheric phenomena. In the context of a PhD project the research consisted of two parts: a practical one that culminated in an exhibition of selected artworks and an exegesis in which I explored some of my ideas through text. These two aspects of the project operated in tandem: I explored certain ideas and employed a certain kind of thinking in the making of artwork and in the text I expanded, reflected and evaluated what I had created. Through a symbiotic relationship, what I discovered in the making of an artwork often led to text-based exploration, which in turn influenced the artwork I made. I was able to explicate ideas through text that I was not able to visualise so easily and conversely, what was realised in the visual work, experiential or embodied knowledge, I could not easily find words for. I was particularly interested in the language of the weather—the poetry of weather forecasts and descriptions—and how we interpret it. Not only is weather experienced physically but also its language is absorbed psychologically. Throughout the project I made artwork that was a combination of words and images as a way of combining the logical and illogical, the conscious and the unconscious and the physical and the psychological. The initial stages of my research were akin to what may be termed traditional research methods as I set about locating appropriate texts through a literature review. I was fortunate to have access to some important primary resource material in the British Library, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Tate Gallery (Britain) in London. Reading selected texts gave me some concrete insight and real evidence of individual thinking, ideas and cultural conditions of the nineteenth century and the ways that these ideas had impact on the work of many artists at the beginning 58

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of the nineteenth century. However, the physicality of handling some of those old books and diaries gave me an experience that was not so easily explicated, almost as if something of what was contained in the texts was absorbed through my skin and was instrumental in inducing a personal reverie. Even at this early stage the manipulation of materials gave rise to a different way of thinking. The methodology I used for the practical project was to refer to some of the texts I had located to work through a series of experimental works, combining photographic and print media, to identify the ones that would best serve my project and develop those more fully, all the while evaluating their success in terms of what I had set out to do. This inevitably involved putting them on public display. Concurrently I continued to locate texts by delving into bibliographies and citations. I unearthed obscure early nineteenth century writings concerning the initial naming of clouds. I discovered the diaries and journals of amateur weather forecasters and those of early nineteenth century explorers. Some texts were much more mundane, such as daily weather reports but when absorbed in a certain way became poetic proclamations. I also walked and used walking to extend and connect me to the outer world and its atmosphere. During extended walks—they could be anything from three to ten days in length—I took photographs and made notations. All these activities resulted in a number of exhibitions of artworks and a series of essays in the exegesis. The essays allowed me to make sense of the disparate activities and make a link to my personal embodied experiences. The exhibitions were a synthesis of material gleaned from the essays and experimentation with print-based media. IN THE MIND’S EYE

As I outlined above, I attest that research is not complete until it involves someone to experience it and one of the main concerns of my project was to include the viewer as an active participant in the work rather than a passive observer. In this way I could create an experience in an artwork to be re-experienced in another context. One of the ways I did this was to increase the scale of the work so that it could not be read from a single viewpoint: the viewer had to move and traverse the work in order to read it. Some of the artworks included elements that could only be seen when light fell on them from a particular direction and this too encouraged the viewer to move. Some pieces relied solely on the viewer’s imagination to construct an image that did not physically exist. My prime motive was to communicate with an expectation that images would be evoked in the mind of my viewer. Throughout my project I used the strategy of taking themes and sensibilities that had their roots in the early nineteenth century Romantic period and subjected them to a contemporary treatment. I did this by stripping away anything extraneous or superficial to produce work that was visually minimal but rich in associations and levels of meanings through the application of text and image. I appropriated texts from such sources as nineteenth century notations, classifications and descriptions. My intention was to utilise the slippages that occur between words and images that prevent both from being seen concurrently and to explore the shifts in meaning that are generated when text and image are intertwined. 59

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I rarely used a text in its entirety or if I did I would render it in such a way that it could not be taken in all at once or read from a single position. Fragments sometimes trigger responses in a viewer that the so-called whole cannot. A fragment attracts attention and allows viewers a space in which to exercise their own imagination to inwardly complete the rest, verbally or pictorially. By suggesting incompleteness, the fragment is more representative of the condition of unknowability and the impossibility of visual representation than a work that suggests a whole (Heath & Boreham, 1999). This role of the imagination to evoke an image or images in response to another stimulus was one that I considered in some of the initial experimental works I had made. I was especially interested in the ways that certain words or texts could trigger an image in the mind. In practice I experimented with materials and techniques that would best suit my needs. I had discovered a mica dust for example that reflected and refracted light. It gave the text a quality of being there one minute and gone the next; it could appear unexpectedly when it caught the light or disappear when viewed from a different angle. Embossing also had a similar effect as it was only revealed when a raking light was directed on to it. Colour too was an important consideration as it has strong emotional associations and throughout the project I used the predominant colours of the sky, blues and greys. Both texts and colour were incorporated into photographic images of atmospheric phenomena, sometimes manipulated to produce a more imaginative image. These aggregated elements— certain colour combinations, manipulated photographic imagery of atmospheric phenomena, particular print media techniques and the use of text—were the tools, materials and processes that I adapted and developed for my artistic purposes (Cornock, 1988) and presented a connected view of what had been learned separately. Below are two examples of projects as illustrations. IN A DIFFERENT LIGHT

3 Mornings and 1 Evening The artwork, 3 Mornings and 1 Evening consists of four full-size sheets of ordinary cardboard commonly used to mount prints prior to framing, each a different shade of grey. Into each of the sheets of card I embossed fragments of texts, descriptions of the sky at sunset and sunrise, written by the nineteenth century artist and writer, John Ruskin. The embossing caused the text to be raised above the surface of the card but because of the neutrality of the greys could only be perceived if a raking light was directed on to it. Each of the texts poetically described the colours of the sky at sunset and sunrise and involved beautiful invocations of shades of reds and oranges, however from the title I had given the work as a whole I did not distinguish between which panel was a description of a sunset or which a sunrise. In this work dawn and dusk were only discernable through the text and required the viewer to determine which was which based on their own experiences of sunsets and sunrises. The artist Olafur Eliasson often begins the titles of his works with the word, “your” as in Your uncertainty still kept or Your sun machine. Eliasson acknowledges that even as the artist he does not make the artwork, rather he provides the conditions 60

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whereby it can be created in the mind by each viewer. My intention was for viewers to summon up colour in the mind’s eye based on its description in the text and thereby imagine their own sunset or sunrise. For instance, is it possible to discern between scarlet and vermilion in the absence of the colour itself?

Figure 1. 3 Mornings & 1 Evening (detail). Cardboard. Lesley Duxbury. 2002

The grey card provided a nondescript, neutral screen, neither positive nor negative, on which to project an individual response. I made the work assuming the presence of a viewer who would actively participate in its creation. New knowledge gained, or the meaning in the resulting artwork, emerges out of the encounter between the artwork and the viewer—it does not reside in the artwork itself. My intention was to use a phenomenological approach to assist my viewers to realise that although they were viewing a sheet of grey card they were able, in an act of self-awareness, to evoke images and to be conscious that this was happening. The artwork engages the reverie of viewers who bring to the work their own vast experiences; in this way a work of art is always under interpretation and in the process of construction. Then & Now The motivation for making Then & Now was nineteenth-century artist, John Constable’s oil-on-paper study of the sky painted en plein air on Hampstead Heath in London, and annotated with personal observations. Constable made many of these studies that depicted the varying conditions of the weather along with handwritten notes on the reverse that provided his interpretation of the atmospheric conditions he had observed while painting and predicted what might ensue by referring to weather just past or about to happen. The images and texts together not only provided factual information but also defined his place in the world at a 61

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particular period in time. Writing notes in response to what is observed can be a way of supplementing memory, an aide-memoire but the notes themselves can also encourage their own interpretations separate from the painting. On the reverse of the cloud study I used for my reference was written, “Aug. 1. 1822/11 o clock A.M./very hot with large climbing Clouds/under the Sun/wind westerly.” In 2002 I went to Hampstead Heath on the same day, August 1, and at the same time that Constable had painted his study. I anticipated that many things would be different, in particular the cloud formations, but I wondered if there may be similarities and if it might be possible to recreate a similar experience to that of Constable’s in order to create a link across the years. On my visit the air was clear, and billowing white clouds filled the sky. There was one distraction, however that Constable certainly would not have encountered—the vapour trails from aircraft that endlessly crossed the sky from every direction, which made it impossible to see a natural sky. In place of Constable’s paints and brushes, I used a camera and took photographs to document the sky. Unlike Constable I was able to frame a section of the sky and stop the clouds in their tracks, freezing a moment in time, and my photographs later evoked memories of that instant in time. They brought the sky close, as though the act of stilling the clouds had itself stopped the advancement of time and located the past in a continuing present; the images became trapped neither fading nor aging with time. In place of objective images of cloud formations my reveries evoked fond memories of a special day, through which I could recall not only the physical location but also the warmth and sounds that had been part of the experience. In response to this experience I made Then & Now in an attempt to evoke a reimagining and representation of the past that would exist in the present and anticipate further interpretations. I scanned one of the photographs I took on that day on Hampstead Heath and converted it to a monochrome. The artwork consists of two panels with an image and text on each; a dominant black and white photograph underscored with two lines of text. Although some aspects of both panels are the same, each panel is subtly different from the other, and it is the differences and similarities, along with the content, that form the framework for the reading of this artwork. Through the use of computers photographs have become extremely pliable and easily manipulated. I was able to erase the offending vapour trails and restore the sky to its pristine, Constablean state thereby altering one seemingly authentic situation and replacing it with another. By placing the panel with the newly pristine image of the sky—the one with the erased vapour trails—to the left, or in a position to be encountered before the one that still contained the vapour trails it was possible to question the representation of a particular moment in time.

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Figure 2. Then & Now. Inkjet Prints. Lesley Duxbury. 2002

On August 1, 2002, the weather forecast for London was, “Quite warm with sunny spells. A risk of the odd shower this afternoon. Winds light.” This simple statement presents an impartial record of that particular day. I positioned this text beneath the original photograph I took on Hampstead Heath and I placed Constable’s annotation beneath the manipulated cloud photograph. Although Constable’s text appears to have veracity and refer to a real event, it cannot refer to the image because, except in its very basic beginnings photography did not exist then. The captioning of this photograph with that text highlights the paradox of depicting what has been within a framework of what is present, akin to Roland Barthes’ enigma—or the magic—of the photograph, which for him lay in the experience of it as existing within irreconcilable temporal frames (Barthes, 1981). If the left panel cannot be a true record of a past event then how is the right panel to be read? The representation of a reality, as perceived through these images, can be experienced not only as evidence of subjective existence but also as an objective process, both being transformed and coming-into-being only in the mind of the viewer through the combination of image and text (Duxbury, 2005). ON REFLECTION

In the context of research, works of art offer ways of imagining and encountering the world without conclusion. They emanate from a position of not knowing, traverse a realm of uncertainty and present ambiguities and possibilities to engage a viewer into a process of speculation and interpretation. Artist-researchers draw upon a vast array of information, from overt influences to private reveries and reflections that allow the artwork to operate in many diverse ways, and offer the viewer a means of imagining and knowing the world. And reflection is not only the domain of the artist. In an encounter with an artwork the viewer is invited to engage in their own reflections and recall their own experiences to evaluate and interpret the work that in itself may be a process of reflective thinking; to engage with private reverie to make sense of a public reality.

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REFERENCES Armstrong, J. (2000). The intimate philosophy of art. London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press. Bachelard, G. (1960). The poetics of reverie: Childhood, language and the cosmos. (D. Russell, Trans.). Boston: Beacon Press. Barthes, R. (1981). Camera lucida: Reflections on photography. (R. Howard, Trans.). New York: Hill and Wang. Birnbaum, D. (2002). Interview: Daniel Birnbaum in conversation with Olafur Eliasson. In M. Grynstein, D. Birnbaum, & M. Speaks (Eds.), Olafur Eliasson (pp. 8–33). London: Phaidon. Brew, A. (2001). The nature of research: Inquiry in academic contexts. London: Routledge Falmer. Cornock, S. (1988). Quoted in Renwick, G. (2006). Decolonising methods: Reflecting upon a practicebased doctorate. In K. Macleod & L. Holdridge (Eds.), Thinking through art (p. 168). London: Routledge. Duxbury, L. (2005). Then & now: Re-imagining the present through a creative representation of the past. In A. Gerbaz & R. Mayes (Eds.), Palimpsests: Transforming communities. Perth, WA: Curtin University. Heath, D., & Boreham, J. (1999). The romantic fragment: Introducing romanticism. Cambridge, UK: Icon Books. Refsum, G. (2002). Contribution to an understanding of the knowledge base in the field of visual arts. Working papers in art and design 2. Retrieved June 18, 2007, from http://www.herts.ac.uk/artdes/ researc/papers/wpades/vol2/refsumfull.html Sullivan, G. (2005). Art practice as research: Inquiry in the visual arts. London: Sage Publications

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5. WAYS OF BEING-WITH Finding a Way to be with the Work

INTRODUCTION

What compels the belief that we have a direct access to cultural representations and their content that we lack toward the thing represented? How did language come to be more trustworthy than matter? Why are language and culture granted their own agency and historicity while matter is figured as passive and immutable? … How does one even go about inquiring after the material conditions that have led us to such a brute reversal of naturalist beliefs when materiality itself is always already figured within a linguistic domain as its condition of possibility? (Barad, 2003, p. 801). It is as if an eternal rift exists between things material and things conceptual; as if the latter always act in hostility toward the former and its stubborn obscurity. Our ideas and beliefs about the world so often seem irreconcilable with the way things are. Not because the two are never found to be in accord but because such accord is only ever fleeting and we may wish it to be still. In addition, the way things are can support multiple accounts. There are always more stories to tell and what is told is not the only story. Yet, despite all this, truth is continually invoked as witness and buttress to our accounts. And, remarkably, it still seems to mean something, although how many of us are entirely sure what? It is an irony that despite what has often been described as the gross materialism of many living in Western, capitalist societies, we remain alienated from all things material. In other words, while the throw away society of consumerism promotes endless material acquisition, its products, with their in-built obsolescence and poor craftsmanship, only afford fleeting attachment. This has prompted a growing call for a re-engagement with materialism such that matter might really come to matter. For some, such as Karen Barad (2003), above, a re-engagement with materiality concerns challenging dualistic thinking and the limitations of understanding that arise from it. For others, concerned with sustainability, a re-engagement with materialism offers a way of challenging consumerism and promoting an alternative conception of the relationship between ourselves and the world. A re-engagement with materialism can also offer insights into the relationship between practitioner and work of relevance to practitioners in the creative arts and design undertaking research degrees.

E. Grierson and L. Brearley, Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices, 65–74. © 2009 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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Through materialising ideas, or thinking through materialisation, the art or design practitioner plays host to both thought and thing and thus engages the strife between the two. It is not that such strife should be eradicated: the problem of the relation between thought and thing solved. Strife can be considered productive. Rather, it is that the relationship between thought and world is problematic. Scholarly practice within most research degrees requires that an account be provided of creative works to situate the work within conceptual schemes and precedent. The challenge for the practitioner is how to create the conditions for dialogue: to ensure, amongst other things, that dialogue is not attenuated by demands for an authoritative, singular, or complete account of the work. How can the practitionerresearcher provide an account of their work without furthering the erosion of agency attributed to material things? This chapter will investigate this question through exploring three interrelated questions: what is the role of material things in their production; to what extent is creative production a projection or co-production; and finally, what is the status of the researcher’s involvement in the work? These questions will be addressed by drawing on conceptual schemes provided by Martin Heidegger’s account of “being-with” and John Law’s account of material semiotics—a perhaps unusual, yet productive, conjunction. It will aim at providing researchers undertaking research through the production of creative artefacts a “materially grounded” model for understanding the relation between research and work. KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION

The challenges outlined above are not unique to researchers in the creative arts: for any researcher making claims about the world the question of the relation between thought and thing is an issue. The question is, therefore, how do these challenges manifest for researchers in the creative arts? Researchers in the creative arts are confronted by these issues through the very nature of their research production or, in other words, because their practice involves materialisation—or working with material or bodily form. But materialisation, or working with materials, is not confined to research in the creative arts. Indeed, there are few disciplines that deal only with the symbolic or purely conceptual, such as mathematics. Writing, although it operates as a system of symbols, can also be understood as involving materialisation such as, for example, when what is being said is performed rather than merely stated. Such writing is often called performative and it can take the form of either creative writing or conceptual analysis. Given this, what makes a research thesis in the creative arts different from other disciplines? Perhaps the most obvious point of differentiation, as I have stated elsewhere (Allpress & Barnacle, 2009), is in the way the thesis is conveyed. To have a thesis means taking a position: putting something forward. While the thesis is conveyed largely theoretically in a conventional, written, research thesis, it is conveyed largely empirically in research conducted through the production of creative works. In written work a position is often put forward theoretically through argument, which depends on evidence, and may be obtained either empirically, through case 66

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studies or experimentation, or theoretically through conceptual analysis. The thesis refers to the evidence through theoretical description and analysis. In other words, the thesis, in this case, represents or stands-in-for the evidence. In creative research, however, a position is put forward empirically through the creation of some kind of empirical artefact which itself embodies and could be said to perform the research (the case may be similar for creative writing based research or writing that aims to be performative). Such artefacts could take the form, for example, of a three dimensional prototype or model, film, drawings or paintings, or creative writing. All research concerns itself with matters of one kind of another, whether conceptual or material. However, for researchers undertaking research through the production of creative artefacts or works, where the research is embodied in or through the work, the nature of the work takes on particular significance. The work or artefact can become more than merely a record of the research to instead embody and enact both the research process and outcome (for more on this see Murray, 2005; van Schaik, 2005; Carter, 2004; Downton, 2003). It is for this reason that creative research and certain types of performative writing are not entirely dissimilar. For Cameron Tonkinwise (2007), theory can be a practice in that deliberate and distinct affects can be generated through carefully crafting materials and meanings into relational forms. Given the conventional conception of a research thesis, however, as elucidated through written argument it is no surprise that those undertaking research through the production of creative works are confronted with significant contradictions when attempting to account for their practice through conventional modes of knowledge generation. Such modes, for example, want to assert the objectivity and singularity of the produced work. They tend to assert the value, that is, of those aspects of things that are stable, singular and enduring over those that are ephemeral, intangible and multiple. Such differences are neither accidental nor benign, but instead propose fundamentally different conceptions of being, or what is, and make a different claim concerning what matters about what is. Scientism or positivism asserts that empiricism offers a superior form of knowledge production and has broad currency today, both within and outside academia. It has meant that the kind of knowledge that can be generated through quantitative empirical methods has become privileged over other forms of knowing. There are, of course, other factors contradicting this dominance. For example, scepticism of science has been increasing in the community at large and relativism, in many guises, remains popular, although often unexamined. My argument here is not that we should abandon science, nor what it often gets equated with—enquiry conducted through quantitative empirical methods—but that there are also other forms of legitimate knowledge production. These need to be accounted for on their own terms. KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION AS MATERIALISATION

What is it, then, that is distinctive about creative research production? I am going to address this question here through the notion of material semiotics as developed by Law (1992, 2007). This notion is useful because it offers a way of understanding 67

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all knowledge production as a process of materialisation, thus destabilising the usual operation of the theory-practice distinction. Material semiotics foregrounds the idea of performativity, or that all realities, whether they exist as ideas or material form are enacted or, in other words, are relational effects. Realities, that is, are enacted through a network of relations. This shifts the focus from a conception of things as autonomous entities to their enactment and performance within a network of relations. As a conceptual apparatus this levels a set of divisions usually taken to be foundational: nature/culture, subject/object etc. It thereby becomes possible to re-think the forces involved in research production and, specifically for this context, to understand creative research practice without the limitations of a narrow conception of the theory-practice distinction. The notion of practice evokes performance and action: doing. Theory, on the other hand, is linked to speculation and contemplation, based on observation and reasoning. Behind this division lies a deeper division between mind and body: whereas theory is considered the domain of the mind, practice is considered the domain of the body. Such thought is called dualistic because it carves up the world into two neatly separated and opposing domains. Dualistic thinking is also hierarchical because the concepts on one side of the equation are privileged over those on the other. Thus, mind is treated as superior to body; culture to nature; man to woman; human to non-human; theory to practice. The provenance of dualism can be found in the seventeenth century French philosopher, René Descartes. While Descartes cannot be held solely responsible for dualism he is certainly its most enduring advocate. The problems of previous ages and thinkers linger through time within established ways of thinking and doing. Descartes’ problem, which still resonates today, was that of how there could be accord between our ideas and the way things are in the world. Both his unsatisfactory resolution to this problem and what it enabled us to think remain potent sources of confusion and uncertainty today (the popularity of relativism is a case in point). Descartes promulgated the idea that thought can exist entirely separate from the world that it purports to be about. In other words, that language and world can be entirely at odds. Descartes came to this position because he was searching for a foundation for knowledge that would provide absolute certainty. Due to the inherent fallibility of the senses, however, Descartes discovered that to make certainty possible mind must be insulated from body. This results in a radical interiority in which certainty can only be attributed to thought itself, or reason “I think therefore I am.” Can I affirm that I possess any one of all those attributes of which I have lately spoken as belonging to the nature of body? After attentively considering them in my own mind, I find none of them that can properly be said to belong to myself ... I am therefore, precisely speaking, only a thinking thing, that is, a mind, understanding, or reason (Descartes, 1641/2007). Since Descartes, therefore, it has become possible to think of consciousness as independent of the world, including one’s own body, and thinking and theorising have been privileged over, and separated from, making and doing. 68

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Dualisms pre-figure reality with a set of foundational concepts defined in opposition to their negative pair. They are foundational because they operate within conceptual schemes as unquestioned categories, established in advance of enquiry. This changes, however, if foundational concepts such as these become treated as secondary, rather than primary, that is, as effects: as effects of rather than grounds for. This is what the notion of performativity aims to do in material semiotics. Foundational concepts become effects of a network of relations, for which there is no foundation, just more networks of relations. Material semiotics explores the enactment of realities and the making of knowledge. Significantly, therefore, conceptions of knowledge that focus solely on an author/creator, or even social construction, are misleading as they fail to engage with the complex, heterogeneous and multiple elements involved. Rather, material semiotics foregrounds effects: the enactment and performance of things within a network of relations. The question then becomes, how do these networks function to produce certain effects within different contexts? Given the multiple elements of research production, including social arrangements, physical spaces, disciplinary practices, research policies, technologies, and discursive practices, how does a research project hold itself together? How do relations assemble or fail to assemble? When questions regarding research practice are posed this way, formed and framed through the conceptual apparatus of material semiotics, the question of whether research is theoretical or practice-based becomes of limited value. In this schema, all research is a form of materialisation. What matters is the enactment and performance of knowledge within a specific research context. Nevertheless, a reengagement with materiality is not as simple as wishing it so: our conceptual schemes are dogged companions. The modern subject is not easily displaced from their assumed vantage point and the consolations of certainty not easily abandoned. The modern subject struggles not to see themselves at the centre of everything: The two central features of modernity are that man is the centre of beings as a whole, the subject to which they are all referred, and secondly, that the beingness of beings as a whole is conceived as the being-represented of the producible and explainable (Inwood, 2000, p. 67). Moreover, as touched on above in the discussion of Descartes, a dualistic account of subject and world did not arise by accident, but because of the appeal of certainty. As Heidegger puts it: Descartes does not doubt because he is a sceptic; rather, he must become a doubter because he posits the mathematical as the absolute ground and seeks for all knowledge a foundation that will be in accord with it (Heidegger, 1967, p. 157). Ironically, it was the appeal of certainty, the possibility of the eradication of doubt, that prompted Descartes to embark on a thought process of doubt and doubting everything. The result, however, is not certainty but a radical ontological and epistemological crisis. Descartes left us wondering not only whether it is possible to know the world but also whether there is a world out-there at all. If the mind and 69

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body are fundamentally distinct and we cannot be sure of what our senses are telling us then what we think constitutes the world might just be fake, the product of an elaborate hoax, as depicted in the film The Matrix (1999) for example. Descartes reduces everything into two types of thing called substances: spatial or physical extension and thought or reason. Consistent with the hierarchy of this dualistic ontology, the mind, or reason, is privileged over, and fundamentally different from, matter. Materiality is treated as inert and dumb. In Descartes’ formulation, therefore, the mind gets understood as injecting space with ideas and forms and space, in turn, in its complete emptiness does nothing but receive them (Borradori, 2000). It is easy to recognise in these ideas the privileged status of man and reason so characteristic of the Western Enlightenment. But it is the epistemological and ontological implications that are not always fully recognised, particularly in terms of their continued resonance today. The material world continues to be conceived as subject to the dominance of reason. This is evident within popular accounts of perception where, due to metaphors borrowed from information technology, sensual perception is characterised in terms of information transmission—the senses provide the software and the brain the hardware. Perception becomes the process whereby external impressions, or sense data are received and transferred to the brain to become information or knowledge. In other words, meaning is constructed by the human subject out of sensory inputs and projected onto a world out there. Not only are things in the world reduced to discrete items of information, but our primary way of being in the world becomes that of information processor. How else might the relation between thought and world be understood? BEING-WITH

In the hermeneutic-phenomenological tradition, being in the world comes before knowing the world. In other worlds, epistemology is in the service of ontology, rather than the other way around (Descartes). This completely changes the status of human and reason with respect to the material world. Most notably, perception is no longer conceived primarily in terms of knowledge and understanding. For Richard Zaner, summarising the phenomenological position: Perception is not in the service of knowledge (or even, more generally, it does not merely or primarily yield information about the world’s material structure); rather, it is in the service of action. That is to say, perceived objects are what the body does or can do to them (Zaner, 1964, p. 246). The whole problem of whether the world really exists or how we can know the world with any certainty is rendered uninteresting if being in the world is considered the precursor to knowing the world. It is not that knowledge is no longer problematic but that the search for absolute certainty is rendered futile and ill-judged. How would the relation between thought and thing, researcher and researched, artist and work be situated in a non-Cartesian account of knowledge generation? Martin Heidegger, the twentieth century German philosopher, challenges Descartes’

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legacy on a number of fronts. In doing so he provides alternative ways of understanding self and world that in turn open-up different ways of accounting for research practice. Heidegger challenges Descartes’ legacy by arguing that our access to the material world does not primarily occur conceptually or intellectually, but instead, through being constantly immersed in activities, projects and practices with others, both human and non-human. Being-with is the condition of human existence. Heidegger calls this our situatedness, “always already” open to the possibilities of being. Thus, how we understand the world arises on the cusp between the history of being—how being has been thought in the past—and the possibilities of being that are opened up in our everyday practices, projects and activities. In other words, what is, including how things become what they are, and what we know are mutually dependent: ontology and epistemology are inseparable. In the words of Iain Thomson: Our very ‘being-in-the-world’ is shaped by the knowledge we pursue, uncover, and embody. (There is) a troubling sense in which it seems that we cannot help practising what we know, since we are ‘always already’ implicitly shaped by our guiding metaphysical presuppositions (Thomson, 2001, p. 250). So, for example, in the case of research, we organise ideas, entities and creatures into projects, alter and construct things. Not only are things, in turn, receptive to our manipulations, but they also act on and orient our own behaviour and actions. The qualities, features and limitations of materials inform what we can do with them. Moreover, our own actions and thoughts are also organised and mobilised in response to other people and things. Heidegger is particularly interested in the way in which modern technologies orient our behaviour, often unbeknown to us. The word processor, for example, enables modes of writing, such as re-writing and writing over, which become restricted by the greater commitment demanded when writing with pen and paper. As Georgina Moore points out (2007), the default configurations of digital animation software orient aesthetic and other decisions along Cartesian lines by privileging form. Our tendency to refer to technologies as merely tools reinforces the mistaken view of our own separation from, and control over, the world around us. We think of tools as subject to our will rather than the tools themselves as orienting and informing our ideas and actions. All things, according to Heidegger, whether works of art, buildings, texts or shoes, act on and in the world. Heidegger describes the action of things in terms of gathering and initiating. In his lecture Building, Dwelling, Thinking, he provides the example of a bridge: The bridge swings over the stream ‘with ease and power.’ It does not just connect banks that are already there. The banks emerge as banks only as the bridge crosses the stream. The bridge expressly causes them to lie across from each other. One side is set off against the other by the bridge. ... It brings stream and bank and land into each other’s neighbourhood. The bridge gathers the earth as landscape around the stream (Heidegger, 1993, p. 354).

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The bridge is an intervention that gathers the otherwise disparate elements of bank and stream into relation with one another as a passage. In doing so the bridge initiates a whole set of relationships between the different regions and towns in terms of both commerce and social relations. He continues: Bridges initiate in many ways. The city bridge leads from the precincts of the castle to the cathedral square; the river bridge near the country town brings wagons and horse teams to the surrounding villages. The old stone bridge’s humble brook crossing gives to the harvest wagon its passage from the fields into the village and carries the lumber cart … Always and ever differently the bridge initiates the lingering and hastening ways of men to and fro, so that they may get to the banks and in the end, as mortals, to the other side. ... The bridge gathers, as a passage that crosses ... (Heidegger, 1993, p. 354). Through his analysis of how things gather and initiate Heidegger turns our attention away from what things are toward what they do. By extension, for the artist or designer, the question becomes: what relationships does this particular creative materialisation enable or delimit and what kind of possibilities are being opened up or closed down? For Heidegger, rather than thinking of creative work as representing the thoughts of a creator, we need to understand it instead as disclosing or revealing a world. The work of creative production necessarily, therefore, exceeds the creator. Indeed, the artists own becoming can be understood as occurring with and through the process of creative production. As Barbara Bolt argues, “… in creative arts practice, ‘research’ commences in practice—in our dealings with the tools and materials of production, rather than a self-conscious attempt at theorisation” (2004, p. 1). It is through the process of materialisation, actually testing out materials, drawing sketches, making models etc, that the work of thinking occurs in a coproduction between the various actors involved—hands, eyes, key-board, mouse, screen, pencil, paper, paint, fabric etc. IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH

There are different stories to be told about creative works and what they mean. We can account for material things in terms of what is quantifiable: length, breadth and depth. This reveals those aspects of things favoured by Descartes, those that are stable and enduring. We can also account for material things through wondering about what they do: what is initiated, made possible or enabled. This reveals those aspects that are ephemeral, intangible and multiple. In the first story, the researcher is absent and the second they are present. Scientism favours the first story: it seeks certainty, repeatability and singularity, an account that is definitive. The second story foregrounds dialogue between the researcher and researched and focuses on how something works or what it does. This account aims to be compelling, to offer insight, but it can never be definitive. Both approaches propose a different relation to being, to what is, and make a different claim concerning what matters about what is. The stories told about research are not neutral, but instead reflect underlying ontological frameworks concerning our disposition toward being, or what is. For 72

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Heidegger, modern technologies orient our behaviour in ways that are not necessarily benign because they inform and transform the way that we relate to, and treat, ourselves and other things (see Heidegger, 1977). Of concern to Heidegger is what he sees as the logic of efficiency and control permeating modern culture, from machines to buildings and social policy. An ever-increasing demand for efficiency has rendered much of the world useful, as resource awaiting some kind of production: for example, a forest is reduced to timber and a person to their potential within a labour market. By making life apparently easier modern technologies tend to embody this drive for greater efficiency—just think of the ever faster, ever more convenient motor car—but they also promote instrumentality as the freeway renders a journey in terms of two abstract points in space, a and b. This drive for efficiency is evident even in the modern conception of thesis. According to Heidegger, in ancient Greek times the meaning of thesis meant “letting lie forth” in the sense of making an oblation, or “bringing something forth into what is present” such as letting a statue be set up (see Heidegger, 1993, pp. 207–209). According to the contemporary concept of thesis, however, it has come to be understood, instead, as commandeering and “fixing in place”. While the former involves what Heidegger calls “letting happen” the latter suggests securing, or holding down. For Heidegger, the significance of this difference concerns the nature of truth: whether truth is conceived in terms of an “account to be rendered” or as “unconcealing”. These two alternatives involve vastly different assumptions concerning the nature of knowledge and the relation of thought to world, the former rationalistic and the latter poetic. As I have argued elsewhere (Allpress & Barnacle, 2009), the account of thesis as a “letting happen” offers an important model for understanding research on its own terms when it involves the production of creative works. Rather than the definitive account, the aim of such research is to let truth happen in the work. In this conception, truth is not projected onto the work by the researcher/artist, neither does it reside in the artefact itself. Instead, it arises in the confluence between artist, artefact, and its particular social, historical and spatial context. As Bolt puts it, “the work of art is not the artwork” (2004, p. 6). For the researcher/artist needing to account for their work the challenge is that of cultivating a disposition toward the work such that it can do its work. In other words, finding a way to be with the work: of letting it happen. It is no coincidence, given the impulse within the contemporary conception of thesis to fix in place, that a search for the definitive account has come to dominate conceptions of research practice. As a particular modality of enquiry, analysis involves breaking down and the separation of elements into constituent parts and is defined in opposition to synthesis, which involves bringing together. Within such a Heideggerian context “letting truth happen in the work” will invariably sound, at best, anachronistic. It involves cultivating a disposition of openness to the cobecoming between artist and artefact. Many creative researchers will already do this, but may struggle to account for their practice through the research discourses readily available. There is a need, therefore, for stories of being with the work to be

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told so that such approaches can receive greater recognition and understanding as a way of analysing and communicating creative research practice. REFERENCES Allpress, B., & Barnacle, R. (2009). Projecting the PhD: Architectural design research by and through projects. In D. Boud & A. Lee (Eds.), Changing practices in doctoral education (pp. 157–170). London: Routledge. Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs, 28(3), 801–831. Bolt, B. (2004). Heidegger, handlability and praxical knowledge. In Art & design update: New policies – new opportunities, Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools 2004 Conference. Retrieved July 19, 2007, from http://www.acuads.com.au Borradori, G. (2000). Virtuality, philosophy, architecture. In D: Columbia documents for architecture and theory, 7, 57–73. Carter, P. (2004). Material thinking: The practice and theory of creative research. Melbourne, Victoria: Melbourne University Press. Downton, P. (2003). Design research. Melbourne, Victoria: RMIT University Press. Descartes, R. (1641/1997). Meditations (J. Veitch, Trans.). Retrieved July 3, 2003, from http: //philos.wright.edu/DesCartes/Meditations.html Heidegger, M. (1967/1998). Plato’s doctrine of truth (T. Sheehan, Trans.). In W. McNeill (Ed.), Pathmarks (pp. 155–182). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology and other essays (W. Lovitt, Trans.). New York: Garland. Heidegger, M. (1993). Building dwelling thinking. In D. F. Krell (Ed.), Basic writings: Martin Heidegger (pp. 342–363). New York: Harper Collins Publishers. Heidegger, M. (1993). Basic writings (D. F. Krell, Ed.). New York: Harper Collins Publishers. Inwood, M. (2000). A Heidegger dictionary. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers. Law, J. (1992). Notes on the theory of the actor-network: Ordering, strategy and heterogeneity. Retrieved December 13, 2004, from http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/papers/law-notes-on-ant.pdf Law, J. (2007). Actor network theory and material semiotics, Retrieved October 21, 2007, from http://www.heterogeneities.net/publications/Law-ANTandMaterialSemiotics.pdf Moore, G. (2007). Overcoming the curse of precision: Exploring the dynamic and ambiguous nature of visual perception using 3D animation software. Unpublished master’s thesis, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Murray, S. (2005). Architectural design and discourse. Architectural Design Research, 1, 83–102. van Schaik, L. (2005). Mastering architecture: Becoming a creative innovator in practice. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Academy. Thomson, I. (2001). Heidegger on ontological education, or: How we become what we are. Inquiry, 44(3), 243–268. Tonkinwise, C. (2007). My theory practice joys. Paper presented at the Design Graduate Research Conference, School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Zaner, R. (1964). The problem of embodiment: Some contributions to a phenomenology of the body. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

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6. WAYS OF PROPOSING Art as Proposition: From the Darwin Translations

ON FINDING A RESEARCH SUBJECT

It happened here in the heat of this room1 From the Darwin Translations began as a simple next step. A ten-year series of art performances and installations examining optimism (The Prediction Pieces) had just been completed. As an extension of this work on prediction I began to think of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, published in 1859, with its description of the survival of the fittest as a profoundly important example of a predictive theory, not determining a future but presenting patterns likely to continue. From the Darwin Translations (Jones, 2005) was envisaged at that stage as a complex description of evolution that would evolve as projects were developed. My assumption was that some new knowledge would arise through an elaborating and layering of physical manifestations of this description. I would, after all, be bringing the eyes and voice of a twentieth century Australian woman2 to the writings of a nineteenth century English man. The research for the series, which included study of Darwin’s notebooks at Cambridge University Library and then travel to Chile, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands following Darwin’s route, was made possible by an Australian Artist’s Creative Fellowship (known as “Keatings” after the Australian Prime Minister, who initiated the Fellowships) for four years (2003–2006). Once this initial research was underway, and in response to issues on sexuality beginning to be discussed widely by feminists, my focus shifted from Darwin’s work on natural selection to his less well-known writings on sexual selection⎯from his major treatise On the Origin of the Species, published in 1859, to his less well known work The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, published in 1871. The shift of focus invited this twentieth century woman to address elements undiscussed but nonetheless present by implication in Darwin’s writing on sexual attraction—namely the place of sexual fantasy and erotica within sexuality as it might relate to a woman’s selection of a sexual partner. The question became a threefold one that could be seen to sit within important contemporary cultural issues regarding sexuality in Western society, particularly for feminists. In finding myself now focused on issues of sexual selection, I was obliged to address the following: In what ways might Darwin’s work on sexual selection address the erotic? What might be the purpose of erotica in contemporary Western culture E. Grierson and L. Brearley, Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices, 75–96. © 2009 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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from a woman’s viewpoint?3 And then, in what ways might a series of artworks contribute to our understanding of both Darwin’s work and erotica itself ? Throughout this essay, as has occurred through the series over the fifteen years that followed, these questions remain in the air as invitations for consideration rather than being presented as questions with specific answers. And they take a more positive form when articulated as three dimensional artworks. What was constructed in the eight intertwined works that make up From the Darwin Translations (Jones, 2005) was a series of re-presentations of images of attraction by plants, animals and humans that addressed agency (issues of power) in sexual play and reproduction, anthropocentrism (as Darwin had done)4 and ideas of beauty and creativity (with which he was also implicitly concerned in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871). Importantly the works made would be propositions for my own and viewers’ ongoing joint considerations—neither statements nor opinions but offerings that might elaborate over time to create new insights into Darwin’s work and into ourselves. Fifteen years later, my ongoing hope is that the reframing of Darwin’s work through From the Darwin Translations (Jones, 2005), and now through this essay (the result of the layering of ideas over many years), will also enable an examination of the “propositional” itself as a research basis for artworks. Eight translations or versions of this study of attraction were made and exhibited in Australia, Europe and Asia over the next eight years (1994–2000), primarily as video installation but also as performance, text and film. Of these, the first six works focused on single images as moments of sexual selection while each of the last two was a survey of many images and moments. The works, Room with Finches; Sexual Play in the Galapagos Islands; Paradise Woolloomooloo; Spitfire 123; In the Garden of Eden; Boys in Loud Cars; Demonstrations and Details from the Facts of Life and 1000 Years of Sexual Play, were then presented together in a web archive (Jones, 2005) as part of a PhD project, and finally exhibited as Darwin with Tears (2008). This was an exhibition of installations and catalogue at the Australian Centre for Contempoary Art (ACCA) in Melbourne— the exhibition and catalogue situating an initial contribution to the world-wide celebrations of the 200 year anniversary in 2009 marking Darwin’s birth. This chapter includes a series of notes, letters and essays completed for papers, talks, proposals and catalogue essays that, through the addition of background material (notes, catalogue descriptions, letters, writings from grant applications) serve to clarify the research process for the artworks and also reveal changes in my thinking over time. Furthermore, because my own ideas about the works change as time passes, they also provide evidence of the importance of context (of time, and place) with regard to meaning making in artworks. As written in 1985 in an address on performance art, titled Slipping And Sliding Across The Disciplines5…

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This paper has a number of sections. All of them include quotations—comments by others who have interested me and influenced my thoughts and quotations from talks and writings with which I have struggled in the fourteen years I have been slipping and sliding across the disciplines. There is no attempt made to present a coherent, linear argument here. There are gaps between the ideas presented as well as repetitions. Rather than travel a line, I will be circling around, spiralling in on recurring notions … jumping backwards and forwards through the years. Hopefully, in the gaps and repetitions there will be openings for a discussion (Jones, 1985). ABOUT THE RESEARCH ON PROPOSITIONS

Over and over over and over over and over6 The works that make up From the Darwin Translations (Jones, 2005) form part of a far larger research project—one that has taken thirty years and continues. It is the development of a propositional means for carrying out art practice. In summary, a proposition is an offering in the form of images, sounds, or ideas that is one’s own. One or a number may coalesce to create a new perception, one that is at every stage irreducible. Propositions eschew analysis, the binary oppositions of form and content, mind and body and the illustration of intention. They embrace the material realm of imagery and are responsive to both viewer and context. While, as writer and academic Teresa Brennan (1995) has shown, they are available in the presentation of new ideas, they are particularly relevant as a means to present art and to have it understood as research. For example, the Australian artist, Fred Williams spent his life making highly idiosyncratic paintings of the Australian landscape. Those paintings, for many Australians, have profoundly influenced the way we see that landscape. As an oeuvre (and also when looked at individually) these paintings constitute a proposition⎯not an analysis or an answer but an invitation. This discussion traces the steps that led to this focus on the propositional as the basis of my own art practice for the past thirty years and my teaching of processes and methodologies across visual art, theatre and dance throughout that time. It is informed by my ongoing projects as well as those of my students. It is written as an invitation to artists and viewers of art to have the courage to become increasingly sensitive to the effects of artworks on our thoughts and feelings as individuals and as social beings. From the beginnings then …

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Figure 1. Room with Finches. Installation. Anna Schwartz Gallery. Lyndal Jones. 1994 DEVELOPMENT OF A PERSONAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Now for The Question of Suffering and The Question Of Enjoyment 7 In 1983 I spent several months travelling around China by myself.8 I travelled, trusting that I was learning something important but not knowing what that might be. “I’m getting culture shock”, I wrote to friends but in truth, my daily life was simple and wonderful, not articulated by self-conscious learning or change or even the accumulation of imagery or stories in the ways I had imagined before going. This was not research as I knew it. Unless it could be called a type of anthropological seepage—one of allowing myself to be influenced and affected rather than coming to conclusions through the utilisation of any systematic basis of examination.9 For instance, in Beijing I decided to learn to understand Peking Opera as this was all that was available on television every night. So I watched it assiduously and went to performances where ever I could. Nothing happened, despite the relentlessness. It was torture. Night after night of music that remained dissonant, unfamiliar, with performance styles I did not know how to watch. Until Kunming. On weekends in Green Park in Kunming, China, in 1983, there were local amateur performances. These were performances of the operas of course. A huge circle of people carved out performance arenas (there were several, like a kind of crazy busking competition for audiences) and people would just step forward and sing the parts. Bertoldt Brecht10 would have been proud. No costumes, wildly varied performance styles and qualities. At some point I realised, from a background of weeks of watching all of that opera on TV, that I was now simply part of the

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crowd, not a struggling outsider. It was now abundantly clear what was going on and where the pleasures lay. So a month later in Shanghai I asked, with the off-hand smugness of the initiated, where the best opera was being performed and was directed with great enthusiasm to a theatre in the city. It was a vast auditorium and I think I may have been the only Westerner. People seemed worried for me. There was a lot of head turning and whispering. I discovered why when I realised this was going to be a very long evening, not of opera but of stand-up comedy with jokes, told in Mandarin and various dialects that everyone else there found very funny. So the learning began all over again. The result of this time in China, this undirected openness was far-reaching. Only afterwards, back in Australia did I realise that I had become increasingly discomforted about being so open. And this discomfort only increased on my return. While China had been expectedly foreign, Australia was the culture shock. Like many travellers, I had become detached from some of my assumptions, so could begin to see the relationships that distinguish this culture by being away from it. Jonathan Miller talked about Darwin who: spent four years sailing around the world, collecting, describing, collating, in order to discover what was under his nose at home. He had to shift his frame of reference in order to make new connections with information that was so familiar it was invisible (Miller, 1982, p. 4). Now, however, I had a personal research method that could be articulated. It centred upon immersing myself in an unknown (unknowable?) area of study/place/culture and trusting that something important would become evident, even in retrospect. The research started earlier than this however, with the decision to simply engage with a particular place, on a particular subject. The series of experiences and thoughts that occured developmentally and accumulatively in response led to these unknowable places because they were responses to context. Something like this is described as an exercise for actors-in-training by Viola Spolin in her book, Improvisation for the Theatre (1973), in which she outlines an exercise rather prosaically as “Yes And”.11 This exercise, like the trip to China itself, is based on the embrace of a mystery of outcome, beginning as it does with only the starting point and requiring ongoing responsive development as a result of acute attention to the contextual stimuli. By not judging and only by continuing to the next point—one that is informed by context, learning and chance occurrences—does development occur. The skill required is that of a heightened level of awareness of both what is happening and one’s reactions to it. This skill leads to the increase in sophistication in the development of an artist. This can be taught.12

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Figure 2. Spitfire 123. Film Still, Venice Biennale. Lynal Jones. 1996 ABOUT THE KINAESTHETIC

The touch soft, like the warmth of fur13 What is being spoken, then, is a sequence of actions. While one might imagine that training in the visual arts centrally involves developing visual acuity, the contention here is that the sense most highly developed in the strongest visual artists is, in fact, the kinaesthetic sense—the ability to develop images that arise from actions; actions that both artist and viewers respond to with empathy. For example, it is the action, the game and/or the attention to movement, place, physicality and weight that has been central to the projects of artists as respected and disparate as Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, Lucio Fontana, the members of the Fluxus Movement, the American Abstract Expressionists, Rebecca Horn, Carolee Schneeman, Emily Kame Kngwarreye. An acknowledgement of the centrality of the kinaesthetic can be witnessed also in twentieth century sculpture with artists as diverse as Richard Serra and Jessica Stockholder, the later focus on performance art and, more recently, on video and works utilising interactive technologies.14 While in London in 1999, viewing a retrospective exhibition of Jackson Pollock’s paintings at the Tate Gallery, I came across the following statement: At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyse or ‘express’ an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on a canvas was not a picture but an event. The painter no longer approached his easel with an image in his mind: he went up to it with material in his hand to do something to that other piece of material in front of him. The image would be the result of the encounter (Rosenberg, 1952).15

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It was written as a small didactic panel from a statement by the prominent American critic, Harold Rosenberg in 1952, to accompany Pollock’s works, and was the basis for Rosenberg’s invention of the term action painting. The Western philosophical focus for an understanding of the physical, of materiality, of action has been articulated largely through what Edmund Husserl first called phenomenology (Eagleton, 1983, p. 55), and later developed by Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, then most notably by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In his major work, The Phenomenology of Perception (1962) Merleau-Ponty describes phenomenology as having its emphasis “on a matter of describing not on explaining or analysing” (1962, p. viii), and his concern “with the wonder of interrelated experiences”. Furthermore, he adds, “We are ourselves this network of relationships” (p. xiii). This is encompassed by the kinaesthetic however. Perhaps it is only an issue of translation across disciplines. Certainly the only other visual artist I have discovered to have used kinaesthetics to describe their practice was New Zealander Len Lye, in the 1920s. Roger Horrocks, in the catalogue Len Lye (2000), referred to Lye’s “kinaesthetic” or “nerve muscle” approach to movement. Horrocks continued: In typical fashion, his conception of the unconscious was highly physical, associated with those areas of the brain most closely linked with the body and regarded by biologists as more ancient and primitive than the neocortex or new brain (Horrocks, 2000, p. 10). While it is fascinating to discover another artist for whom the physicality of the project is central, it is disconcerting to find it discussed as a kind of eccentricity. My own use of the kinaesthetic to discuss the physicality of art comes from the world of dance. The relationship between thought and action can best be found in the formative work of Mabel Elsworth Todd (1937) based on her study of anatomy and physiology. After describing the kinaesthetic sense as the learned physiological ability to measure distance based on the movement of eye muscles, Todd continues to describe how it operates in everyday terms: … we do not measure the number of pounds we are about to lift or the number of stairs we are about to climb before we change our co-ordinated movements to lift our bodies or to adjust them to a level plane after climbing; nor do we measure the distance of the rope from the floor before we jump over it, nor apply a yardstick to the field before we throw the ball. All these skills arrange themselves simultaneously in patterns of movement in response to impulses set up in the nervous system. These impulses activate muscles, and muscles move bony levers in orderly fashion according to the mechanical laws of leverage (Todd, 1937, p. 31). Todd was the first to describe the ways in which this physical ability is used to create physical changes through the use of imagined movements, which is now an essential part of the training of elite dancers and athletes. Todd’s writings on the

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use of mental imagery to create changes in physicality were picked up by such early twentieth century thinkers as Lulu Sweigard and Rudolph Laban and followed by the Israeli scientist Moshe Feldenkrais.16 This area of research has revolutionised practice in the fields of performance and dance, sport and health and provided a practical manifestation for developments in cognitive theory. In my notebook (Jones, 1992a) I found the following reference to this kinaesthetic sense as it related to the viewer and articulated a personal conviction that differences between individuals in sensory orientation lead to differences in their experiences of the world: We spent a lot of time talking about art—our responses to various bits of theatre, painting shows ... And I was curious that we could be friends and yet disagree on so many occasions. But we both began to recognise a pattern to it. She liked to be the voyeur, the outsider, and I on the other hand needed to be in the thick of it. To engage, to feel the danger of being close, to touch the sweat. And every time it worked, this analysis. Every time she liked to witness and I had to be ‘touched’. In hindsight, it was a testimony to our respect for this friendship that our sense of being right didn’t swamp a curiosity about the nature of the differences that only increased as we spoke. What it highlighted, of course, was a value system that we shared that was deeper than our disagreements about individual works of art. We shared the belief that different individuals perceive the world differently. And here was an ongoing example of the depth of that difference. A particular work was no longer ‘bad’ because it only engaged through voyeurism. But it was still viable that I found no point of interest or engagement. My own quest in art making became clearer at the same time. That quest was to find, to develop, to make available, to myself and others, ‘an aesthetics of the erotic,’ to use Susan Sontag’s term. A direct sensory experience (but an intelligence of the sensory rather than a mere dumb doing at the descriptive level). In other words, that this be its subject, its object, its form, its content, its signifier, its signified—whatever the language that is acceptable (Jones, 1992a). As a result of this process, the resulting work would have a sense of openness rather than resolution. It would automatically form a set of propositions.

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Figure 3. In the Garden of Eden. Video Still. Lyndal Jones. 1998 THE KINAESTHETIC AS A MATERIALITY OF EXPERIENCE

I run my hands down your fur17 And so there is a personal delight in evoking a world where the viewer is implicated, involved; where that viewer also experiences themselves moving both literally and imaginatively, where there is an actual sensual experience to be had. It could be at the imaginative level as with my own experience of a film by Bruce Connor (1976): Many years ago I saw a film by Bruce Connor called Crossroads.18 It used newsreel footage of the first nuclear test in the Pacific. The image of the explosion, that famous mushroom image, was repeated many times from various angles from different aeroplanes. The visual images in the first version were accompanied by the naturally occurring sound delay of the planes as recorded from a distance. This was followed by the delayed sound of the explosion. In the second version the whole visual sequence was repeated, this time without sound effects—now there was, instead, music by Steve Reich. In the first version there was threat in the sound of the plane approaching and suspense in the length of the delay before the sound of the explosion, occurring always some time (never the same time) after seeing the visual image of the explosion.

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In the second version I watched this recurring image as it became increasingly beautiful with the music—no matter that this was a nuclear bomb. I was shocked by how easily my senses had betrayed me, even as I knew what was happening. I had never experienced so materially political a work of art. It raised questions in me about manipulation through the senses as it also enabled me to experience this, about the nature of beauty, about what moves me. And I still see it and hear it and feel it so clearly (Jones, 1992c).19 For the most part in these works, however, the originals are physicalised through the utilisation of three-dimensional space as video installation (or performance) and heightened through a highly specific use of sound. AND NOW TO PROPOSITIONS

It’s like this. There is a type of art practice that is based on certainties. The beautiful object, the powerful metaphor, the central position of man, the power of a visual image to create change … And the art objects or actions that result from such certainties are themselves self-confident statements for us to peruse, learn from, be moved by, witness with awe. I find, however, that I cannot lead you to any certainties either political or aesthetic with any of my works. I have nothing to teach you. Not a single answer has been able to be provided. I must confess though that I don’t actually consider this an inadequacy. Art that has delighted, challenged, excited, moved me profoundly has always been speculative, propositional. Without answers but redolent with possibilities ... So with my new works From the Darwin Translations I wish simply to set forth a number of propositions. There is this … In this catalogue statement for the performance version of Room with Finches in Sydney (Jones, 1994c),20 I was able to finally name the process that underlay my work and, in so doing, to declare it my project.

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Interestingly, in a discussion with Teresa Brennan in Cambridge that year about methodologies, the political choices inherent in them and their effect on the resulting work, we were equally surprised that each of us was at that time actively using this term in describing our processes. In History After Lacan (1995), published later that year, Brennan wrote of a “propositional mode” as a series of assertions made without having to be supported by the statements of others. Teresa Brennan on the propositional mode: Whatever the content of an inspiration, carrying it through requires the confidence to proceed in the propositional mode. This is a style of thinking that seems to be tolerated more in the French academic world than outside it. Within the English-speaking academies, one does not proceed propositionally. One proceeds critically. Creditable academic work consists of research, exegeses and critiques (Brennan, 1993, p. xii). It will be seen that the presentation of both artwork and publication as a series of propositions, forms the research basis for this project. It now included both Brennan’s overview concept of it and my own strategies that comprise it. But the question remains: Is this valid as research within the English-speaking academies to which Brennan referred that is usually based on analysis and critique? Gillian Beer describes this methodology in a slightly different way: Symbol and metaphor, as opposed to analysis can allow insight without consequences because perceptions are not stabilised and categorised. They allow us fleetingly to inhabit contradictory experience without moralising it (Beer, 1983, p. 16). As these writings reveal, art that is propositional seeks to establish relationships between the work and the viewer beyond, or outside, analytic comprehension. It seeks other kinds of understandings including empathy, to utilise our ability to accumulate meaning in non-linear ways. It engages all the senses plus language towards a synthesis (as does metaphor or symbol) that is neither rational nor necessarily conscious. It is irreducible but none the less crucial. As mentioned earlier, the paintings of Australian artist, Fred Williams (and, I would add here, of Sidney Nolan) are now iconic (if somewhat unproblematised21) within this culture, providing highly particular and popular means to visualise the landscape (Williams) and central mythologies (Nolan) of Australia. Both bodies of work, when viewed either individually or as an oeuvre, are irreducible. They do not provide answers or analyses. They are propositions for seeing this culture differently. As research, it is possible to claim that both have had a profound and widespread effect. That the effect is immeasurable is neither here nor there. And I would argue further and more pertinently to this discussion, that Darwin’s writings in his notebooks may also be recognised as a series of propositions that accumulate as a theory.

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Figure 4. 1000 years of Sexual Play. Video Still. Lyndal Jones. 1996 THE INFLUENCE OF DARWIN’S METHODOLOGY

He married his cousin you know22 In order to understand how Darwin developed his theories I first studied his notebooks in 1993 in the Reading Room at the Cambridge University Library. The notebooks are a series of six small, leather-bound books, each a different colour, like the very private diaries of a teenage girl. Inside, the writing is barely legible, a palimpsest on fragile paper of thoughts and ideas very like the journals that most artists I know write: full of often seemingly disconnected thoughts and the actual working through of feelings and disparate thoughts jumbled together in half sentences and phrases with references to the everyday world around, and to the context of that time. Across all of the notebooks where were hundreds of examples, hundreds of questions asked in series of short (often incomplete) sentences and paragraphs from the minutiae of specific moments, specific features he had observed, discussions he had held. … In Notebook C, Darwin wrote the following cryptic statements for example (including an elaborate use capitals and punctuation): Is man more hairy than woman. Because Ancestors so, or has he assumed that character – female & young seem most like mean characters the others assumed – Daines Barrington says cock birds attract females by song. do they by beauty

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Erasmus says he has seen old Stallion tempted to cover old mare by being shown, young one (Darwin, 1838, p. 178). And, from Notebook D: The young of the Kingfisher has the colour on its back bright blue – Many of the pies assume the metallic tints, such as Magpie, Jay, & perhaps all the rollers - whenever metallic brilliancy is present in Young birds, one may be sure cock & hen will be alike - I presume converse is not true for he says Hen and cock Starling alike, yet young ones brown. – Sexual Selection If masculine character. added to species,. we can see why young and Female alike. Is it Male that assumes change, & is the offspring brought back to earlier type by Mother? – do these differences indicate, species changing forms, if so domestic animals ought to show them. – Anyhow not concerned with habits. (Darwin, 1838, p. 147, punctuation and syntax in original). One particular issue with regard to Darwin’s work and the central role it might have in this project was flagged by a meeting in Cambridge with the academic and author Gillian Beer. Her book, Darwin’s Plots (1983) clarified the ways in which Darwin’s theories have removed humans from the centre of the picture. One of the persistent impulses in interpreting evolutionary theory has been to domesticate it, to colonise it with human meaning, to bring man back to the centre of its intent. Evolutionary theory emphasises human unawareness of the past and obliges us to study a world from whose history we are largely absent. We must survey an antiquity in which we have no place (Beer, 1983, p. 16). But this work went further. Beer placed this body of knowledge within narrative structure. It is possible to have plot without man – both plot previous to man and plot even now regardless of him (p. 21). Darwin’s thinking was anti platonic, was anti-essentialist, ‘a philosophy of flux’ as Gerard Manly Hopkins observes when he speaks of ‘the ideas so rife now in a continuity without fixed points’ (p. 23). If I needed any further support for utilising Darwin’s theories, this sense of his project as a giant narrative exploring sexuality yet challenging humankind’s arrogance provided precisely the impetus I needed. Darwin’s biography by Adrian Desmond and James Moore (1991) was also influential. Their description of the details of Darwin’s voyage around the world determined the path I would also take in tracing Darwin’s journey. …

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A week out of Lima and the Beagle was 600 miles away, approaching the Galapagos islands. It was 15 September when they first sighted the closest island, Chatham (Desmond & Moore, 1991, p. 169). As described in the biography, I followed his path from Valparaiso and Santiago in Chile to Ecuador then out to the Galapagos Islands where I spent two weeks (also living on a small boat) making video images of the plants and animals there. As I had not been able to gain access to his diary of the voyage, their references to it became very important. It never occurred to me, that the production of islands only a few miles apart, and placed under the same physical conditions, would be dissimilar. I therefore did not attempt to make a series of specimens from the separate islands (Desmond & Moore, 1991, p. 184). Like Darwin, I did not know what I was looking for.

Figure 5. Boys in Loud Cars. Video Still. Lyndal Jones. 1997 ON THE ISSUE OF INTENTION

Don’t start that … rolling your eyes at me… Why make work that is propositional? Surely either a series of questions inviting analysis, or certainties that provide statements offer more as artworks? What might be the intention behind this particular process is the question most asked of the artist as viewers seek ways to understand what they see or hear. In those works where the outcome is designed to be open to the influence of the viewer’s own personal and social context, the artist is therefore forced to perform a contradictory double act as artist on the one hand and explicator of the intention of the work on the other. 88

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In seeing the artwork through the prism of authorial intention, the viewer’s focus is usually on the initial concept (as evidenced in many university requirements for statements of intention to precede research projects): The first travel video I ever shot was in Chile in 1993. At the time my intention was simply to learn how to use the camera. But it’s a funny thing about intention … I suspect the only ones able to be articulated at the beginning of any project are the most prosaic (Jones, 1986).23 How might an assessment of intention assist in an overview of the project? Even if this project were a scientific experiment, would the results be judged solely on intentions outlined at its commencement? Or even in retrospect? If this were the case, what happens when the results far outweigh the initial thoughts in terms of their social applicability? Do we not hope in all arenas of endeavour that the results will be far greater, more unexpected than we could ever anticipate or articulate when we started? Yet artworks are so often discussed only in terms of the artist’s intention. In this publication I am hoping to lighten intention from the weight of its central responsibility in the current discussion of artworks. With this in mind, this essay, and the works themselves, embody a series of propositions rather than the maintenance of a single, coherent position, emphasising writings completed at different times for public lectures and seminars or as proposals to funding bodies while this series was being produced. For example, the following paper on artistic intention was written as the catalogue essay for The Next Wave Festival Art Exhibition (Curator Gail Hastings) in Melbourne, 1992: We were driving to the beach, listening to the cricket commentary on the car radio. One of the passengers was American. He was silent, polite for a long time. Suddenly he could bear it no longer. Where on earth is Silly-Mid-On? I was driving, everyone else was asleep. Well… I began, having never had to think this through before ... everyone just knows where Silly-Mid-On is ... You see, there is an on side and an off side. The on side being the side of the ground the bat is turned to, and therefore the side to which the ball will most naturally be hit. The off side is the other one. Mid-On is half-way between the two wickets on the on side and Silly-Mid-On is so close to the bat you would have to be silly to stand there. Okay, he said, what about Slips. Undaunted and supported by my logic to date I continued ... Slips are on the off-side just behind the bat where the ball might be tipped or slip if the bat touched it but didn’t stop it. It follows that you have fieldsmen or women in slips when there are faster bowlers. (I was now making this up but it seemed reasonable.)

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And what’s this got to do with art? I hear you ask (even if you are not American). With sport, like cricket, there is a simple pleasure in the competition between individuals and groups. The pleasure of the game. I grew up amongst cricket players. As a result, it all seems very natural. I just wonder how long it would take someone who had no previous knowledge of the game to understand it without outside explanation. And at what stage, in this developing understanding, the pleasure would become available to them. The American was like an anthropologist looking in. But then, so also an Australian unfamiliar with the game and its language. Should cricketers be more responsible for explaining the game or changing the rules so that others can understand? It could be argued that aspects of cricket were certainly changed and popularised with the introduction of the one day game but for the most part the cricketers themselves weren’t told to do other than work on their game. No one ever asked of cricket ... But what is the bowler really trying to say here? No one ever asked of the Trobriand Islanders, But what is your culture really trying to say? The question is ridiculous. They are engaged in living. They are engaged in experiences of pleasure and commitment. With the art of every culture too, there are those who know the language/the rules (or conventions) and there are those who don’t. As in most areas of social life, to the group inside, the conventions are so known they seem natural ... how things are. To those outside there are clearly conventions at play but the language is foreign. It’s hard to find a structure for understanding. But, as with the cricket team, or the Trobriand Islanders: And what is the artist really trying to say? is the wrong question. It’s the wrong question to ask about art and it’s the wrong question to ask of the artist. The experience of the work is the work. And that experience is to be found within the person looking at the work. The question to be asked instead is What do I see and feel? And then, And what are the structures of this society that determine both how I perceive this work and how the artist has made it? And then, And what are the words I need in order to better understand this experience? To date, as a culture, we have been badly taught (Jones, 1992).24 90

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From the Darwin Translations (Jones, 2005) as a series can thus be seen to be a continually spiralling set of propositions as distinct from the answering of a number of questions or the development of a series of assertions. These propositions seek to encourage a range of different understandings of each work, and simultaneously of the series. The set of strategies developed has a long personal history, evident even in the following catalogue statement in 1985:25 On Looking … Some Memories That Seem Important… For many years I would stand outside famous cultural institutions and carefully scan the faces of people leaving to see if they had been changed in some visible way as a result of their experiences inside. There is a film of a performance … I saw it a long time ago …with two people on a beach. One stood on the circumference of a large circle inscribed in the sand, the other on a straight line nearby. They held between them a pole, each person with an end. As the person on the circle started to move, the other, in order to maintain their hold of the pole, was obliged to move also on their line. It became a walking dance. The pattern was simple, regular … My enjoyment lay in that and in predicting how far one person would travel before the length of the pole or the limitation of their line obliged one to turn and thus the other. I remember my fascination but not any attempt at meaningful ‘interpretation’. It was the play between constancy and change that I enjoyed. The back cover of a novel was extremely important to me. By reading it in conjunction with the last few pages I could get the story out of the way really quickly, thus being able to concentrate on the manner of the telling … Reader, viewer, audience pleasures such as these I describe form the basis upon which my work rests. I don’t set much store by originality. But patterns, sensory pleasure, a sense of the interconnectedness of my thoughts and ideas with those of others at both conscious and unconscious levels … They are another matter (Jones, 1985). And so works that make up From the Darwin Translations (2005) constitute propositions, not so much through metaphor as through the careful juxtaposition of images, an exploitation of the pervasiveness of sound, the use of chance techniques, the inclusion of various languages, the performance style of direct address and physical experience and an attitude to narrative as an accumulation of moments. 91

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They do this by utilising contradiction, gaps, repetition and close attention to shifting rhythms. The ultimate purpose is agency for both author and reader/viewer through the presentation of both as complex. NOTES 1 2 3

4 5

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From the script of Room with Finches, www.darwintranslations.com The works were developed during the 1990s. There is an extensive literature by women writing about attitudes to the erotic. This is the subject of a chapter, ‘Some random Notes on a Process’ in Darwin With Tears (2008), the catalogue for the survey exhibition of that name at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne, Australia. As articulated by Gillian Beer in her book Darwin’s Plots (1983). The following was written as an address on performance art, made for Woop Woop National Performance Event, Adelaide, 1986. It still serves well to both introduce this paper and to point out a concern that has echoed through my entire practice. From the script of Spitfire 123, website www.darwintranslations.com Throughout this chapter, the phrases that travel across the series will continue to appear as they appear continuously in the body of the website. In 1983 I received the Kiffy Rubbo Memorial Fellowship from the Visual Art Board of the Australia Council to spend four months in Japan and China. The aim of the research was to become more selfconscious of, and perhaps even shift, the image-base (which had been unquestioningly European) upon which my work rested. Most of the time was spent in China travelling by myself. As an undergraduate I had studied anthropology at Monash University. So I had a background in various philosophies and strategies for research in different cultures. The methodology I employed in this situation (of simple responsiveness with a heightened awareness of my responses and reactions) was, however, the methodology of an artist perhaps influenced by the anthropology training. The question remains: was this study a rejection of my training in anthropology or a return to it? The reference here is to Bertoldt Brecht’s development of a theatrical ‘style’ for his productions where the audience is continually reminded that this is only a performance (not real-life) by the use of direct address, by changing character onstage, by shifting between actor and character and by the use of song. These strategies are inscribed in the interactions as written in the scripts (e.g. where the character turns to the audience and comments on his or her own actions) as well as in Brecht’s many instructions to actors written as stage directions. Two actors are to imagine themselves somewhere (e.g. a park bench). One actor speaks. The other must respond using the words “Yes, and … ” The first must then do the same … and so on. Neither may reject by word or action, the subject offer made by the other at any time. They must respond to that offer. That pressure in itself provides the impetus for something unexpected to occur. Because of the pressure of rigorously maintaining the rules, the actors eventually find themselves discussing subject matter and carrying out activities that could not have been imagined at the starting point. This same set of rules can apply equally to actions. And, because it is responsive, the actors usually find themselves giving up shallow cleverness for a deeper engagement that often becomes unexpected and therefore engaging (in the danger of failure) for the audience. This strategy is equally successful in leading to open outcomes in the development of an artwork. It proved a potent basis for the development of a methodology for teaching creative process to both performers and visual artists over many years. The idea is to begin with any concept or image of interest knowing that, no matter how banal the issue being addressed, more personally important aspects will be revealed through this process. (The “artist’s block” arrives, not because an artist has nothing to say but because he or she continually rejects ideas that aren’t apparently worthy. They presume to know the ending without allowing a material process to occur.)

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13 14

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25

The next step is to take that initial material and simply say “Yes, and … ” rather than discard it. The beginning point is never revisited. The artist simply stays responsive to the material at hand and the immediacy of the situation, continuing to take that material to the next stage, always accepting what is there, so that a metamorphosis occurs. The notion of clarity of intention (where it means remaining responsible to the beginning point) is given up for a focus on the influence of the materials being used and the context within which the work is being placed. Process shifts intention in this case. This is supported in discussion of the work-as-intention is no longer part of the conversation. Instead, reception of the work becomes the focus. The viewer has to take responsibility. This could be seen to fall into the arena of “reception theory” as articulated in the 1980s (Eagleton, 1983). While I have reservations about finally limiting discussion of artworks to reception, the fact remains that the strategy continues to prove extraordinarily successful in providing a framework for theatre and for art students in the development of their works in an open, supportive environment as the pressure to find brilliance in a vacuum is removed. From the script of Room with Finches, http:/www.darwintranslations.com.htm While knowledge of these artists has come from many sources over many years, a most comprehensive overview was cited in Art since 1900: Modernism, antimodernism, postmodernism by Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin Buchloh. Harold Rosenberg, exhibition wall note, Jackson Pollock exhibition, Tate Britain London, 1999. Rosenberg’s citation was from his article, The American action painters for the New York magazine, ARTnews. 1952, p. 25. My postgraduate training has been in this area. In 1978 I received a certificate in Laban notation from Goldsmith’s College, London, and in 1989 completed a four year diploma to enable me to practice as a Feldenkrais Practitioner from the Cumberland College of Health Sciences, University of Sydney. From the script of Sexual Play in the Galapagos Islands, http:/ www.darwintranslations.com.htm Bruce Connor (1976). Crossroads (36 minutes) was a film of the first nuclear bomb exploding on Bikini Atoll using found newsreel footage. The Film That Bruce Made was from a paper presented at the Yvonne Rainer symposium, State Film Centre, Melbourne, 1993. 1994 catalogue entry for performance version of Room with Finches, in 25 Years of Australian Performance Art, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, national touring exhibition, Australia. Leela Gandhi in her book, Postcolonial theory (1998, p. 108) describes the nostalgic yearning of nationalism within its xenophobia, racism and loathing. From Demonstrations and details from the facts of life, www.darwintranslations.com From my personal notebook (Jones, 1986). “Intention is the key to Lamarck’s concepts. And in this he accords with human wishes and human language. It is extraordinarily difficult to eradicate the language” (Gillian Beer, 1983, p. 23). 1985 catalogue entry for the exhibition Meaning and Excellence, University Gallery, University of Melbourne and the State Film Centre, Melbourne to accompany my performance Prediction Piece 7.

REFERENCES Adriani, G. (1989). Joseph Beuys: Drawings, objects and prints. Stuttgart, Germany: Institute of Foreign Cultural Relations. Annear, J., & Danko, A. (Ed.). (1980). Women at work (Catalogue). Melbourne, Victoria: George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne. Alston, R. (1995). Press release. Canberra, ACT: Government House. Armstrong, E., & Rothfuss, J. (1993). In the spirit of Fluxus. Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Centre.

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JONES Art Gallery of NSW, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery & Len Lye Foundation. (2000). Len Lye. Sydney, New S Wales: Art Gallery of NSW. Barrett, P. H., Gautrey, P. J., Herbert, S., Kohn, D., & Smith, S. (Eds.). (1987). Charles Darwin’s notebooks, 1836–1844. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bartenieff, I., & Lewis, D. (1980). Body movement: Coping with the environment. New York, London and Paris: Gordon & Breach Inc. Bataille, G. (1991). Death and sensuality (M. Dalwood, Trans.). London: City Lights Books. Beer, G. (1983). Darwin’s plots: Evolutionary narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and nineteenthcentury fiction. London, Boston and Henley: Ark Paperbacks. Bonk, E. (1989). Marcel Duchamp: The portable museum. London: Thames & Hudson. Brennan, T. (1993). History after Lacan. London and New York: Routledge. Connor, B. (1976). Crossroads (B&W film, 36 mins). Cramer, S., & Jones, L. (2001). Lyndal Jones: The prediction pieces 1981–1991: Writings and images from the archive. Sydney, New S Wales: Museum of Contemporary Art. Darwin, C. (1832/2004). The Voyage of the Beagle: Charles Darwin’s journal of researches. In J. Brown & M. Neve (Eds.), London: Penguin Classics, Penguin Group. Darwin, C. (1838/1981). The Descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Darwin, C. (1838a). Glen Roy notebook (manuscript). Cambridge University Library. Darwin, C. (1838b). Notebook B (manuscript). Cambridge University Library. Darwin, C. (1838c). Notebook C (manuscript). Cambridge University Library. Darwin, C. (1838d). Notebook D (manuscript). Cambridge University Library. Darwin, C. (1838e). Notebook E (manuscript). Cambridge University Library. Darwin, C. (1838f). Notebook M (manuscript). Cambridge University Library. Darwin, C. (1838g). Notebook N (manuscript). Cambridge University Library. Darwin, C. (1839). Notebook A (manuscript). Cambridge University Library. Darwin, F. (Ed.). (1902). Charles Darwin: His life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters. London: John Murray Press. Desmond, A., & Moore, J. (1992). Darwin. London: Penguin. Dunkley-Smith, J. (1975). Back in Bedford (16mm film, b&w, sound). London (Personal film). Dunkley-Smith, J. (1979). Hoddle Street Suite (3 screen, 16mm film, b&w, sound). Melbourne (Personal film). Duras, M. (1986). The Lover. (B. Bray, Trans.). London: Flamingo, Fontana Paperbacks. Eagleton, T. (1983). Literary theory: An introduction. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell. Feldenkrais, M. (1985). The potent self. San Francisco: Harper. Foster, H. (2000). Richard Serra, October files. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Foucault, M. (1986). The care of the self. The history of sexuality, Vol. 3 (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books, Random House. Gandhi, L. (1998). Postcolonial theory: A critical introduction. Sydney, New S Wales: Allen & Unwin. Grosz, E. (2004). The nick of time: Politics, evolution and the untimely. Sydney, New S Wales: Allen & Unwin. Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri. (1993). Marcel Duchamp (Catalogue). Palazzo Grassi, Venezia Milano: Bompiani, Sozogno, Etos S.P.A. Horrocks, R. (2000). Len Lye (Catalogue). Sydney, New S Wales: Art Gallery of New South Wales. Huxtable, A. L. (1997, June 14). Faking It. The Age. Extract from A. L. Huxtable (1997). The unreal America: Architecture and illusion. New York: New Press. Isaacs, J. (1998). Emily Kngwarreye paintings. Sydney, New S Wales: Craftsman House. Jones, L. (1986). Prediction piece 7 (Catalogue). Meaning and excellence (D. Robinson, Curator). Melbourne, Victoria: University of Melbourne & State Film Centre. Jones, L. (1986). Notebook unpublished.

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WAYS OF PROPOSING Jones, L. (1988). The Practice of theory: Feminist criticism in the 1980s. Unpublished conference paper, Interventions: Feminism and performance conference. Sydney, New S Wales: The Performance Space. Jones, L. (1992a). On the kinaesthetic sense: Talking to Jane. Notebook unpublished. Jones, L. (1992b). Yvonne Rainer: Acts of flirtation and guerrilla warfare. Unpublished paper, Yvonne Rainer seminar. Melbourne, Victoria: State Film Centre. Jones, L. (1992c). The film that Bruce made, in unpublished paper, Yvonne Rainer seminar. Melbourne, Victoria: State Film Centre. Jones, L. (1992d). On having good intentions, catalogue essay in Next Wave Festival, G. Hastings. Melbourne, Victoria. Jones, L. (1993a). London notebook, unpublished Jones, L. (1993b). Regarding Lyndal Jones/Margarita de Ferranti; and In the flesh, in On the evolution of sexuality, unpublished script for Room with Finches. Jones, L. (1993c). About the intellectual crisis around Charles Darwin’s theories, unpublished proposal to curator, John Barrett-Lennard, curator. Adelaide: Adelaide Biennial. Jones, L. (1994a). Notebook unpublished. Jones, L. (1994b). Performance, feminism and women at work. In C. Moore (Ed.), Dissonance: Feminism and the arts 1970–90. Sydney, New S Wales: Allen & Unwin, with Artspace. Jones, L. (1994c). Room with finches catalogue entry, in 25 Years of Australian Performance Art, N. Waterlow, curator, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, IMA, Brisbane, national touring exhibition, Australia. Jones, L. (1994d). Unpublished letter to Julie Ewington, curator. Canberra, ACT: School of Art Gallery. Jones, L. (1995). On Charles Darwin’s theories of sexual selection, Spitfire 123 performance, unpublished proposal to Australia Council. Jones, L. (1996). Notebook unpublished. Jones, L. (1998). Unpublished letter to Peter Ride, ARTEC, London Jones, L. (2000). Notebook unpublished. Jones, L. (2002). Room with finches. Unpublished notes to Queensland Art Gallery. Jones, L. (2005). From the Darwin Translations. Available at http://www.darwintranslations.org.htm Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1992). The tree of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding (R. Paolucci, Trans.). Boston and London: Shambhala. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). The phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). New York: Humanities Press. Miller, J. (1982). Darwin for beginners. Writers and readers comic book/2003. New York: Pantheon Books, Random House. Mollison, J. (1989). A singular vision: The art of Fred Williams. Canberra, ACT: Australian National Gallery. Mulvey, L (1975). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screen, 16(3), 6–18. Rainer, Y. (1974). Work 1961–75. Press of Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, Canada. Rosenberg, H. (1952, December). The American action painters. In ARTnews. NewYork, USA. Schneemann, C. (1997). More than meat joy. Kingston, NY: Documentext/McPherson & Company. Schwabsky, B., Tillman, L., & Cooke, L. (1995). Jessica stockholder. London: Phaidon Press. Sheldrake, R. A. (1988). The presence of the past: Morphic resonance and the habit of nature. New York: Times Books. Snow, M. (1967). Wavelength (16mm film, B&W). Toronto, ON: Canadian Filmmakers’ Distribution Centre. Spolin, V. (1973). Improvisation for the theatre. London: Pitman. Sweigard, L. E. (1974). Human movement potential: Its ideokinetic facilitation. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company Inc. Todd, M. E. (1937). The thinking body: A study of the balancing forces of dynamic man. New York: Dance Horizons.

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7. WAYS OF ACTING AND REFLECTING Researching and Writing the Screenplay

INTRODUCTION

This chapter discusses the ways creative researchers may identify creative writing as a site of knowledge generation in the academy. Offering a perspective on what it means for a researcher to reflect on screenwriting projects, it discusses research within the context of screen industries and advocates a methodology to combine rational analysis and imaginative reflection. In the examples discussed the creative researchers in screenwriting produce the project (a screenplay) and an accompanying research paper (exegesis) situating their project within a larger context. In the process they relate the creative project work to scholarly, theoretical, technical and industry questions of screenwriting culture. In context of the academy we observe how researchers in screenwriting organise their work into two components: firstly there is the project document (a screenplay for feature film) representing an act of creative imagination; secondly, there is the support of an exegesis investigating a specific conceptual framework and the methodology through which the creative work is undertaken. This dual research process allows researchers to reconcile what may otherwise be seen as contradictory impulses: to dream expansively and to plan logically using a process of reflection and critical interrogation. By these means researchers may find ways of knowing that are both intuitive and rational, as they become more aware of the global industry and alert to the creative potentials of their imagination. In her work on creative methodologies, Elizabeth Grierson (2004) points out that critical practice involves an active engagement with risk, imagination and reflexivity as a means of identifying and analysing the discursive processes of knowledge generation. According to this view, researchers reflect on their own creative processes and reflexively engage in the research contexts to activate both their imaginative and rational capacities. Through their processes of creative research in screenwriting, the researchers with whom I have worked demonstrate aspects of reflective and reflexive practice. This discussion considers how researchers may work with their creative practice to identify relevant questions, which guide the creative process and shape the nature of enquiry and outcomes. The process involves selecting and framing scholarly and technical references to contextualise the work of screenwriting. Overall the discussion illustrates how such an approach to research supports and structures

E. Grierson and L. Brearley, Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices, 97–110. © 2009 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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creative activity and provides a foundation of knowledge from which effective creative action may grow. CREATIVITY IN AN INDUSTRY CONTEXT

While the focus here is on screenwriting, it is relevant to note that any piece of creative writing such as a novel or a play intended for publication or for public audience needs to make an inherent appeal to the industry practitioners (publishers, editors, producers) who will support the work by bringing it to an audience. The methodologies discussed here are of relevance to many creative practitioners, particularly those involved with scripts for storytelling, animation, computer games and performance. Through exploring this context the discussion offers specific examples from researchers who have written a variety of scripts across genres including the Spaghetti Western, the Romantic Comedy and the Road Movie. Through this enquiry the researchers gain greater awareness of their field of scholarship and of the industry context in which their work will eventually be situated. Screenwriting is an art form that is highly dependent for its success on its audience and therefore it has a continual relationship with the economies of technologised production and consumption. Again with reference to Grierson (2004), there are larger epistemological shifts that ensue from technological change. One outcome is that we now think differently about the nature of global culture, the nature of the text and the object in relation to the conditions of truth. Elsewhere, Grierson (2005) observes that within this shifting global culture, the creative industries as a market category is one of the fastest growing sectors in the economies of societies driven by media technologies. This rapid growth provides both opportunities and obstacles for researchers in screenwriting. In his research on digital storytelling for the Australian Film, TV and Radio School, media analyst Jason Romney (2006) observes important changes in how we consume media. He points out that screen producers and writers are working in a changing production environment driven increasingly by computerbased applications. According to Romney, the proliferation of new services such as mobile and broadband delivery is forging new patterns in Australian viewing and in delivery of screen stories and games. These patterns are of direct relevance to the process of researching in the area of screenwriting for film, television, internet, mobile and other digital media. Romney (2006) points out that the global economy of film, television and internet-based digital production and distribution is complex and highly competitive. As film and television production is one of the most capital and labour intensive of the visual arts, it may be wise for researchers to understand the priorities and needs of that industry. The researcher may therefore consider this larger industry framework as part of the context for expression of an idea or concept. It follows that some attention to the rationale governing the work is important so that researchers may position their creative work in a framework for an audience or a marketplace and situate their project within a specific industry context. This allows them a critical view of the field, which takes account of the complexities of 98

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global culture. Observing the larger industry context also allows researchers to act with awareness of the volatile and competitive media production environment. While structures and institutions are important, they are not the driving force of creative research. We recognise here how important it is for the creative researcher to be given space to dream and explore in an unfettered environment. In an article on creativity and the global economies of education, Grierson (2006, pp. 10–11) refers to the twentieth century psychoanalyst, Silvano Arieti (1977) whose “dynamics of creativity” focus on the cultivation of a creative mind. As Grierson points out, Arieti is following the twentieth century discourses of psychology to focus on several attributes of creativity, which give rise to art and its outcomes. Grierson (2006) cites the Arieti attributes as: – Aloneness (removal from stimuli) – Inactivity (give time to do nothing) – Daydreaming (a source of fantasy life) – Free thinking (suspension of control) – Gullibility (suspension of judgment) – Remember trauma (inner replay) – Alertness (heightened awareness) – Disciplined productivity (have commitment – practical skills). Grierson presents these attributes in context of her discussion of the discourses of psychology and the creative mind as she seeks to go beyond the psychologically defined attributes of creativity. Grierson acknowledges that: There may well be elements of any or all of these in creative moments of activity and thought that give rise to art and its outcomes … It seems there may be a problem when the psychologically identified attributes of creativity are out of line with rationalized educational policy and deterministic practice. Arieti’s last two attributes would seem to have the closest application to the field of art and art education: ‘Alertness (heightened awareness); Disciplined productivity (have commitment – practical skills)’ (2006, pp. 10–11). While analysis of these issues is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is worthwhile remembering Arieti’s observation that free thinking and daydreaming remain central to any creative research project. The creative writer needs to make room for the free play of the imagination while also researching the industry context of screen production. One aim of the researcher is to find a place for the screenplay project in the industry community. Understanding the global context of the film industry assists a creative screenwriter to understand the pragmatic challenges and find a producer for the work who can bring it to life on the screen. There is a crucial need to establish an audience for the work and focus one’s craft to address that audience directly. The examples discussed here focus on screenwriting structure and technique, showing how the researcher may relate to the larger demands of audience and producer. By focusing on the industry context, the screenwriter is informed by a community of practice and may build on intuitive and technical knowledge while connecting the project to a broader cultural framework. An understanding of 99

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industry will challenge the researcher to identify and shape the work so it may appeal to the production criteria of the media industry and thus reach an audience within the wider global culture. Within this broad context, the primary task for the researcher is to master the creation of the project, in this case a cohesive screenplay document. In order to bring the project to fruition, the researcher must argue for the project’s relevance to a group of peers, practitioners and producers. Screenwriting researchers must provide a rationale and a project persuasive enough to mobilise and instruct the producers, distributors, directors, actors, photographers and technical crew. These collaborators will work from the screenplay, as a kind of blueprint for action, in order to bring the project to life (Dethridge, 2003, p. x), a process that is about liberating the imagination or vision of the screenwriter. IMAGINING THE PROJECT

How does the dual research structure of reflection and analysis equip the researcher with a methodology for screenwriting? The screenplay functions as a set of instructions, a blueprint, which is then developed by a team of creative practitioners including producer, director, cast and crew (Dethridge, 2003). One starting point for any creative project is a basic description or sketch of the work, its dimensions, features and style. Whether painting, sculpting or screenwriting, the artist may build on initial descriptions in a process of reiteration, making new sketches at regular intervals. This kind of action research is one way of arriving at key decisions, which may begin with intuitive responses about technique and content, and then be informed by further research into scholarly genre, technique and style. How does a screenwriter engage in a process of creative action? The screenwriter may focus first on devising a plot or story and a visual world that will engage an audience. This process may begin with a series of brief outlines where the researcher starts to sketch in the basic parameters of the story world, the settings, characters, action and themes that will make up the plot. The researcher may begin this research with loose biographies for the main characters, descriptions of the main story locations, and initial notes about the style and themes of the story. This process requires both imagination and logic. In her work on creative research Grierson (2004) examines imagination. One envisages in the mind’s eye objects, people and events, which may not really be there in front of you. Imagination is “a word which raises a raft of questions relating to the aesthetic experience, the primacy of feeling, the creative process, the nature of intuition, the notion of artistic activity, and relationships between thought, feeling, reason and perception” (Grierson, 2004, p. x). The researcher can sort out some of these questions by imposing some order to what can otherwise be a chaotic inner process. Screenwriting is an imaginative process requiring plenty of daydreaming as a departure point. The writer must envisage and describe an entire story world and populate that world with characters from their inner vision. The screenwriter must then report on that world; writing a description sharp and accurate enough that others (producer, director, cast and crew) may share the vision and bring it to life for the cameras and later, the audience (Dethridge, 2003). 100

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Not all researchers begin with a clear vision of their project. One screenwriter may have the sketch of a love story yet not know if it is a comedy or a drama. Another may have the biography of a famous dancer yet not know at which point in the character’s life story their screen story will begin. Another screenwriter may know they want to envisage a vampire horror but is not sure of the historical setting or style. Each of these writers will benefit from sustained research to build up the imaginative parameters of their project. The writer of the love story for instance may need to investigate the distinguishing features of both comedy and drama in order to decide which genre is most appropriate to their needs and talents. The writer of the biography (or Biopic) may examine scholarly literature on the genre and make a close analysis of several case study scripts in order to examine the way chronology or time span is managed in the depiction of a character’s life story. The horror writer may examine various vampire subgenres (Horror, Gothic, Teen, Urban and so on) and survey the range of options for their vampire character. In this way, the researcher frames the scholarly research as a support to the project work. Scholarly research into genre or the types and styles of screenwriting (for film, TV, games and other digital media) may help the researcher to assess the structural and aesthetic options. The researcher may identify and study the genre of his or her choice and within this study may identify a key area of technique, such as the use of the flashback, the use of voiceover, suspense or three-act structure to help focus on a particular problem or process within the project. An understanding of genre or screenplay structure provides insight into the technical requirements of the industry. The discussion of genre also relates to the expectations of the audience. For example, authors may investigate in detail the primary requirement of the horror movie—to frighten the audience out of their seats. In contrast, authors of a romantic comedy must investigate how to get the audience laughing through their tears. By investigating further and researching specific types of comedy, satire, slapstick and so on, authors may focus their approach to a particular aspect of character psychology. They may also fine-tune their understanding of how techniques in plotting, stage direction or art direction may reinforce character. In this way, the researcher can build on initial story or character sketches to form a more detailed vision or sense of the structures that define the work. The researcher may develop questions to guide the research process toward the solution of a particular problem or issue and thereby may be empowered to make decisions about basic structures such as genre, character and plot. As a result of this focused activity, the researcher may gain a sense of certainty and commitment to the work; a sense of mastery over what may sometimes feel like a chaotic and haphazard imaginary realm.

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THE EXEGESIS AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The written exegesis acts as a companion document for the screenplay project. In the exegesis the researcher engages with key theories, terms and methodologies established by the survey of literature in the field. Using this theoretical research to provide a methodical account of the creative project work he or she may refer to the purposes and processes of conception, the methodology used to develop the work, the significance of what was learned, the significance of what was practised, and the significance of what was produced for both the self and the field. In the written exegesis the researcher reflects upon the aesthetic and/or the technical features of the creative project situating these reflections within a larger framework related to industry, to academia or to an arts community. A skilled researcher may refer to one or more of these contexts in exploring and analysing the work, and then focus the research in one particular area in order to solve a specific technical problem in the project work. The literature review, upon which the thesis is built, is essential to survey and assess the primary features of the field. Researchers of screenwriting are encouraged to consider the academic literature in their field and to select and observe case studies by expert practitioners. This theoretical enquiry may relate to screenwriting, to literary theory or to studies in narrative, to film studies or to character psychology. They may develop simple questions to provide an anatomy for focusing their ways of acting and reflecting around the following enquiries: – Who are the key theorists governing the field of practice? – How does one or more theorist define a specific key term or technique or relevance to the project? These questions assist researchers to focus on a specific aspect of the field and to limit the scope of their enquiry. In addition, they may seek information about the technical and or conceptual problems and controversies within their field, which may derive from screenwriting studies or from related fields such as literature, film production or theatre. – What is the key genre and/or the key technique that may inform the candidate’s project work? – How may we define and discuss a particular controversy or problem that is a feature of the field? Researchers may be further encouraged to study examples of creative screenwriting work that are relevant to their project aims and objectives asking: – Who is the key practitioner informing or inspiring the project work? – What are the key case studies (screenplays or films) by this practitioner that may be useful as subjects for theoretical and/or technical analysis? With reference to Grierson (2004, p. x) it is important for arts researchers to reflect critically upon their own practice in “a process of questioning and enquiring”, which gives impetus to the creative process. Grierson explains that a reflexive understanding of the systems we study also ensures that we develop an awareness of what others are doing in the field as we recognise the mutual relationships in which practice is embedded. Reflexive activity is essential to understand the context of the systems they study and to understand how they are part of these systems. 102

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We can structure a degree of self-awareness or reflexivity into the research plan by including a question that addresses the researcher’s considered responses to the research action. – How useful (or not) are these specific theories and techniques to the process of my project work? Romantic Comedy Subgenre Once such research questions are established, the researcher may answer them in a methodical way, working to a schedule or timetable to ensure the completion of each question. This process is designed on a timeline so that analysis may work to inform the creation of the project. For example, one screenwriter is engaged with research around the romantic comedy subgenre and plans to write a screenplay featuring the structures of this genre. She spends the first three months of her research programme answering question one with general reading around screenwriting theory and structure: – Who are the key theorists governing the field of practice? She devotes some of this research to a focus on the specific subgenre of the romantic comedy asking: – How may we define the features of the romantic comedy subgenre? To answer this question she spends another three month period focusing on the theoretical work of Billy Mernit, an expert in the field of romantic comedy for the screen. Mernit posits a particular set of criteria for the psychology of the protagonist or main character in romantic comedy. The researcher may then apply Mernit’s criteria for romantic comedy to a particular case study, such as the screenplay for Sleepless in Seattle by Nora Ephron (1993). – How may we apply Mernit’s criteria for character psychology to a case study for analysis? During the first six months of research, the researcher is also preparing initial notes for her own script project. She may for instance use the techniques discussed by theorist Mernit and exemplified by the practitioner Nora Ephron, in the preparation of character biographies, in notes on location and in a plot outline. This process may then be followed by a further process of development and iteration in which different approaches may be tested. The theoretical research can be of benefit to this process as it encourages a more reflexive approach to the work, making the researcher more conscious of the structures that support her imaginative process. In the next three to six months, the researcher may then analyse the results of this methodical study and discuss the results in relation to the production of her screenplay project. – How useful (or not) are these theories and techniques to the process of my project work? The researcher thus engages in a process of reflexive study where results are fed back into her creative work. As she draws conclusions around the theory she can apply (or discard) elements of structure and technique that may be of use (or not) to 103

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the project. In this way she may produce a rough draft of her screenplay; polish and reassess the draft in the light of further research. The research methodology of reflexive engagement should allow for the production of a final draft after several iterations of rough drafting and polishing over six months or a year. Classic Road Movie with a Twist In another example, a screenwriting researcher knows he wants to write a classic road movie with a twist; the two main characters are gay lovers. His initial survey of the literature (question one) led to the discovery that there is a clear lack of research discussing the road movie as a genre. His research may redress this gap by providing a contribution of knowledge to the field. In this example, the researcher examined the technical structures of the road movie (question two), which enabled him to define the genre and also define the audience expectations. He investigated several historical case studies (question three), helping to clarify the function of a key structure, the dual protagonists. These two lead characters are usually an odd couple hitting the road for adventure and romance. The researcher examined the classic road movie where the two lead characters are usually men on the run or on tour (think of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in the On the Road series of 1940s and 1950s comedy road movies). In other generic examples such as Two for the Road, a romantic couple may travel across country with no urgent agenda and encounter strange individuals and adventures along the way. In one recent departure from the norm, Thelma and Louise (1991), the odd couple is played by two women who become outlaws in a bid to escape their humdrum lives. The researcher re-interpreted and re-examined this structural framework in the light of more specific theory related to gay cinema and queer theory. He used this theory to identify various cultural issues surrounding the depiction of homosexuality on screen. The researcher used this theory to explore the features of a specific case study of the Oscar-award winning script for Thelma and Louise by Callie Khourie (1991). In his methodology, the researcher included a self-reflexive question related to the usefulness of the theory to the project work (question four). This ensured that he developed a critical self-awareness to inform the creative process. Thus the researcher was able to discuss strategies and options available to him as a result of his research into the theory of genre, his research into the theory of gender and his technical analysis of the case study. Using the theory and case studies, the researcher investigated various options for the depiction of gay romance on screen. In analysing and reflecting upon aspects of technique, and aspects of film culture and popular culture, this researcher produced an interesting cross-genre approach that both observes and bends the rules of the classic road movie script. His accompanying research into genre may contribute to the field by identifying new insights into character psychology where our traditional expectations about the road movie genre are given a fresh, contemporary twist. 104

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War Movies Another screenwriting researcher wants to write an edgy and contemporary screenplay about war. He surveys the literature, researching the stylistic and technical features of the war movie genre in order to frame his study. He then focuses on a particular theorist, Stephen Prince (1998), who specialises in the depiction of violence on screen. The theorist provides several clear categories to illustrate the discussion of violence in the war movie. The researcher devises research questions that allow him to critically examine these stylistic categories. He then applies Prince’s structural criteria to a particular case study script. In line with the reflexive research method outlined in this chapter, the researcher further investigates ways in which these structures may be useful in helping him organise the plot of his own screenplay. He asks a fundamental question: how is this research relevant (or not) to my project? In writing his responses, he applies the lessons learned from theory and from case studies to his own screenplay. As a result, he discovers several fruitful technical solutions to problems in his own work. These include the use of flashbacks and the use of surreal imagery to highlight his key theme involving the seemingly crazy or insane visual and psychological context of violent battle. Italian Spaghetti Western Another screenwriting researcher examines the Italian Spaghetti Western genre, which is an exotic (and little studied) subgenre of the Western film genre. He focuses on the hallmarks of the genre, observing the minimal dialogue, camera and editing techniques, which both constrain and enhance the narrative or storytelling style. The researcher then observes these structures in the films of Italian writer/ director Sergio Leone, particularly in his film How the West was Won (1963). The researcher reflects on these techniques in relation to his own screenplay. He applies his new theoretical and technical knowledge to the structures of his own script observing the conventions of the Italian style Western, reducing the dialogue and enhancing the conflict around the bad guys and the very bad guys (he also observes nearly all the cowboys in Spaghetti Westerns are bad guys!). Then as a result of this work, the researcher’s project script is picked up for consideration by American and Canadian producers. The researcher builds further on the insights gained from his research. He is preparing a scholarly paper on the Spaghetti Western subgenre thus adding to knowledge in the field. He is also adapting his screenplay as a possible vehicle for production and distribution by mobile phone in the form of three-minute mobi-sodes. Thus we see how this process of creative research has enabled the researcher to go beyond the initial scope of his early research and to participate in the evolution of media forms. The researcher’s expertise in the stylistic features of the 1960s Spaghetti Western cinema allows him to make a transition into contemporary, mobile digital culture.

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Inter-related Demands These examples illustrate an important aspect of creative research methodology. By marrying a careful theoretical reading with an analysis of case studies, the researcher comes to understand the inter-related demands of industry, technique and storytelling. The researcher reflects upon this process in the exegesis, forming useful insights into the writing process that may be passed on in scholarly fashion to other screenwriters and practitioners. In this way, the researcher may contribute the research findings to other researchers involved with exploration and innovation within the field. This may contribute to ongoing debates around structure and process or may add to an understanding of industry and the larger media culture. The researcher may publish or present new findings to the academic and/or industry communities that support the production of the project. Thus the researcher makes a meaningful contribution to the screen culture sustaining scholars, industry producers and fellow creative practitioners. THE NEED FOR REFLECTION AND A RATIONALE

Researchers may present their project and research in an appropriate medium, publication, presentation or speaking venue, adopting a convincing rationale to justify the relevance of their research to the field. Researchers critically engage with their own vision by examining their own assumptions as well as those of the discipline. A researcher may have a passion for a favourite dialogue or scenes. However the research may reveal elements or ideas that are superfluous, flawed or inappropriate to the larger needs of the project structure. Research may reveal information at odds with the hunch or bias of the researcher. In a reflexive process, the researcher may confront quite bravely these disquieting ruptures and document them, thus offering others an insight into the creative process. In screenwriting circles there is a slang phrase—“kill those darlings!”—which writers use ironically among themselves, to describe their difficult imperative to delete inappropriate dialogue or scenes. In examining the structure of the opening scenes, for example, a screenwriter may discover a disjunction between the theory and her practice. The theory of classic plot structure suggests that initial scenes may work best at a leisurely pace to carefully and logically introduce the protagonist and his or her world to the audience (Dethridge, 2003). In contrast to this principle, the researcher may have structured an opening that is fast-moving and jumps around from location to location. She is operating from a personal hunch that the opening will work just fine. After all, it is dramatic and involves the audience in the story. To check her process, the researcher applies the theory to her opening scene, examining whether or not the theory is useful to her process. She checks whether it is a useful strategy to bend or break the classic rules of plot logic. In doing so, she gains an important insight. The scene is fast-paced and fun, but according to the rules of classic structure it may present the audience with too much information too soon and may therefore sabotage the introduction by confusing them. The researcher 106

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decides to compromise in favour of classic structural integrity, to “kill those darlings” and rewrite the scene. If able to refer to a technical or theoretical authority in the field, the creative researcher can weigh up the decision by referring to a source outside that of personal intuition. The decision is therefore made as if in consultation with a wider community of practitioners. Reference to theory and technique allows the creative researcher a virtual consultation with a bank of experts who can offer useful advice on the options for project construction. The researcher may thus consider how to temper intuition with logic; how to bend or break the rules with effective results. The research examples have shown how the screenwriter uses a process of logical, technical analysis to stay focused on the specific project tasks, while at the same time, reflecting on the process of the research, and making comment on the usefulness or relevance of specific theories, rules and techniques to the project work. This means that at every major step of the research, the authors may ask themselves how useful (or not) is this theory or that technique to my project? How may I translate this technical or theoretical knowledge into the production of a better project? This interrogation of theory and technique leads the researcher back to reflect on the process of the creative work; evaluating how and why a particular theory or technique may be of use to this work and to others in the field. Using a creative research methodology of reflection coupled with reflexive analysis, we see how the researcher builds the work according to a variety of criteria related to the processes, techniques and aesthetics of creative production. Whether the project and findings are destined for academia or industry, researchers may reveal some of the underlying technical, historical, cultural and personal assumptions and conditions that relate to their project. Researchers of screenwriting also face the critical rigours of economic analysis. In the fiercely competitive media production environment the first questions often concern the economic bottom line. Who will pay for the project? Who will buy the outcomes? These pragmatic questions address the fundamental issue of market relevance. How useful is the research that is being proposed? Will it work? Who will benefit and, more crudely, “who cares?” Researchers of all disciplines need to find answers to the latter question. As part of their research they need to structure a rationale or statement of the project’s relevance to a larger field of academic, scholarly, artistic, policy and/or industry practitioners, thus appealing to the producers, distributors, directors and technical crew who will bring the media project to life. RELATIONSHIPS

The intention in this discussion of screenwriting as creative research has been to show how creative writers can support their creative project work with an analytical process of scholarly research and practical investigation. It is a two-way process. This may result in a more knowledgeable and skilled practitioner who is developing a hunch by using a plan. The research process outlined here enables researchers to reconcile the institutional and personal aspects of their creative research and explore widely in order to articulate intuitive and artistic responses. 107

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The structure of the exegesis provides a focus for what may otherwise be a chaotic and overwhelming process. The exegesis demands a discursive, analytic framework that goes beyond the personal toward a more informed discussion of structure, technique and culture. This articulation and engagement with scholarly and industry issues can be helpful in preparing a screenwriter for an active and relevant professional life. When a researcher provides dual documentation of project and exegesis, he or she also develops an impressive portfolio to present to others in academia and industry. Screenwriting researchers may have their script projects assessed and produced by commercial producers for distribution or screenings or for national and international festivals. The researcher of the road movie produced a script now under consideration for production in Europe. The author of the war movie script has applied and adapted his technical expertise to a new medium. He is now writing the script for a computer game based on the war movie genre. In each case, the research process allows each researcher to move beyond the scope of the initial vision and to keep apace with the fast-moving demands of a global industry driven in part by technological change and innovation. By reflecting on the process of their work and the connections between theory and practice, the researcher in this field may justify the usefulness and relevance of the screenwriting project among larger communities, be they academic or industry, local or global practitioners. The researcher may answer a need for further research into specific areas of screenwriting craft or may point to a need for further research into a particular technique as a way of extending knowledge in the field. For instance, the author of the road movie script is preparing to publish part of his exegetical or written research as a journal article as a way of disseminating his scholarship. His initial survey identified a lack of research around the road movie genre. His findings may address this gap thus providing a clear contribution of knowledge to the field. Judging by these examples, we may recognise the useful process of analysis and reflective practice where researchers may critically investigate their creative process by observing how it conforms to or departs from the canons of academia or from the practice of others in their field. The dual structure of project and exegesis allows the creative researcher to activate both the intuitive and the rational aspects of their creative potential. The writing project provides a blank canvas for full artistic expression where daydreaming, risk-taking and imagination are associated with creative endeavour; and in the exegesis, the researcher acknowledges an industry context as well as technical or artistic criteria. This all requires a high degree of critical self-awareness, analysis and organisation. CONCLUSION

This discussion has shown how creative researchers in screenwriting may work with sustained methodologies to articulate methods, techniques and insights that are of use to themselves and others in their field. While engaged in the reflective practice, researchers produce documentation and analysis that they may publish in 108

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journals, websites, books or blogs. They may contribute to professional knowledge by reflecting on how their work is situated and how it may be of relevance to the wider field of their peers in industry; and they may present their work at scholarly and industry conferences thus contributing to ongoing debates in academic, cultural or industry communities surrounding the project work. This process of peer review and publication can add to researchers’ selfconfidence, and it demonstrates how the combination of scholarly research and creative project may contribute to the culture of a larger screen community or marketplace. By revealing the underlying processes of creation researchers in the field also help to educate the audience or marketplace, thus contributing to media literacy throughout the broader public sphere. In the reflexive and relational process of scholarly creativity the exegesis provides a discursive space in which questions of aesthetics and intuition may be examined critically, and by exercising a critical reflection on creative processes the researcher can make connections and contributions to the field. By employing a reflexive process of enquiry the challenge is to examine the personal creative process (characters, locations and plot) while looking outward to engage with other practitioners and theorists. Thus writers may engage with their imagination, their logic and their own creative dynamics. The dual structure of a screenwriting project and exegesis allows researchers the liberty to explore their imagination and to dream about their plot or characters while engaging with a critical reading of the broader contexts. Evidence from the creative researchers discussed here shows that contradictions and slippages often lead to creative solutions in the realm of creative screenwriting. Thus the road movie is re-invigorated with a contemporary study of gay romance while the war movie is enriched by a study of surrealist editing styles. And it is here that the researchers’ process of investigation may nurture their ability to imagine or envision the creative project, cultivating a critical awareness of screenwriting practice and theory, and applying insights gained from readings and case studies to a reflexive exploration of research questions and project work. Researchers may thereby investigate and justify their creative choices within the guidelines of a selfimposed rationale, which relates to the usefulness of the enquiry and its results. With close attention to their rationale and research questions, researchers may ensure their work is relevant to a larger community of scholars and practitioners including other screenwriters, researchers and producers who may benefit from aspects of the research. In both the creative project and the written research, the researcher examines and tests the assumptions behind technical or aesthetic criteria established by theorists and practitioners in the field. While this assists the individual process of creation it also allows us to clarify and observe the formation of larger social and institutional conventions. We see that in researching, constructing and presenting projects and findings, the screenwriter-researcher may develop valuable insights. These relate to both the intuitive and the logical, the personal and cultural, the local and global structures that define the practice and theory of screenwriting. Most importantly, researchers may focus their imaginative capacity by studying theories, practices and techniques 109

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to help shape their project in a fruitful, organised way. They may reflect on the relevance of these structures to their own project and may present findings of use to other practitioners and theorists within a broad socio-cultural context. In this way, creative writers turn their inner gaze outward to recognise the artistic, cultural, academic, technical and industry communities that surround their creative endeavours. REFERENCES Dethridge, L. (2003). Writing your screenplay. Sydney, New S Wales: Allen and Unwin. Grierson, E. M. (2004). Methodology and interpretive procedures in education: Risk, imagination, reflexivity. In Educational research, risks and dilemmas. Proceedings of the NZARE AARE (New Zealand and Australia) Association of Research in Education Conference, Auckland, New Zealand, Nov. 29 – Dec. 3, 2003. Retrieved Oct. 28, 2008, from http://www.aare.edu.au/03pap/gri03172.pdf Grierson, E. M. (2005). Art academy and the creative community in a globalized place. In S. Jones. (Ed.), Artists, designers and communities. Proceeding of the Australian Council of University and Design Schools (ACUADS) Conference, Canberra, Australia, September 23–25, 2004. Canberra, ACT: ACUADS. Grierson, E. M. (2006). Creativity: Cultural identities in a state of becoming. Questions of art and art education in a global knowledge economy. Australian Art Education, 29(2), 5–19. Prince, S. (1998). Sam peckinpah and the rise of ultraviolent movies. Texas, TX: University of Texas Press. Romney, J. (2006). The digital cusp: How new technologies are reshaping the distribution of content. In Centre for screen business research papers, Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS). Retrieved July 15, 2006, from http://csb.aftrs.edu.au/go.cfm?path=/go/research&

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8. WAYS OF CONSTRUCTING Epistemic, Temporal and Productive Aspects of Design Research

INTRODUCTION

This is a tale of researching through designing. It is both an account of a practice as a maker and a practice as a researcher. Ongoing research projects in which I am involved underlie this chapter and entail the physical construction of models. Knowledge is also being constructed in the sense that I consider that more is known now about designing than at the outset of the research. I will argue below that knowledge (at least for an individual) is embodied in the models made and that as this embodied knowledge transmutes into collective knowledge, there is a social process of construction taking place. At the outset of this research in 1996, I was concerned to know more about how design is actually done, and the ways in which designers gave their designs form, spatial relations and particular characteristics. To do this I might have engaged in a detailed review of the literature to unearth techniques and findings and then perhaps conducted variants, or extensions, of others’ research by observing, recording and listening to descriptions of designing processes. This is, as always, both an informative and unsatisfactory process. Designing does not lend itself well to formal study by the means of behavioural sciences. The techniques of recording and analysing are obtrusive; their effect on normal designerly behaviours are unknown and probably unknowable. Research descriptions of formally conducted protocol studies raised as many concerns as they provided moments of understanding.1 They can be criticised as a means to reveal and study the largely internalised processes involved in designing, on the grounds that the thinking involved in designing is of a different kind from that required to discuss it; the necessary verbalisation has unclear effects on the very designing being studied (Lloyd, Lawson, & Scott, 1995). In some studies, video recording of one or more designers working on paper has been used. The designer then gives an explanation or is interviewed. This is a very self-conscious process, and raises problems with the quality of the subsequent account and the possible interferences from wilful reconstructions or failures of memory. To satisfy my concerns I needed accounts by designers that were as honest as possible and spoke about the details of the doing, the quotidian, the paths to success and the dead ends. These are partially available through informal conversations and anecdotes. Teaching design can also elicit many insights, but accounts presented publicly by architects and other designers are often intended to promote the designer’s personal myths. In these, everyday designing is sanitised; E. Grierson and L. Brearley, Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices, 111–128. © 2009 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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the accounts are polished and packaged post-rationalisations replete with tales of amazing journeys through the wilds of theory. My project thus had a dual start: the desire to make, and the desire to find answers through interrogating the designer conveniently at hand. I found myself to be a usually co-operative research subject while building a collection of small models termed epistemological pavilions. These are little constructions with no client-provided functional briefs, but enmeshed in rich programmes of exploratory intent on my behalf. They are on timber bases and their dimensions are less than those of an A4 sheet. This making has provided the raw material to research designing in a totally introspective manner. The project has been described in two books, some papers, lectures and exhibitions.2 As the books were published in 2003 and 2004, the making, researching and understanding gained subsequently is reported here melded with a brief account of the prior material.

Figure 1. Museum display shot of Pavilions 1 to 6

The models demonstrate my addiction to making dust: timber dust, plastic dust and metal dust and filings. They are made slowly, mostly in the corner of my study and the interstices of the rest of my life, predominantly using hand tools. As the years have passed my tool and technique collection has improved. The models serve two ends: they are themselves, evidence of my practice as a designer-maker, and are also mechanisms for inquiring into designing. They are thus research tools. The pieces evolved through a process of adjustment, moves were incremental accommodations to what was already present; the evolution in detail was local and resulted from a reaction to an element’s immediate already-made surrounds and to the ideas occupying me. While I was aware of the issues of concern and of knowing and ultimately knowledge being produced as I worked on a model, clarity sometimes did not come until near, or after completion, and then perhaps the help of others was necessary. At such points I had an idea of what the model was about. Concurrently with researching through my own designing and making, I was conducting research about designing, or at least about my own designing, as there was a meta-me scrutinising what the designing me was up to. Predominantly, the designer led and was watched. Sometimes, the lead reversed and the researcher into design suggested ideas for the designer and maker to explore. 112

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To enable analysis, which by being a detailed account of the work of an individual in a larger context is broadly ethnographic or anthropological, I kept each and every scribble or three-dimensional mock-up and frequently photographed the models as they progressed. Making was as direct as possible with little in the way of prior designing on paper, although a lot of prior thinking is undertaken. This material was dated and logged.

Figure 2. Four construction examples

Hard copies reside in a large evidence box; scans and images are electronically stored. I have been able to approach it as I would other research evidence or data generated in a less personal manner, and analyse it fairly objectively even though I sometimes need to dredge my memories to understand the intent behind a drawn or made exploration. Producing it is, however, entirely personal and every drawing and act of making is done with the inescapable knowledge that it will be scanned or photographed, talked about and presented to others; all my activities on this project are thus inherently self-conscious. This must shape my doings, yet, because I have operated this way for eleven years it has become so ordinary and everyday that its impact has been reduced and rendered relatively slight. This entirely introspective mode of research is open to considerable critique from convinced quantitative researchers. It is intended to approach as nearly as possible the interior monologues and personal behaviours involved in designing without the mediations and interferences 113

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introduced through attempting objective methods. I am confident that I have been able to reveal more from this sustained experiment than would be possible from an experiment not as able to adequately reveal the inner and ongoing workings of a designer—the moments of revelation on a train, the convoluted explorations of workbench-bound making. I have tried hard to be open and honest, and to overcome problems of memory and interpretation through an unnatural and rigorous orderliness established to serve constant self-questioning and evaluation. Any reader is asked to suspend sceptical doubt, trust that I have not knowingly fabricated my findings, and read on to evaluate the making project, my account of it and the views of researching through designing that have grown through the doing. Through reflection on the designing and making I began to see three classes of research activity in which I was engaged. I only became aware when writing the books that these modes had been previously named and variously defined. The terms date back at least to English art critic Herbert Read, about 1943; they were developed and reused by Christopher Frayling in 1993, and have evolved and subsequently found wider use. It is important not to muddy the three broad classes of research as they each have different methods and produce different outcomes. Briefly, they are revealed by examining designers’ activities. Almost inevitably, designers undertake research to enable their designing and, by designing, produce new knowledge—in other words, they research by designing. In addition, I was conducting research about designing itself. Unfortunately, after somewhat limited reflection, many designers seem now to be claiming that they engage in design research simply because they need to find out various things to enable whatever design project they are engaged upon. The significant reason they can rightly claim to engage in design research is, however, that they are concurrently doing unique and original research by producing knowledge (minimally and initially for themselves and then for others) through their designing and the designs that result. The three types are examined in turn below. RESEARCH FOR DESIGN

Here, the term research for design is understood to mean those research activities intended to support and enable designing that are necessarily carried out during an overall design process. This includes research intended to provide supporting information and data required to successfully conclude the undertaking in question. While often conducted as a way of learning about, or reflecting on, a specific design project, research for design may have a general focus where the designerresearcher intends to enhance their knowledge of design-related matters. Where it concerns a specific project it facilitates choice: designers use this class of researched information to make decisions about matters such as materials, products, processes and governing regulations. To produce the two models considered here, I had to research some materials and find bits and pieces to be used in the projects. I also required images and detailed drawings of some musical instruments as well as detailed plans of a number of buildings. The sources of materials included friends and family, the darker reaches of my own collections, a street rubbish skip and 114

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shops. Books and the Internet produced the necessary images. This parallels the kinds of research necessarily carried out by a designer such as an architect in finding the supporting data about building products and materials as well as research into the canonic history of architecture, or immersion in fashionable theoretical thickets. Researchers in various design disciplines and in other related fields conduct research of this class and make information generally available to others to support understanding and choice. Research that can be used for designing is not always specifically directed at designers, and discovery and interpretation on their part may thus be necessary. For example, work in sociology and demographics might be provided to designers of a housing estate, but translation and digestion will be necessary to shape this data in such a way as to enable design directions and decisions. We can also distinguish research intended to improve design processes or outcomes, or to aid the education of designers. This shades into research about design and is considered below. RESEARCH ABOUT DESIGN

Research about design or research into designing is driven by epistemological interests: what is design, what is it about, what is it for, why do we have it, how is it possible, how is it done and how can education enable it to improve? Some startlingly glib assertions masquerading as putative answers to these questions have graced architecture and design books and lectures over the years. Frequently, they contain untested assumptions hidden in the many normative theories of design promoted by gurus attempting to impress followers. Serious and unglamorous efforts to provide answers to questions such as those above are made in research into what designers do when designing. Designers’ processes and thinking are scrutinised in research about design. Such enquiries into designing sit comfortably in educational milieux as research about design can be focussed on learning how to design specifically on the assumption that the best learning leads to the best design. Of course, the promoter of the learning procedure sanctions any position about what is best in learning or design. Closely relating to this is research conducted into the actual practice of designers in an effort to determine how the practice of acknowledged design leaders results in good design. In this project the research about design examining the quotidian activities of one designer was continuously conducted as described above. A final, significant, portion of research about design concerns its history: the objects of design and the biographies of individual designers. Here, there is an evaluative and critical component introduced by the historian, as the objects and people are positioned in the tale of the history of design and relative to the canon of designed works. TEMPORAL ASPECTS AND IMMEDIACY OF APPLICATION

Like any research, design research may be applied or it may be blue-sky. As an Australian, I live in an era that favours the pragmatic and the applied—education 115

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has been coerced into emphasising the vocational, while the impact and short-term applicability of research outcomes are monitored and increasingly determine funding allocations. Unless blue-sky enquiries are permitted and undertaken there will be little or nothing added to human knowledge that could be categorised as “bewilderingly useless” when discovered, even while harbouring the chance of becoming richly useful some time in the future. One exemplar of this is the concept of the stimulated emission of light proposed by Albert Einstein in 1917. It took thirty-something years for the technical and engineering explorations of this to begin and, even in the 1950s and 1960s, the various laser types were devices without immediate commercial use. Now, as the CDs, DVDs and barcodes of our world are scanned, our writing, listening, looking and buying are shaped by laserbased technologies.3 Research about design mostly lies toward the speculative end of the classificatory continuum—when it seeks to understand designing there is the anticipation that the knowledge gained will enhance future designing. The time frame is uncertain, as educational uptake is not immediate. Some of these research projects are curiositydriven journeys to and around territories that are not well mapped; there is no certainty that the knowledge gained in these wilder terrains will have any foreseeable use. Historical research shares some of this character: better knowledge of the past holds little promise of application, but considerable interest; it unfolds enrichments of the context of current activities. The research for design that is undertaken in all design projects is inherently in the realm of the applied as it is undertaken to satisfy known or reasonably wellprescribed aims. If a designer wants to select appropriate materials for instance, there is a specification of performance more-or-less established prior to the search for information on potential materials. A rethinking of performance and a chain of future changes might result if surprising properties of a material are learnt by an inquiring designer, but research for design is predominantly directed to short-term application of the knowledge gained. It endeavours to assemble what is known and apply this knowledge for design ends. Although some of this assembled knowledge may once have been blue-sky, its collection and collation is not therefore categorised as such. However, even when finding the already well known, the designer’s research for design may be personally blue-sky in that it produces ideas that are fresh and invigorating. There are temporal issues in both design and research; each can have short-term and long-term temporal horizons. The blue-sky would be expected to be long-term, while applied research, by the very nature of concerning itself with its application to understood and known problems, focuses on a shorter implementation time. Designing is inevitably projective, but this does not necessarily separate and distinguish it from researching. Designing looks forward in time; it cannot effect change in past circumstances. While some research attempts to discover past conditions, much research in sciences starts from past conditions and projects these forward to determine what might be the case if one of the regularities of the past was varied. Regardless of the intent of research, the take up of its findings may be

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for projective purposes. Some designing, again like some researching, is provocative; the activities are undertaken by researchers intent on rattling the bars of their disciplinary cages. RESEARCH THROUGH DESIGN

To commence a consideration of research through design, consider one of the earliest Oxford citations of “research” from 1694, prior to the word acquiring more-or-less scientific connotations. It is defined as “Investigation, enquiry into things” (OED, 1989). This is delightfully open and thus useful, but as with any other definition of research thought must be given regarding why an investigation is to be undertaken, why things are to be enquired into. One cannot enquire without at least some form of theory to guide one’s enquiry, and some decisions about what tools will be used, and what methods employed. A theory, even an informal one, is necessary to guide the direction of the enquiry. Any researcher claiming to be undirected and expecting untainted data to emerge from researching is talking nonsense. Such supposedly undirected research is rich with assumptions about what is significant to observe, collect and assemble in the way of data. Any question entails exclusion. A discussion of what will be investigated also proposes a compliment: all the things that will neither be dealt with nor enumerated. The landscape of research is shaped by assumptions that bound it. The direction of research is tailored by desire—there is always something that the researcher wants to know. When designing is undertaken in response to a brief, a broad direction of investigation is specified. This parallels the idea of a research question where, specifically in the case of a candidate for a research higher degree, any project is normally expected to specify something like a research question. Now, if designing does not entail enquiry, this is a meaningless expectation for a design-based higher degree. Designing must be held to be a mode of researching, or of at least producing knowledge in a manner analogous to the expectations of research. As with all designers, the research of higher degree candidates produces changes in the designing of the individual undertaking the designing; in education, this is its intended outcome. Simply saying ever more stridently that design is a research activity is pointless. Making the case in an effort to be heard by scientists and people holding the purse strings has some urgency in contexts such as Australia’s. In many countries this is not the case, and no one cares if design or art or music is argued to be research except to the extent that the question has intellectual interest. It is also contested within the debate about whether or not a PhD can be done by project. It hinges on the issue of knowledge: how it is produced, where it resides, and how it is transmitted to others. The predominant view is that production and transmission has to be in, and by, words and that therefore a PhD must be produced as a written thesis. I argue otherwise. We need to examine how researching through designing is like traditional research or how it parallels such research in its own domain of enquiry and practice. Research as understood in sciences is not the only source of reliable knowledge. Design processes use knowledge, but in addition, designing produces 117

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personal knowing for designers and ultimately this can become collective knowledge. Such knowledge has characteristics in common with other knowledges and is characteristically enfolded into the process of designing itself. Like other knowledges it is also embodied in some carrier medium when it becomes collective knowledge. In this case the embodiment is through the outcome of the designing—the designs. There can be little doubt that all sorts of knowledges are embodied in the processes of their doing: dancing is a clear example, but skill-based laboratory techniques in sciences also offer an example where the producer of knowledge herself embodies knowledges required for the production of more knowledge (Knorr Cetina, 1999). This is difficult to examine in some non-invasive objective manner. Selfinterrogation by designers may be the most revelatory technique available. The knowledge produced in design is stored, transmitted and learnt through works in a manner such that design knowledge leads creatively to more design knowledge. TWO CASE STUDIES

The two most recent pavilion models in this ongoing project are considered here as case studies to examine the idea of researching through designing. The first is composed predominantly of forms and elements that are involved in the production of music. The second is predominantly about reuse of elements extant in various works of architecture. They both, therefore, involve (re-)interpretation, translation and transformation. Pavilion 11 is titled Music Bridge: a chamber of iterative interpretations. Classical music compositions require reinterpretation. Performers enrich and vary their interpretation of a work over time. The changes come piecemeal; the performer’s later interpretations of a composition sum these iterative changes. In my case there are iterative steps in understanding and also in designing and making. This is a work about reinterpretation; it began with the site. Initially this is a reuse of a short section of a Stegbar windowsill. The act of reuse becomes one of reinterpreting once a sill is thought of as a base for a window—a concept metaphorically extended to encompass a base for a way of looking at design ideas. It gains an additional allusive twist by being made hull-like through its shaping at one end. Perhaps it is a site eager to venture forth in search of the new. After the site choice, my next act of designing and making was to form a plasticine mould and construct a papier-mâché shell roughly in the shape of quarter of a cello. This was thought of as a sheltering form to be held aloft in an initially undetermined manner. It has come to partially cover a platform reached by the bridge of the title. The platform area is an elevated raked gravel garden held in a melding of a hull and a concert grand piano shaped from wood found in a street skip. A melding can set up resonances and possibilities for conflated or contradictory readings. My reinterpretations are intended to challenge the interpretations of any viewer. That the raked gravel displays evidence of sound waves propagating through it adds another idea.

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Figure 3. Images of Pavilion 11

The three-element bridge more-or-less remains a bridge although the forms pay homage to architect Mark Goulthorpe’s bronze hearth in the Haddad apartment, Paris, 2001. The bridge becomes embroiled with other elements: there are remembrances of draw bridges and hints of bridges that raise or open as in Amsterdam. The bridge mechanisms blurred and in my mind became one with container cranes. They are constructed through interpretive reuse of elements employed in hard disks—items inevitably involved in the recording of music, in a great deal of its reproduction, and in some modern music performance. Plugs, pieces from within hard drives, and memory brackets from motherboards were pressed into service. Music became the dominant theme. For the tower I began a reinterpretation of a skillion-roofed shed, but increasingly it morphed into a castle tower and finally a hopper—perhaps from images such as those by photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher—with a ghosting of signal boxes by architects Herzog and de Meuron. Pavilion 12 is The Pilgrim Temple of Canonic Desires. The other half of the remnant windowsill had to be used. After mocking-up a sloping platform with no obvious derivation, this next model began to take on the theme of reuse when I decided to replace the initial distorted oval shape with most of the roof plan of La Chapelle-Notre-Dame-du-Haut at Ronchamp by Le Corbusier (1950–1955) used as a floor. My version of this plan displays both bending and mild warping—an exaggerated version of the sloped floor of the actual building. A platform leading to it is sheltered by a roof derived from any of a number of houses by Frank Lloyd Wright—for example, the Ward Willits House (1901), the Frederick Robie House (1906), the Avery Coonley House (1907), Taliesin (1911) and the Harry Adams House (1913) all utilise this roof form and pitch.

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Figure 4. Images of Pavilion 12

Once a start was made at stealing forms, the slide was precipitous; this was the mode of continuing. The search for appropriate targets was quickly joined and most other elements of the model now involve a reworking of some aspect of a piece of architecture. First, a version of the chapel plan of Francesco Borromini’s S Carlo Alle Quattro Fontane (1638) was let into the Ronchamp-based platform. The sixteen pilasters of this interior became columns made of clear Perspex to allude to the glass columns of the Paradiso Hall of Terragni’s Danteum project of three hundred years later.4 Sixteen columns also support the roof at Ronchamp and there are twice the number in the Paradiso room plus one in its entry. This was a serendipitous coincidence. These columns do not support anything in my model; instead a bent and beaten metal version of the Ronchamp roof plan, punctured by a selection of the windows from that building’s south wall, hangs above them. It is partially supported by cranes mounted on an over-scale and extended reworking of a folly at Osaka by Morphosis (drawn from the original scheme rather than from the simpler built-version).5 The other end of this roof, and part of the Wrightian roof, each hang from greatly transformed versions of two of the three towers at Ronchamp. Their transformation is so great that they are constructed from frame elements not mass concrete; the claim that they relate to the original towers hinges on their positions in the whole and their relative heights proportional to the plan here and in the original. The diverse elements in this model span centuries, styles and schools of architecture; they do not belong together except as items in the canon of architecture. They share little in the way of formal or intellectual concerns. By using these elements, however, a new whole has been formed. It is made of parts of buildings from the canon of architecture. It is ideas of, and from, these buildings that I intend to conjure, not representations of them. Bringing them together makes a new entity, but does not necessarily elucidate a relationship between the parts simply through the act of conflation. Thus the piece proposes this idea of canonic works as metaphoric temples, places of pilgrimage in both physical and intellectual landscapes. Architectural pilgrims nurse desires to visit such canonic temples. In those architects 120

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educated, as I was, prior to the postmodern critique of meta-narratives such desires were thoroughly instilled; appreciation, even love, of canonic works was mandatory. The processes of making and designing demonstrated in these two models reveal the kinds of knowledge employed by the designer-maker. My knowledge concerning choice of materials, and how to work, finish, glue, or surface them, is evident in both the objects and in the images of them. Knowledge, either held or acquired by me as designer-maker, about aspects of music and architecture can be ascertained from the models and the descriptions above. Mixed throughout is the somewhat random knowledge accumulated in any life. Finally, the aesthetic knowledge concerned with forming wholes for expressive ends can be distinguished and evaluated by anyone examining the two models. Each of these clusters of knowledge is there to be discovered by any viewer. Progression through aggregation of elements of a slowly emerging whole can be seen as a mode of designing and making. This leads to the requirement for me to accommodate to what is already extant. Mostly, this is what I did; occasionally I had to abandon something already made, as a newer better idea demanded the sacrifice of a prior element. This was my way of working. It is a mode that parallels research in sciences according to Pickering (1995) who presents evidence of accommodation to resistances as a key element for working scientists. There was no pre-determined overarching theme, no initial design on paper or a screen for a maker (whether me or another) to follow. Designing and making were essentially one; there was no mediation by a craftsperson between my designing and the final model. Much of my designing is conducted by thinking with no support such as paper; often it is aided by fiddling at the workbench (with mock-ups or materials) prior to commencement of committed making of a section. A film of my working practice would show periods of staring into space punctuated by bursts of messing about with bits and pieces. TRANSFORMATION AND TRANSLATION

The dominant theme in both these pieces concerns the relation between the original borrowed elements or ideas and those embodied in the model. Does the movement from original to model involve acts of translation or acts of transformation? It seems simplest to suggest the original elements have been transformed. Typically a change of scale is involved in modelling, as is the case here; such changes transform at least the size of the original while maintaining its shapes, forms and proportions. Likewise there is a change of materials, but this is a substitution rather than a transformation in that one material is entirely replaced by another. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED, 1989), at least where languages are concerned, suggests that translation involves a process of turning one thing into another resulting in a new version of the original. Figuratively, this is extended to a rendition in another form or medium. Webster’s Dictionary (2002) extends this definition beyond languages to include representational systems, and thus would seem to enfold the process involved in the models within the concept of translation. According to dictionaries, transformation entails something changing from one form, shape or 121

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appearance to another. Agency for this change can reside in the thing changing (metamorphoses), or come about through external means (perhaps a mathematician performing a substitution in an algorithm). On this basis, much of what has been done in the processes of designing and making the models can be subsumed under either term. Examination of the process reveals the importance of selection on the part of the designer-maker. Elements are chosen for inclusion in the piece. In each of these, some aspects are selected and maintained in the model to allow recognition. In the case of Pavilion 12, most of the roof plan shape of Ronchamp is maintained, but its curvature is not. This is sufficient for architects, at least, to recognise the allusion to the original it seems, as they will, I have found, recognise even a partial sketch of the plan. A small prod in a descriptive text might be necessary for a wider audience to recognise it and people with no knowledge of the plan shape cannot be expected to do so. This might require an act of judgement by the maker to present just enough aspects of the original to allow recognition. Alternatively, the designermaker’s intention might be to use the original for his or her own purposes, with no concern for whether-or-not the original remains apparent. As described above, various elements from diverse originals are employed in these models with varying degrees of abstraction and mutation. Some material is migrated from one context to the other. What is subsumed under the rubric of material here is highly variable and subject to various strategies of selection. In different instances, number is preserved, but not the types of construction materials; forms are preserved, but not number; position and proportional size are preserved, but not form or materials. These selections, substitutions and preservations are reminiscent of translation of texts between languages where the translator endeavours to address the changes in cultural contexts and meanings surrounding the text and to offer a parallel rendering in another language and culture; there is an attempt to maintain the meaning not to simply substitute words that best fit those of the original. A translation is, of course, a new work and may go beyond the original in various ways. Although something more like translation seems to be the main activity, an effort on my part can be discerned to sustain selected significant aspects of the originals and employ these in the pavilion models. If they were to remain recognisable and to be used as representing or as in some way standing in for the original, it would appear that these aspects must be transformed rather than translated. Yet, this is the act of translation: to keep the idea stable although employing a different medium. On this analysis, there appears to be elements of both transformation and translation involved in these models, but something more is also entailed. Because the sources of originals are numerous and varied, and because new elements which have not been consciously borrowed have been introduced, the pieces are neither transformations nor translations exclusively. In part they are, but the transformed or translated elements are combined, melded together and cooked up into a new meal. There are many evaluative acts on the part of a designer-maker working in this manner: decisions are being constantly made about the nature and selections of the original material to be employed, what will be maintained and the way it will 122

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be used and combined. This class of evaluative decision-making is common to all designing. Michael Brawne (2003) gives an account of the formal, typological models informing three major buildings—the ways these have been modified, adapted and evolved over the gestation and development of the projects. KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION AND EMBODIMENT

For the designer-maker of works such as these two model pavilions, or for anyone coming to either of them, there is a necessary canonic knowledge if the work is to be understood in the terms discussed above. In addition to this there are necessary knowledges from other fields and any viewer can be expected to bring a range of knowledges not possessed or used by the designer-maker in producing such pieces. To what extent are requisite pieces of knowledge embedded in the work? To what extent are the pieces players in an epistemological adventure? Consider the embodiment of knowledge in designed works and extend this to their representations in photographs and drawings since such representations are treated similarly as if they are tools of embodiment and transmission. In essence, knowledge can be gleaned from such sources by a person, commonly a designer, who comes to the work or the representation and interrogates it in a manner similar to obtaining knowledge from a book. Whether this obtained knowledge is, in some fashion, drawn from the book, or whether it is created in and by the reader or even whether it is a joint enterprise between writer and reader, is a moot point. Knowing on the part of a reader comes into being through the act of reading; knowing with respect to a design is similarly brought into being through acts of questing and questioning—the same processes that are involved in engaged reading. There is a knowledge transfer from the person who produced the knowledge in either a written piece or a designed work to another person (the reader or the person engaging with the designed work). This is not an exact transfer. There may not be a loss in the transfer; there may be a gain. Most likely, I imagine, the new person takes some knowledge, perhaps augments it, probably misses elements or arguments, misunderstands parts and, in addition, adds knowledge from his or her existing supply. This whole procedure makes new knowing. Philosopher Karl Popper (1972, pp. 10–105) distinguishes statements of the kind “I know x” that involve someone’s belief and preparedness to make utterances about what they know, from what he terms “world three” items of knowledge, those items that are recorded in the world and exist independently of a knower. These, he says, have a largely autonomous existence independent of any person to decode or know them. The term knowledge thus has a different meaning in each use. The first sense consists of dispositions to behave, claims to know and so on, while the second consists of theories and arguments that are independent of anyone’s preparedness to assent to them. This is knowledge without a knower. The distinction of the putative objective world, “world one”, from the “world two” domain of subjective experience is commonly made in philosophy. In Popper’s view “world three” items of knowledge can be independently encoded in, or carried by, the quotidian physical entities of “world one”, where this knowledge 123

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exists without a knowing subject. Embodied design knowledge is a prime example since it can be argued to be embodied in the designed entities to which it applies, perhaps as an entryway, a briefcase or an interface. The embodied knowledge is experienced and dealt with by a knowing subject in “world two”, however. In any piece of design, there is evidence of the knowledge involved in its designing that can be understood by others and potentially learnt by them. Through an act of analysis (historically observation and drawing) architecture students have long been required to discover what an architect had done to achieve the outcome subsequently regarded as a canonic work. In other words, architects have historically expected to learn from prior architecture; they operate as if architecture contains knowledge, or as if they can learn things necessary to the practice of architecture from the study of at least some works of architecture. Some other design areas have less history of this, but behave similarly. Elsewhere, writers read as part of learning their craft, painters examine and copy prior masters, composers listen, analyse and maybe mimic—they all behave in manners that assume the embodiment of knowledge in the works of past practitioners. Either such knowledge is, indeed, embodied in the designed entities, or they possess some characteristics that trigger learning in those that study them. There is no gain in knowledge of these entities without the study of them. Some portion of this knowledge may well be conveyed through written descriptions of the work and the ideas driving it and apparent to a viewer or user but, visiting a building for example, or seeing a photograph of it, produces a great deal of new, non-verbal knowledge. Consider a designed work, or a representation of it: while words may enable the discussion of ideas that informed the work and aid their discernment within it, the work is the principle purveyor of ideas. Works are repositories of knowledge. Taken in total they form a great part of the collective knowledge of design disciplines and the evidential material stored within them can be transmitted to others. Designers learn from their interactions with the embodied evidence of the knowing and knowledge involved in the designing and making of the work. Part of the learning arises from the potential for the design to trigger fresh ideas and new knowings in anyone considering or interacting with it. A work is thus a source of knowledge for a designer; this knowledge can be accessed, referred to and utilised in some pursuit of a designer just as any other source of knowledge may be accessed, the knowledge gained, and then deployed. It is possible to distinguish three classes of design knowledge that display independent existence: first, the knowledge unavoidably embodied in a designed work and available through scrutiny—for example, technical knowledge concerned with making, manufacture and construction, and knowledge employed in decisions made for an expressive end; second, that formed from the intentional incorporations of the designer(s) of the work (some of which may not be intelligible to others); and third, the knowledge possessed by the reader and brought to the perception of these embodied knowledges. The knowledge brought to the work by others may be greater than that of the original designer. In this category, for the knowledge to be revealed, an enquirer must possess sufficient other knowledge to seek and understand what is embodied, and learn and extend the understanding brought to the 124

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inspection of the designed object. There is a similarity with reading in that the reader has to know enough to decipher the text, engage with the author’s ideas and learn or disagree. These processes may be partial. Novelty fosters learning in the sense that something that is new to the learner has the potential to result in a greater change to that person’s knowing than something familiar. There is no claim that a designed work or its representation can reliably present specified knowledge to a person seeking it. What is claimed is the significance of a designer making the approach and seeking, or being receptive to, elements in the work that trigger new knowing in that designer. REPRESENTATION AND LEARNING

While a piece of architecture or landscape fixed, as they are, in space can embody knowledge that is available for a visitor, a representation of it is necessary to transmit the knowledge to people in other places. The transmission of knowledge is affected by representations. For many people images replace architectural originals entirely and most of us know most architecture through the multiple sources of images available to us in our media-saturated world. The same can be true of mobile designed works such as garments and products, even though there are often multiple instances of their existence. Representations introduce distortions and emphases. These may detract from what can be known about the work or add emphasis for educative purposes. Learning from examples involves reaching a decision about the significance of an entire work or some aspect of it. Words accompanying representations usually tell what was done in response to a brief and to various influences, intentions and constraints, and they sometimes engage with a larger discourse about design to contextualise the work. These words aid learning. What a designer has previously learnt from whatever means, be it exploration through designing, through examination or listening to others, will be brought together in the current design enquiry in the current set of circumstances. Any tools, techniques, concepts and theories that have been acquired by the designer can be integrated in the designer’s designing. Designers learn and amplify their prior learning through the experience of designing. The projective characteristics of designing are significant. The processes and the outcomes are concerned with change, with bringing something into being. The discussion above concerns the knowledge used and produced in designing and the knowledge embodied in a design, but a design represents what will be or what could be. It embodies the knowing and knowledge of its designer(s) and uses this to speculative ends to address what will be or what might be. While based on and employing knowledge, it is similar to any other prediction. We cannot know tomorrow’s weather, or the winner of a sporting contest; we can make predictions of varying quality ranging from guesses to detailed computer simulations. To the extent that design is a set of instructions for bringing a state of affairs into future existence, it should have highly predictive capacities. These capacities are not static and independent of what actually transpires, as a weather forecast might be. Considerable effort is expended to make the design come true and take its place in 125

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the changed reality it is part of engendering. During this process new design decisions are made according to circumstance, each one of which may result in the original design being less predictively accurate although potentially more acceptable because of this. An epistemological issue of concern can be phrased as, “how do you know you know?” This can be asked of an individual or of a discipline area. In the case of research through design, it is further compounded by considering how you can convince others that you know. In this context, observation of practitioners and their peers suggests that they behave as if designs produce and embody knowledge. Is this sufficient for those outside design disciplines? In essence it bears a symmetrical relation to knowledge in a science; simply because a particular designer cannot comprehend the knowledge claimed to reside on a page of formulae and unfamiliar terms, does not render it invalid. We have to trust the discipline. We can equally ask for the same if designers can coherently and consistently agree about the extent and nature of the knowledge embodied in designs. Others, regardless of their comprehension, will have to acknowledge that design knowledge is resident in designed entities, or that what is embodied can aid the knowing of an individual interrogating the entity in such a way as to learn. At the very least, new knowledge produced through designing is new knowledge of processes for the design discipline. This is paralleled by other disciplines; some portion of the knowledge they produce entails a development of the ways in which things are done in that discipline.6 OUTCOMES OF RESEARCHING THROUGH DESIGNING

These two little works have joined the ten that preceded them and taken their place in larger research enterprises growing around them. Throughout, my enquiry has been shared with others as it unfolded. There were seminars, lectures, two books and myriad conversations with people, mostly postgraduate researchers, engaged in project-based research. Two larger projects emerged and enfolded the activities described in this chapter. These projects each received Australian Research Council (ARC) grants from the Australian Government. Both involve four or five other researchers.7 In this sense they satisfy the normal strictures of traditional research projects, but they endeavour to speak to their audiences largely in the languages of making, exhibition and performance, not in the traditional modes of research reporting. The first ARC project involves a series of three exhibitions in the Melbourne Museum examining the roles and uses of models in architectural design and specifically considers the differences between physical modelling and computer modelling. The second ARC project is an enquiry about sound in Japanese gardens, normally places that are predominantly considered in visual terms. In this case, the contribution of sound to the enduring qualities of these gardens is being examined and used for design modelling and compositional outcomes by researchers based in architecture, sound design and music. The research outcomes will centre on performance and production. The knowledge produced by each research project is being constructed in designed (physical) objects and through performances of composed works. The 126

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research is being conducted through its doing and the research outcomes are constructed in the modes of enquiry and production utilised in the parent disciplines. My effort is to show that the designerly knowledge produced through this research at least partially resides in, and can be conveyed through, the design processes and physical outcomes of the research. If it is accepted that knowledge is embodied in designed works and can be accessed by others, then the activity of designing is a knowledge-producing activity as are other forms of research in other disciplines. NOTES 1

2

3

4

5 6

7

See, for example, Suwa & Tversky (1997). Six papers on protocol analysis appear in Design Studies 16(2), 1995. For a review of techniques see Cross (1999) and Cross (2001). Books and papers in which aspects of the project are presented include all those listed in the references under Downton, P. Nobel Prize. Retrieved on June 25, 2007, from http://nobelprize.org/physics/educational/laser/facts/ history.html Terragni’s Danteum project, started in 1938, is a powerful example of translation from the medium of Dante’s poetry into designs for a representation in physical form. It is richly explored in Schumacher, T. & Ciucci, G. (2004). Detailed drawings of the unbuilt version appear in Isozaki, A. (1991). See the discussions on practices in physics and on practice differences between biological laboratories in Knorr Cetina, K. (1999). The two ARC Discovery Grants are Spatial knowledge and the built environment: the design implications of making, processing and digitally prototyping architectural models with Professor Mark Burry, Associate Professor Andrea Mina, Alison Fairley (RMIT University) and Professor Michael Ostwald (University of Newcastle); and Teimu (The garden of dreams): aural and aesthetic attributes of Japanese gardens as models for spatial environments with Lawrence Harvey, Dr Michael Fowler (RMIT University), Dr Gregory Missingham, Alex Selenitsch (University of Melbourne).

REFERENCES Brawne, M. (2003). Architectural thought: The design process and the expectant eye. Oxford, UK: Architectural Press. Cross, N. (1999). Natural intelligence in design. Design Studies, 20(1), 25–39. Cross, N. (2001). Design cognition: Results from protocol and other empirical studies of design activity. In C. Eastman, W. McCraken, & W. Newstetter (Eds.), Design knowing and learning: Cognition in design education (pp. 79–103). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Downton, P. (2000). Theory’s cupboard: Myths of knowing, form, memes and models. In M. J. Ostwald & R. J. Moore (Eds.), Re-Framing architecture: Theory, science and myth (pp. 49–59). Sydney, New S Wales: Archadia Press. Downton, P. (2003). Knowing practice: An inquiry into design research via making. In C. Newton, S. Kaji-O’Grady, & S. Wollan (Eds.), Design + Research: Project based research in architecture Proceedings of the Second International Conference of the Association of Architecture Schools of Australia, Melbourne, Australia, 2003. Melbourne, Victoria: Melboune University Press. Downton, P. (2003). Design research. Melbourne, Victoria: RMIT University Press. Downton, P. (2004). Studies in design research: Ten epistemological pavilions. Melbourne, Victoria: RMIT University Press.

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Downton, P. (2005). Doing little drawings: A study of intention and relationship in a design research project. In K. Holt-Damant & P. Sanders (Eds.), Drawing together: Convergent practices in architectural education. Proceedings of the Third International Conference of the Association of Architecture Schools of Australia (AASA), Brisbane, Australia, September 28–30, 2005. Brisbane, Queensland: University of Queensland and Queensland University of Technology. Retrieved April 18, 2007, from http://www.architect.uq.edu.au/aasa2005/resources/26/downton.pdf Downton, P. (2005). The azure sky, the design made. In J. Redmond, D. Durling, & A. de Bono (Eds.), Futureground Design Research Society International Conference Vol. 2. Proceedings of the Design Research Society International Conference (DRS), Melbourne, Australia, November 17–21, 2004. Melbourne, Victoria: Monash University Faculty of Art and Design. Downton, P. (2006a). Making dust, acquiring knowledge. In M. Burry, P. Downton, A. Mina, & M. Ostwald (Eds.), Homo faber: Modelling architecture, exhibition catalogue [CD-ROM]. Melbourne, Victoria: Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory, RMIT University. Downton, P. (2006b). Temporality, representation and machinic behaviours: Model dialogues with the self, collaborators, clients and others. In M. Burry, P. Downton, A. Mina, & M. Ostwald (Eds.). Homo faber: Modelling architecture, exhibition catalogue [CD-ROM]. Melbourne, Victoria: Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory, RMIT University. Frayling, C. (1993). Research in art and design. Royal College of Art Research Papers 1(1). London: Royal College of Art. Isozaki, A. (1991). Osaka follies. London and Tokyo: Architectural Association Workshop for Architecture and Urbanism. Knorr Cetina, K. (1999). Epistemic cultures: How the sciences make knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lloyd, P., Lawson, B., & Scott, P. (1995). Can concurrent verbalisation reveal design cognition? Design Studies, 16(2), 237–259. OED Oxford English dictionary (1989, 2nd ed.). Retrieved May 9, 2007, from http://dictionary.oed.com Pickering, A. (1995). The mangle of practice: Time, agency and science. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Popper, K. (1972). Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schumacher, T., & Ciucci, G. (2004). The Danteum (2nd ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press. Suwa, M., & Tversky, B. (1997). What do architects and students perceive in their design sketches? A protocol analysis. Design Studies, 18(4), 385–403. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. (2002). Retrieved June 25, 2007, from http://un-abridged.merriam-webster.com

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9. WAYS OF PERFORMING Perspectives on Performance and Performativity

INTRODUCTION

Temporal Creativity This chapter weaves the voices of researchers and supervisors as it presents narratives of doctorate and master degree projects working through creative practices of visual arts, film and music performance. As well as reflecting on the nature of performance itself, the projects engage performatively with issues of Indigeneity and Australian society, attitudes and identity, and the role of creative practices in the transmission and translation of cultural knowledge. Working with performative methodologies, two Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, Richard and Andy, tackle the relations between theory and practice in music performance by elucidating performative relationships between music performance and audience, theory and practice, idea and event. A third researcher, Emma engages visual practices through a range of filmic and visual media practices working collaboratively with her guiding Indigenous artists in Larrakia land, Darwin, Northern Territory, to investigate processes of cultural translations from Indigenous and nonIndigenous perspectives. Each project involves different forms of performance and each works performatively in the temporal moments of their creative engagements to invigorate their research questions. To perform is to enact in an embodied way, to improvise, execute, or fulfill an action to some form of resolvement through a temporal interplay of creative practices. Performance may be a constructed event involving language, voice, images, design, music, poetry or kinaesthetic action, with either pre-determined intentions or undefined and unknown purposes. Or it may be part of the quotidian aspects of one’s life as a ritualistic or incidental practice. When the body relates to its spatial surroundings and feels its dimensions, performance exists. However in context of a doctorate or master’s research project performance carries some external obligations of a scholarly kind, such as a requirement for identifiable questions, structures, scaffolds and frameworks. When the project is arts-based or practice-led there is an expectation that the creative practice is leading the researcher into the unknown of new possibilities. Creative practice suggests a capacity to “let happen”, to work with sensation and perception, to perform through aesthetic and material relations, to work with the interplay of sound, image, movement, form or language, and to bring forth ideas for further contemplation, invention or reflexive engagement. Such an E. Grierson and L. Brearley, Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices, 129–148. © 2009 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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approach makes room for the unexpected by conforming to a form of logic other than that of means-end thinking or causation. The challenge for the creative practitioner-researcher is to marry these vastly different approaches and to keep the creative potency alive in relation to the research focus. Performance and Performativity: Proximal Relations For the filmmaker, musician or artist, performance is a necessary part of the research process and performativity is an effective methodology for interlocking and interlacing diverse affects. What are the proximal relations between performance and performativity? Each is a space and place-making process (McAuley, 2008), with temporality and spatiality being activated through the relationality of the moment. Performance can involve an interchange between subject and audience as co-performers; or it may be an everyday moment of experience. Performativity effectively displaces arbitrary divisions between subject and object, researcher and thing being observed, constructed or incidental, as it establishes an interplay or reflexive and embodied mode of thinking, speaking and enacting through relational practices⎯word with action, text with text, image with text, one artist or author with another, theory with practice, or performer with audience. To enact performatively is to adopt a methodology that enables the interplay of such relationships as way of working. Each of the projects discussed by Richard Frankland, Andy Baylor and Emma Barrow involves performances and performative methodologies. The performances call for responses from an audience or participant at given moments in time and place. In different ways, each project involves storytelling, and expresses embodied experiences by improvising, reclaiming and reinvigorating social histories and practices. Each brings eventfulness into the moment, constructing or displacing order, engaging or deconstructing social and cultural assumptions, and intervening in known rules of communication to create the new. Each project is enacting perceptual, aesthetic, relational and spatial practices—and more. Richard’s and Andy’s performances work through music and language to open questions to do with cultural identity as well as to investigate the notion of music performance itself. Emma’s filmmaking involves Indigenous artists whose embodied dance performance activates associations of Indigenous rights and land, language and culture, power and its effects. Performance suggests conditions of witnessing. In the case of Emma’s research her filmmaking captures these transactions and through later exposure she opens the performance moments to a performative reflexivity where Indigenous and non-Indigenous sensitivities and perspectives become manifest. Performativity may embody the relational conditions of physical, psychological, historical or ecological relations with land, self and life-world, or it can be an interplay of textuality through oral, visual, kinaesthetic or written languages. Performance can link different worlds together, the micro and macro, as forms of embodiment and emplacement (Snow, 2008), with performativity activating the relational networks. Snow speaks through the Levinasian principles of being for 130

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the other as an embodied and ethical encounter in the performance process. For every artist/author/musician/actor/dancer there is a viewer/reader/listener/watcher, with each acting as witness of the other and working with different levels of embodied and participatory action in the performative relations. Thus to perform can be to bring the creative moment into appearance in its time of reception in relation with its inception. And with each moment of inception and reception there is a moment of immanent aliveness, a temporal creativity always ready to come into appearance. Performative methodologies provide a sustained way of engaging with and making sense of these moments of performance. They transmit and critique as they enable and inscribe an interlinking play across diverse personal, temporal, spatial, ideological, ethical and cultural ecologies. WITNESSING CONTEXTS OF MUSICAL PERFORMATIVITY

Presencing of Cultural Work The challenge for the performative researcher engaged with creative arts projects is to hold to a state of immanence, of possibility, while also framing and theorising systematically to give account of, and provide witness to, the processes they are undertaking. The performances in this discussion show that performativity as a methodology opens the creative practice to dialogues of cultural, political and social moments of engagement (see Waterman, 2005; Lines, 2006). Through these processes performing can disclose philosophical questions of being and knowing, self, other and world. Anthropologists and ethnomusicologists have long accepted music performance events as locations for the emergence and transmission of cultural knowledge. For example, Small (1977) discussed the essential social function of “musicking”; Stone (1982, p. 1) explored the notion of “music sound conceived as part of an integrally related cluster of dance, speech, and kinesic-proxemic behaviour … occurring in particular time-space dimensions …”; and Bauman (1992) examined performance as communication. More recently musical studies in performance and performativity have focused, for example, on performance as a generator of social meaning (Cook, 2001, 2003), theorisation of the embodied production of identity through performance (Waterman, 2005), the role of performativity in shaping social identities in Asian American music-making (Wong, 2004), performativity in literature and music (Guldbrandsen, Haugen, Refsum & Hovland, 2005) and performative aspects of music and gender (Tolbert, 2003). David Lines (2006, pp. 65–74) advocates for the power and potential of improvisation in music, drawing from Heidegger when he speaks of music “presencing” in the temporal moment of its occurrence. In the “presencing of complex modes of cultural work” music mobilises and generates “receptive and productive forces” (Lines, 2006, pp. 67–68). Thus music-making as a specific category of performance works to reveal or bring to recognition the cultural moment.

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Music Performance At the communicative heart of musical performance lies a relationship between performer and audience; and also there are relationships with temporal, spatial and cultural conditions. These relationships, involving emotional, perceptual and social engagements, attribute individual and collective meanings to musical sounds and associated actions that may be shared, acknowledged, celebrated or perhaps transmogrified, translated or displaced in the performance setting. In this sense a musical performance is a meeting place for the exposition and transmission of intangible cultural knowledge.1 In a performance, as Cook (2003) notes, “you perform something, you give a performance (of) something … signification is constructed through the act of performance and generally through the acts of negotiation either between performer, or between them and the audience” (Cook, 2003, pp. 204–214). There is a semiotic process in action with the signs being performed having a social signification in their visual, aural and kinaesthetic domains. In this way, the revealing process of knowing and being occurs in a live, first hand encounter between performer and audience. Many will have experienced these moments and events in a range of locations, such as small intimate spaces (clubs, homes, theatres, studios), ritualistic gatherings or massive stadiums. According to recent statistics at least twenty-five percent of the 2005 Australian population attended a music event.2 These audience members would be familiar with the emotional charge and exchange of intangible knowledge associated with the enactment of the performance relationship. Anthropologist and folklorist, Richard Bauman defines performance as “a mode of communicative behaviour and type of communicative event” (1992, p. 41). Communicative actions⎯essentially the sending, receiving, encoding and decoding of messages⎯are performed actions and, as such, relate to the approaches to musical performance mentioned above (Small, 1977; Stone, 1982; Cook, 2001, 2003; Waterman, 2005; Guldbrandsen, Haugen, Refsum & Hovland, 2005). Bauman (1977) argues that, “performance usually suggests an aesthetically marked and heightened mode of communication, framed in a special way and put on display for an audience. The analysis of performance⎯indeed the very conduct of performance ⎯highlights the social, cultural and aesthetic dimensions of the communicative process” (Bauman, 1977, p. 41). Bauman goes on to highlight the “evaluative role” audiences are assigned in the performance event. He maintains that the act of communication “… gives license to the audience to regard it and the performer with special intensity. Performance makes one communicatively accountable; it assigns to an audience the responsibility of evaluating the relative skill and effectiveness of the performer’s accomplishment” (Bauman, 1977, p. 44). Together in this evaluative process, performers and audience reach what Fox (1994, p. 154) calls a “congruent understanding” in which meanings are made and cultural knowledge shared. In summary a performance involves emotional and social engagement; transmission of intangible culture; heightened modes of aesthetic and other forms of communication; ethical and communicative accountabilities; embodied and

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embedded relations of one and other; and perceptual, interpretive, evaluative and participatory roles for audiences or witnesses. Here lies the interplay of productive forces. Each of these performance elements involves actions in which meaning is made, knowledge created, place and culture revealed and transmitted. That is, in a heightened state of aesthetic perception, human feelings and symbolic messages are exchanged in a social, cultural and physical context. During and after a performance the audience, listeners or viewers participate in meaning making processes in the musical, spatial, linguistic or kinaesthetic moments and from these exchanges they come to know something about selves, others and the life-world of which they are a part. Discussing aesthetics of new media art in relation to digital innovations in artistic sound and music computing, particularly in the field of human-machine interactivity, Kim and Seifert (2007) characterise performativity as “the capacity of a performative act to generate meaning and ‘reality’” (Kim & Seifert, 2007, p. 230). From this it would seem that performers, participants and audiences have different and changing capacities to enact generative moments of cultural recognition in different performance locations, be they physical or virtual. In this sense a musical performance is a temporal and spatial event in which audio, visual, kinetic and digitalised actions are the channels for bringing into presence the aliveness of the moment, for the generation of meaning making processes, and for interpretations and perceptions of spatial and temporal realities. The performative actions are inscribed by performers and audiences through communicative interactions of listening, sounding instruments and voices, improvising, applauding, dancing, moving and generally participating in the eventful encounter. In the context of academic work how do we evaluate the work of performers as researchers and the relationship between scholar and performer in determining scholarly outcomes? To explore these questions we need to look further at what is meant by Bauman’s notions of “communicative accountability of the performer” and “the evaluative role for audiences” (Bauman, 1977, p. 44). Specific approaches are drawn from two Australian postgraduate performers as researchers, Richard Frankland and Andy Baylor, who have examined their performance practice not only in relation to general audiences, but also to an audience of scholars. Both have international reputations in their fields of work; and both are concerned with how issues of personal, community and national identity feature in their artistic practice. One is an Indigenous Australian, Richard Frankland, a leading activist, spokesperson, musician and film-maker; the other a non-Indigenous Australian, Andy Baylor, a well-known Rhythm and Blues, Cajun and Country musician. In what ways, and to what extent, did the two researchers (and the supervisor as participatory audience) generate meaning and activate both creative and scholarly reality through the musical performances at the centre of their performative research?

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RICHARD’S STORY

The Art, Freedom and Responsibility of Voice: Multiple Narratives of a Gunditjmara Man, Father, Artist, Activist and Warrior Richard Frankland’s master’s research programme involved a performance presented as part of the 2004 Melbourne International Arts Festival, The Charcoal Club: A Meeting Place for Burnt-Out Blacks and Singed Whites. Richard’s presentations of sung and spoken texts explored his multiple narratives as a Gunditjmara man, father, artist, activist and warrior. His work aimed to provide multi-layered insights into the experience of being an Aboriginal man in contemporary Australian society and set out to contribute to the field of Australian cultural knowledge through the integration of self-knowledge and Indigenous and non-Indigenous public knowledge. The integration of personal, public and cultural knowledge with explication through musical performance and written text are evident in both Richard Frankland’s and Andy Baylor’s work. The integrative processes of different experiences and fields of scholarship are outcomes of their performative processes. For Richard Frankland, the multifaceted medium of song performance involves the relational integration of Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of knowing. He states: There are many people in the world who sing to the land and waters, who sing to navigate, who sing to hurt, to heal, who sing in praise of the creators, who sing for love, who sing to find water, to protect sacred areas, who sing to teach, or to announce their presence, who sing for or with their children or sing just for the joy of singing and who see the power of song as a gift. ... In many Indigenous Australian nations and tribes people who sing are called and regarded as song-men or song-women (Frankland, 2007, p. 58). The significance of the performance role of these men and women is reflected in the explanation of Indigenous music and performance emanating from the Garma Symposium on Music and Performance convened by Mandawuy Yunipingu, at the Yirrnga Music Development Centre at Gunyangara, Northern Territory, in 2002. Such explanations position Indigenous performances as integral to Indigenous ways of knowing and vital for the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians. As explained on the Garma website: Songs, dances and ceremonial performances form the core of Yolngu and other Indigenous cultures in Australia. It is through song, dance and associated ceremony that Indigenous people sustain their cultures and maintain the Law and a sense of self within the world. Performance traditions are the foundation of social and personal wellbeing, and with the ever increasing loss of these traditions, the toll grows every year. The preservation of performance traditions is therefore one of the highest priorities for Indigenous people (Langton & Marett, 2002). For Richard Frankland, as an Australian Indigenous musician and researcher, the emotional, social, political and cultural stakes in musical performance are high. As a man familiar with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of knowing, his 134

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starting point in the world of Western Eurocentric academe was initially one of “alarm [and] cautiousness” about … what knowledge I might share and with whom I might share and explore it. Would I be arming the ‘enemy’ with knowledge which could be used to attack me, take more from me and from my people; Or would the opportunity further my philosophy and practice of facilitating change in the Western Eurocentric world; particularly Eurocentric concepts of education? (Frankland, 2007, pers. com.). This caution is to do with a relationship with audiences of the Eurocentric world of higher education rather than the relationships he builds frequently with live performance audiences. As a man living in both Indigenous and non-Indigenous worlds, Richard Frankland’s musical performances often embody deep social and political meanings and spaces of reflection, revelation and reclamation. He observes: Voices of song and story are powerful channels for the expression of heightened reality in performance. Much of my work and the artistic work of other Indigenous Australians is often perceived as ‘only’ political or ‘only’ cathartic, whereas often it is both, or even more multifaceted. Performance is a method for the revelation of human experience and transmission of cultural knowledge. Thus, performance involves more than mere entertainment and a ‘feel good’ factor. In terms of performative methodology, Denzin (2003) confirms this and notes ‘A good performance text must be more than cathartic⎯it must be political, moving people to action, reflection, or both’ (Denzin, 2003, p. xi). The idea of making meaning through the performing arts is central to my role as a Gunditjmara man. My multiple narratives as performed in The Charcoal Club tell of political activism, warrior activism, as well as healing processes (Frankland, 2007, p. 12–13). Here Richard Frankland notes how the multifaceted content of performances occurs in multifaceted processes in which new knowledge emerges from the integration of different ways of knowing. An important element of integration for Richard in his master degree research is the integration of three methodological processes alongside his performance work. The interlacing of these different elements was possible through the performative approach to his project. Firstly, he refers to a qualitative social research method, autoethnography, through which the researcher documents his or her ethnic background and social history through processes and outcomes. These convey, as Ellis (2004) explains: … the meanings you attach to experience. You’d want to tell a story that readers could enter and feel a part of. You’d write in a way to evoke readers to feel and think about your life and their lives in relation to yours, you’d want them to experience your experience as if it was happening to them (Ellis, 2004, p. 24). Secondly, he works with narrative enquiry, which makes use of narrative as “a way to give contour to experience and life, conceptualize and preserve memories, or hand down experience, tradition, and values to future generations” (Bamberg, 135

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1998, online); and thirdly, Dadirri (Atkinson, 2001, p. 1; Ungunmerr-Baumann, 1988, in Brundell, 2003), an Australian Indigenous term referring to quiet and respectful deep listening. It also involves a symbiotic joining of the sacred and the secular, the metaphysical and mundane coexisting in everyday human experience. Richard Frankland’s multiple performances took place in an international arts festival in Melbourne as part of a lifetime of performing in diverse venues for different audiences. Coming from his lineage as a Gunditjmara man, father, artist, activist and warrior, Richard’s performative actions include song, spoken texts, narration, transmission and integration of personal experience and knowledge, facilitating the revelation of experience to audiences, sustaining self identity, Indigenous culture and Law, and moving people to action and reflection through politicising, healing and deep listening in the communicative processes of performance. His work activates layers of knowledge in the fields of Indigenous history, culture and personal experience through the musical moments of engaging and relating with audiences both in time and through time. ANDY’S STORY

Someone Else’s Song: Playing Cajun in Australia Andy Baylor’s work investigates questions related to how he and other performers of popular music in Australia search for cultural identity through their work as contemporary Australian musicians. His research project consists of a folio of Cajun style compositions and their performance supported by an exegesis examining the historical and social processes associated with the introduction of Cajun music from the United States into Australia. Reflecting on performative methodology in terms of the integration of his performance and research work Andy Baylor observes: On the one hand, scholarly work is reflective, solitary, intellectual. On the other hand, musical performance is a group activity situated in the moment and based on feeling/emotion. So the two occupations inhabit different worlds: For example, solitariness versus group, improvisation and unpredictability (both highly desirable in music performance) as opposed to the rigorous and careful thought and action required in scholarly work. Perhaps it can be maintained that performance as ‘life-lived’ in the moment becomes the subject of scholarly work. Scholarly work has a different relationship to time than does musical performance. At the same time both areas can and do cohabit the same space and confirm each other⎯for me as a musician/scholar. In other words, the two roles can be integrated and contingent upon one another. You could say that there is an integration of heart and mind, action and reflection, theory and practice. In terms of processes … to maintain the integrity of my music performance within the thesis methodology I have used an autoethnographic methodology, 136

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which has involved collecting written accounts of personal performance history of myself, and others. This creates a personal cultural history, which can be used to inform musical performance. My work also involves composing and recording music, which demonstrates the ideas put forward in my exegesis. This music is also being performed in the course of my professional life. My methodology allows me to explore the nature of my audience and meanings of my performance in relation to contemporary Australian culture. In conducting the research I have a space for analyzing and codifying technical aspects of my musical performance and an opportunity to broaden my audience and thus to explain and strengthen my performance (Baylor, 2007, pers. com). Like Richard Frankland, Andy Baylor’s work involves searching for cultural identity and making social and historical meaning through his performance practice. At the same time, he is aware of different relationships between his live performance audience and his scholarly audience whilst acknowledging they and he can “cohabit the same space and confirm each other …” (Baylor, 2007, pers. com.). Andy Baylor identifies integrative elements in his performative methodology: heart with mind, action with reflection, theory with practice, solitary with group musical action, improvisation and unpredictability with rigorous and careful thought, and the effects of different temporal elements of audience attendance and response. INTRODUCING EMMA

Visual Practices—Cultural Translations. The meeting of Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Perspectives Cultural experiences and lineages are central to the third project in this discussion. Emma Barrow engaged in a Doctor of Philosophy by project to create and investigate visual practices and to consider their capacity to enact cultural translations at the intersection of Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge perspectives. Emma worked collaboratively with Indigenous artists of Larrakia heritage in the Darwin area, Northern Territory, Australia, who guided her research into changing concepts of land, identity, continuity and discontinuity. “The Larrakia is the name of the traditional owners, language, land and waters of Darwin region (Cox Peninsular, Shoal Bay, the Vernon Islands and the Adelaide River, Northern Territory). The Larrakia are Saltwater people” (Barrow, 2008, p. 3). Utilising creative arts-based methodologies, Emma produced site-specific paintings, land art, video art, film and collaborative performances working with Larrakia artists, Garry Mura Lee and Desmond Kootji Raymond whose voices trace through her texts, images, land art, film sequences and performances. Her research questions and disrupts assumptions of singular knowing derived from dominant ideologies and reveals the effectiveness of visual arts as a form of relational practice for cultural exchange.

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Throughout her research Emma journeys from place to place, always close to the land: “In particular, walking connects me to my surroundings” (Barrow, 2008, pp. 5–6). In the process she meets and works with a diverse range of peoples and languages, ideas and images, performative moments and events. She asks if the insights to do with values and meanings, processed through the making and viewing of art, might be understood as cultural translations. She sees art-making and art events as crucial markers in the cross-cultural translatory journeys and “meeting points of diverse histories, perceptions, conversations, peoples and places” (p. 7). These she calls “lived experiences” and her interest lies in how they are filtered through artist and viewer, Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives, as she engages her art making processes in a performative mode of enquiry. Thus Emma Barrow’s primary interest is in the intersections of ways of knowing and being; and this is where she sees the “acts of translation” occurring (p. 7). EMMA’S STORY

Site Specific Seven Minute Video: Darwin Emma: For the purpose of this discussion I will present and analyse a site-specific seven minute video made during my research project in Darwin, traditional Larrakia land, with participation of local artists of Larrakia heritage; followed by an analysis of viewer responses from Melbourne. This video work is one part of a larger project, which became my PhD, Visual Practices⎯Cultural Translations: The Meeting of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Perspectives. The aim of the video is to work collaboratively to convey aspects of cultural continuity, disruption, and Western framing and ownership. Rather than select for discussion viewer responses that complement my intentions, I have chosen to include the elements that primarily focus on issues of Indigenous representation. I consider these elicit responses that are less of a socio-political etiquette and more of an uncertainty about Aboriginality. Working within an intercultural context, my analysis of this work focuses on a variety of discursive elements, as identified by Edward Said (1978), such as style, figure of speech, setting, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances. This holistic approach enables a multi-layered interpretation of verbal responses, light, texture, position, conversations, and all aspects of the physicality of the environments. Individual interpretations of identity and relationships with the environment as viewed through art are as diverse as they are unique, since they are the result of the influences that environmental, economic, and political structures have on our perceptions about our surroundings. Many people today, including myself, live or spend substantial time outside the jurisdiction of their homeland and heritage. At times within this context my white English heritage provokes a singularly colonial framework of reference from a non-Indigenous perspective, whilst also excluding it from the same framework. What is of interest here is how my Englishness remains

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undiluted, despite significant time spent outside the country. At times non-Indigenous value judgments readily undermine concepts of traditional Indigenous perspectives through the influences of cross-cultural experience and environmental changes. Rather than seeing the intercultural experience as a form of homogenisation that incurs loss of culture, I prefer to look at how the dynamic of intercultural change enriches individual perceptions derived from the confines of a singular cultural framework. This provides the potential for thought-provoking creative expression and interchange. What can be deemed an inspirational environment through the eyes of an artist can be a culturally bound environment for Indigenous people⎯in terms of cultural heritage, title deed and identity. This is just as significant for many Indigenous people living within metropolitan areas. In Darwin, my research exemplified the interconnection of land, people, history and beliefs as a continuity of local Indigenous values. Cultural Continuity versus Social Disruption This video work combines aspects of independent and collaborative processes. During the video some scenes involving Indigenous people are made possible through the participation of colleague Desmond Raymond, artist, and Nicole Copley, dancer, both of whom are Larrakia traditional owners. Our aim was to work through creative practice to incorporate aspects of what constitutes an Indigenous sense of identity and ownership from an Indigenous perspective coupled with Western concepts of representation, intervention and ownership. The video was filmed in two locations: a remote area near Howard Springs; and one kilometre to the east of the powerful sacred site where Darriba Nungalinya (pronounced Dard-a-ba Noong-a-lin-ya, Old Man Rock) sits, and half a kilometre north-east of Gurambai (Rapid Creek) on the Casuarina Coastal Reserve, Northern Territory. The film format is constructed in the shape of a sphere to represent two areas of enquiry. This eye-like shape suggests notions of Western framing, voyeurism, and the romanticisation of Indigeneity. In Indigenous terms the sphere as a formal device is able to suggest issues of continuity more effectively than would be possible through the partitioning of an image by a square or rectangle. The film begins with the sound of footsteps walking through bushland; the darkened screen then reveals the ground moving below. Pointing the camera towards the ground while walking through the bush introduces a common experience to all and also captures the essence of my role as the artist in the making of the film. In the next scene my role shifts to that of the documenter, lying down, with the camera panning out across ground level. Colleague Desmond Raymond’s feet come into view, barefoot, kicking the dust aside, walking towards the camera eye. This is to direct the viewer to concepts of Indigenous interconnectedness with the environment through a physical contact with the land. Throughout the film, with the exception of the opening and closing sequence, the camera is positioned at ground level.

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Figure 1. The Sphere. Screen Shot. Emma Barrow. 2006

Figure 2. Screen Shot. Emma Barrow. 2006

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The pace of the video coincides with scenes of a dance. Nicole Copley choreographs and performs the dance combining traditional and contemporary movements silhouetted on the land. I choose to work with the silhouette of a body for four sequential reasons: a shadow to suggest Aboriginal history; a moving figure on the land to imply continuation of culture; the interconnected body and land to represent an Indigenous sense of identity; and finally, a partial view so the viewer is not distracted by the particular physicality of the dancer.

Figure 3. Screen Shot. The Sphere. Emma Barrow. 2006

In conversation the dancer, Nicole, spoke of how, “Dancing on country for me is a connection to my heritage. I danced on my land; my Ancestors have done that for thousands of years and more. I feel that connection when I dance” (Copley, 2006). Dance sequences with both the body and feet are interrupted and overlapped periodically with the sound of a machine digging into the land (which I had operated in another performance work), and images of land being displaced to reveal a large trench. There are several reasons for the inclusion of the digging and image of the trench: a disruption of land to suggest outsider use of country as an intervention, and to suggest archaeological interpretation through delving into histories of place to reveal the layers of land. Also I combine the shadow of the dancer near the trench to imply the continuation of an Indigenous sense of identity, despite outsider disruption of land and culture—and in this case the trench appears as a grave. As this sequence fades into darkness, all that can be heard are the sounds of retreating footsteps. The final image comes into view, with the camera eye looking down at the trench, which is approximately thirty-five metres long and winding out into the bush. Debates about the camera eye, the re-framing of social knowledge, the historical impact of colonialism and anthropological research underpin many of the ways Indigenous people are re-claiming, taking control and inserting authentic forms of representation and recognition through creative practices. My research is showing 141

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that amidst the slow injection of Indigenous theories and values into academia, politics and the arts, there exists a place for revived intercultural dialogue. Even though Indigenous models of thought are yet to permeate general thinking of the broader populace, it is through the inclusion of these collaborative contributions, and the analysis of Western art perspectives, that I attempt to position my practice as a non-Indigenous artist.

Figure 4. Screen Shot. The Sphere. Emma Barrow. 2006

Viewer Responses To embark on intercultural dialogue through art can be as problematic as avoidance. The problem lies in how such practices may be identified and perceived. Both of these positions⎯inclusion and avoidance⎯run the risk of hindering the generation of cross-cultural practices and understanding. One particular catalyst of fear exists in the ethical and moral debates about Indigenous representation through a nonIndigenous interest. In October 2006, after showing the film at the RMIT First Site Gallery in Melbourne, my supervisors and I opened a group discussion during which the conversation shifted to matters of Indigenous representation and appropriation. In general I found that a southern (i.e. southern parts of Australia), non-Indigenous, viewer response to the video proved to be far more problematic than the actual process of making this site specific work within the Northern Territoryw with its cross-cultural context, and certainly more problematic than the responses of Indigenous people from either the south or the north (of Australia). Overall, Indigenous viewers felt it was an effectively combined model for self representation, revealing the importance of land, and raising questions about Western concepts of framing social knowledge through creative modes of practice. In the Melbourne discussion, the formal device of the sphere and the collaborative decision to include Indigenous people within the context of the film prompted 142

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interpretive responses from the non-Indigenous group about notions of voyeurism, romanticisation and appropriation of Indigenous culture. I felt that such points were prompted less by the aesthetic persuasion of the video, as I had intended, but rather by my own gene pool of “Whiteness” and my British heritage, and what this signified in working with Indigenous people in this research field. The paradox of non-Indigenous disassociation from specifically English heritage is that it proclaims in turn a greater desire for cultural authenticity about Indigeneity. This occurs despite limited first-hand experience, and arises from knowledge of Indigenous peoples and cultures gained through the bias of historical documents and limited media coverage. It could be argued that non-Indigenous value judgements and interpretations are outmoded as they are largely informed through historical Western values and frameworks of knowing. Because of this it seems that the non-Indigenous viewers’ interpretations in the discursive session following the showing of the film were primarily siting a socio-economic dislocation from Indigenous society in the aftermath of Australian settler history, which manifests in a fear of Indigenous cultural legacies, representation and appropriation⎯certainly a caution towards Indigenous fields of knowledge and cultural practices. Fear of the known and unknown as explained by Marcia Langton (1993) is at the core of resistance associated with non-Indigenous participation or translation of Indigeneity.3 The known impact and repercussions of colonialism for Indigenous people and land nurture such fears in non-Indigenous sectors of society. Furthermore, it may be considered that non-Indigenous hesitation about intercultural dialogue arises from the apparent success of Indigenous intellectual and cultural property rights. Therefore there is a fear of appropriation. Aboriginal claims about the reappropriation of the Aboriginal within the framework of intellectual and cultural property rights, as discussed in Our Culture Our Future (Janki, 1998) reveals that the processes of campaigning for Indigenous rights and the misappropriation of Aboriginal art could have succeeded in educating non-Indigenous audiences and artists. Therefore criticisms and hesitations ingrained in attitudes of political correctness in relation to my work could be seen as a positive. However they are also confused as there is no overt appropriation of Aboriginal artwork in the film sequence. This confused and hesitant Australian framework should be recognised for what it is: less of a socio-political concern, and rather a trepidation towards historical colonial actions, contemporary dislocated relations, and an uncertainty of how to proceed. Nonetheless, the myriad of cultural translations emerging from the group viewing of the video, and the subsequent discussions, tended to demonstrate unresolved and ever repeating points of contention existing within the Indigenous and nonIndigenous binary condition. The Challenge The challenge of this project was not only to re-evaluate how forms of political analysis can be steeped in particular cultural values and interests, but also to analyse how creative practices embody or question these determining conditions. The historical implications of colonialism, disruption of cultural values and anthropological 143

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ideologies are entrenched within contemporary thought. The binary of “them and us” can still govern much of contemporary thinking. This creates by default a sense of polarisation, which references Western values held at the time of Australian settlement. This is not to sanctify the celebration of the “universal” (Morphy, 2000) or “difference blindness” (Langton, 1993), but to acknowledge the historically inscribed ideological values in the construction of the “other” and how this construction translates into general attitudes in contemporary society; and to consider ways in which this barrier is recognised, approached and negotiated. My aim is to work through art practice at the intersections of varied perspectives to reveal how acts of translation source and trigger associations between different sites of cultural knowledge. My research shows that within the relations, tensions and points of translations of intercultural dialogue, transformative attitudes can occur and these can be conducive to inclusive models of thought and action. INTEGRATIVE ELEMENTS

Supervisors’ Comments In their research projects Emma Barrow, Richard Frankland and Andy Baylor identify their processes of integration through performative methodologies of live creative events and scholarly research. In different ways their projects integrate self, public, cultural, temporal and spatial knowledge. Each brings into play elements of other methodologies. Emma brings action research into the scope of practitionerled enquiry. Her collaborative art and filmmaking decisions act as a way of moving the Indigenous and non-Indigenous discourses into a recognition of cultural translations. Richard and Andy call on elements of autoethnography, narrative enquiry and Dadirri, Indigenous deep listening to make use of different and spontaneous revelations of experience and relationships of meaning making. These act as ways of presencing, or bringing knowledge into appearance in live performance work. Andy’s and Richard’s performative methodologies involve not only integration of self and public knowledge in relation to their live audiences, but also in relation to their more abstracted or distanced scholarly audience. Both musicians are held accountable to these audiences and both audiences are “licensed” to evaluate their performances. However, the response, feedback and reflexive processes of the two kinds of audiences are significantly different in terms of immediacy, function and relationship. A live audience can respond immediately to the performance as comembers of ritual, entertainment, amusement, reverie or celebration. Indeed, their live responses, as performative actions, are a crucial factor in determining what concepts, feelings and knowledge are being revealed, shared, co-recognised, cocreated and transmitted. The response of the scholar to the same performance often lacks such immediacy and is of necessity made subject to certain criteria or analytical principles. Thus these are differences in their licensed roles as reflexive evaluators. The academic supervisor of Andy Baylor and Richard Frankland (Kipps Horn) acted as both an immediate and distanced audience member of their performance144

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research work. The supervisor-candidate relationship involved the facility to move swiftly and appropriately across the spectrum of personal and public encounters through different performance moments of engagement and performative events. Without doubt these relationships involved the supervisor as a learner as well as a mentor. In these relationships their different expertise was given respectful recognition in a Dadirri sense. To return to Bauman (1977, p. 44), the relationship of supervisors and creative practice-led researchers also involves issues of communicative accountability and evaluation for all concerned. Through the complex interplay of responses occurring in live performance events, including music, dance and filmmaking, and the diverse functional roles that such events play, it is reasonable to suggest that performers are accountable for initiating musical or artistic events; and for ensuring the quality of technical presentation, guiding event content, and facilitating the achievement of heightened modes of aesthetic and/or ritualistic communication between all those involved in the moments of performance. In this process the audience acts as cocreator and witness to the cultural presencing. This was occurring in Richard’s and Andy’s music performances, and also in the process of Emma’s film sequence of the dancing feet on land and the digging of a trench. The artists and audiences are acting as co-creators of the cultural moments. Academic audiences, including those viewers in the discursive response session in Emma’s story, take on the additional role of appraising and assessing the performerresearcher’s relative skill and effectiveness in accomplishing and communicating a scholarly outcome. To the academic audience the music and art scholars are responsible for the communicative quality of their reflexive relationship with their own performance work. With the demand for a critical component the scholarly response seeks an analytical thrust to the creative enquiry. The supervisory roles with Emma, Andy and Richard necessitated a Dadirri deep and respectful listening process. For Kipps Horn, the supervisor of Richard and Andy, this role was crucial given his position as a non-Indigenous migrant scholar working with an Australian Indigenous researcher. Without a deep mutual respect for each other they would not have been able to travel the performerresearcher journey in a way that allowed for mutual learning about perceptions and methods of knowing from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives. In achieving this, each acknowledges that they made a small contribution to the decolonisation of Australian research cultures. For Elizabeth Grierson and Simon Pockley, supervisors of Emma Barrow, the principles of deep listening were implicit in that Emma was working in a situation demanding respectful relations. In summary, the creative-led, performance, research work of Emma Barrow, Andy Baylor and Richard Frankland shows how creative events of music performance, dance and film are the location for performative actions to heighten modes of communication and perception for performers and audiences. In this transformative state, the sharing and integrating of knowledge and experience creates the potential for performers and audience to bring about social, political and cultural recognition and change. Researchers and supervisors inhabit the different temporal spaces of live performance and scholarly work and each seeks to integrate the immediate and distanced elements of these domains. This involves a process of working with the 145

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oscillations of perception, experience and knowledge in the live musical and filmic moments, transforming them through reflexive processes into rigorous scholarly outcomes. CONCLUDING COMMENTARY

Through performative relations these projects bring forth cultural and social meanings through artists and witnesses, idea and event, theory and practice. Each of the encounters with image, text, music, film, language and dance, involves performative enactments of embodied and relational practice; and each carries cultural, aesthetic, personal, ethical and political implications. The three projects reveal the ways performativity can mobilise a research process. Each of the projects opens for examination multiple layers of cultural knowledge and experience; and each is inviting critical encounters with discourses of cultural identity and difference. As is the usual process of postgraduate research degrees, each project was put to the test of scrutiny through external assessment. In different ways examiners observed that the projects challenged normative narratives of both Australian cultural histories and conventional academic research. In each, the performances engaged audiences in events that countered the easy rationalisation commonly brought to bear on Aboriginal history, thereby creating spaces for grappling with new understandings. In terms of communicative accountability each researcher kept themselves accountable to high standards of knowing, telling, engaging and working with others in their projects, and each revealed the self in a way appropriate to their project themes, aims and contexts. The outcomes with creative events and a series of texts (performances, exhibitions, artworks, DVD recordings and written exegeses) presented credible accounts of embodied experiences. Many layers of eventful action are taking place through the work of each of these researchers, and it is in the creative processes of making, performing, mediating, reflecting, viewing, collaborating and participating that the performativity works as a creative methodology. There are also hermeneutical processes in action as cycles of interpretation are taking place in the performing, making and relating processes. The methodologies engaged in these projects are providing structures, strategies and scaffolding for the interlacing elements of practice and theory. Arts-based and arts-led practices, autoethnography, hermeneutics, heuristics, narrative enquiry and Dadirri deep listening, oscillate through these projects to generate challenging questions to do with Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge, relationships and understandings. NOTES 1

The term Intangible heritage refers to the 2003 UNESCO convention for the safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). The Convention states that the ICH is manifested, among others, in the following domains: Oral traditions and expressions including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage; Performing arts (such as traditional music, dance and theatre); Social practices, rituals and festive events; Knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe;

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Traditional craftsmanship. Retrieved July 24, 2007, from http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index. php?pg=00002 Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1301.0, Year Book Australia (2005), Attendance at the Performing Arts, reveals that in 2002, 26.4% of the Australian population aged 18 years and over (3.8 million people) attended at least one popular music concert, 18.7% (2.7 million people) attended at least one opera or musical. Retrieved January 6, 2007, from http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/[email protected]/ 46d1bc47ac9d0c7bca256c470025ff87/7d530635bd8c1d21ca256f7200832fb6!OpenDocument In Well I heard it on the Radio (1993, p. 28a) Marcia Langton speaks of the need to celebrate the fear of difference, and in acknowledging the power of visual work proposes that, “the way forward is to produce a new body of knowledge and critical perspectives from Aboriginal worldviews, from Western traditions and from history”.

REFERENCES Ahern, M. (2003). Performance, performativity, theories of media, keywords glossary. The University of Chicago. Retrieved August 28, 2007, from http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/performance.htm Atkinson, J. (2001). Privileging indigenous research methodologies. Paper presented at the National Indigenous Researchers Forum 2001, University of Melbourne, Australia. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bamberg, M. (1998). Narrative Inquiry: The forum for theoretical, empirical, & methodological work on narrative. Worcester, MA: Clark University. Retrieved August 1, 2007, from http://www.clarku. edu/~mbamberg/narrativeINQ/index.htm Barrow, E. (2008). Visual practices—Cultural translations. The meeting of Indigenous and nonIndigenous perspectives. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy thesis, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Bauman, R. (1977). Verbal art as performance. Massachusetts: Rowley. Bauman, R. (Ed.). (1992). Folklore, cultural performances, and popular entertainments. New York: Oxford University Press. Baylor, A. (2007). Personal communication with Kipps Horn, Melbourne. Brundell, B. (Ed.). (2003, Spring). Editorial: Against racism. Compass, A review of topical theology, 37. Retrieved March 23, 2007, from http://compassreview.org/spring03/1.html Cook, N. (2001, April). Between process and product: Music and/as performance. Music Theory Online, The Online Journal of the Society for Music Theory, 7(2), 14–15. Retrieved January 5, 2008, from http://societymusictheory.org/mto/issues/mto.01.7.2/mto.01.7.2.cook.htmlm Cook, N. (2003). Music as performance. In M. Clayton, T. Herbert, & R. Middelton (Eds.), The cultural study of music (pp. 204–214). New York: Routledge. Cook, N., & Everist, M. (2001). Rethinking music. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Copley, N. (2006, September). Personal correspondence with Emma Barrow. Denzin, N. K. (2003). Performance ethnography: Critical pedagogy and the politics of culture (p. xi, preface). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Erling, E. G., Trond, H., Christian, R., & Erlend, H. (2005). Performativity in literature and music. Norway: University of Oslo. Retrieved August 30, 2007, from http://www.hf.uio.no/imv/english/ research/ Fox, J. (1994). Acts of service: Spontaneity, commitment, tradition in the nonscripted theatre. New Paltz, NY: Tusitala Publishing. Frankland, R. (2007). The art, freedom and responsibility of voice: Multiple narratives of a Gunditjmara man, father, artist, activist and warrior. Unpublished master’s thesis, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Frankland, R. (2007). Personal communication with Kipps Horn, Melbourne.

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Guldbrandsen, E., Haugen, T., Refsum, C., & Hovland, E. (2005). Performativity in literature and music. Norway: University of Oslo. Retrieved August 30, 2007, from http://www.hf.uio.no/imv/ english/research/ Kim, J. H., & Seifert, U. (2007). Embodiment and agency: Towards an aesthetic of interactive performativity. Proceedings of the 4th Sound and Music Computing Conference, 11–13 July, 2007, Lefkada, Greece. Langton, M. (1993). Well, I heard it on the radio and I saw it on the television. Australia: Australian Film Commission. Langton, M., & Marett, A. (2002). Statement on indigenous music and performance. Garma Symposium on Music and Performance, convened by Mandawuy Yunipingu, Marcia Langton & Allan Marett, Yirrnga Music Development Centre, Gunyangara, 10–12 August, 2002. Retrieved August 25, 2007, from http://www.garma.telstra.com/2002/statement-music02.htm Lederach, J. P. (1995). Preparing for peace: Conflict transformation across cultures. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Lines, D. (2006). Improvisation and cultural work in music and music education. In D. K. Lines (Ed.), Music education for the new millennium: Theory and practice futures for music teaching and learning (pp. 65–74). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. McAuley, G. (Ed.). (2008). Unstable ground: Performance and the politics of place. Brussels: Peter Lang. Morphy, H. (Ed.). (2000). Culture landscape and the environment. New York: Oxford University Press. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. London: Penguin. Small, C. (1977). Music, society, education. London: John Calder. Snow, P. (2008). Performing all over the place. In G. McAuley (Ed.), Unstable ground: Performance and the politics of place (pp. 227–246). Brussels: Peter Lang. Stone, R. (1982). Let the inside be sweet: The interpretation of music event among the Kpelle of Liberia. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Tolbert, E. (2003). Music and gender. In Pirkko Moisala & Beverley Diamond (Eds.), Women & Music, 7. Foreword by Ellen Koskoff. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. UNESCO. (2003). UNESCO convention for the safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003). Retrieved July 24, 2007, from http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00002 Wong, D. (2004). Speak it louder: Asian Americans making music. New York: Routledge. Waterman, E. (2005). Sounds provocative: Experimental music performance in Canada. University of Guelph. Retrieved September 15, 2007, from http://www.experimentalperformance.ca/pages/biblio. html

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10. WAYS OF DECONSTRUCTING Risks, Imagination and Reflexivity

OUTLINING THE TERRAIN1

The critical analyst must take risks, use imagination, but also be reflexive (Ball, 1994, p. 2).

Figure 1. Risking the Terrain. Photo. Elizabeth Grierson. 2006

The British educational theorist, Stephen Ball (1994, p. 2) speaks of a methodological aim for the critical analyst, namely to analyse, take risks, and be imaginative and reflexive when interrogating a field of knowledge. Ball uses these terms in context of the political economies of market reforms in educational policy and practice, but they can be applied equally to an engagement with the field of creative arts in educational research. This chapter deconstructs the notion of neutrality in educational research, acknowledging the importance of methodology as I construct a discourse that examines discourses. My way forward is to investigate methodological terms such as critical, analyst, risk, imagination, reflexive and reflective, focusing the investigations on the creative arts. Acknowledging that there is no such thing as a neutral stance in the way one undertakes research, I work towards transparency in the selection of methodology. The approach to methodology in any research project discloses a specific approach to knowledge formations and assumptions, and therein lies the knowledge-politics E. Grierson and L. Brearley, Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices, 149–163. © 2009 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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of the researcher and of the field under research. Posing some research examples in the educational field of the arts and engaging the field through poststructuralist methodologies, the discussion scrutinises these terms: critical, risk, imagination, reflexive, as it examines poststructuralism as theory and methodology. It should be acknowledged that the very procedure undertaken has inherent risks tracing through it because it foregrounds and inter-relates poststructuralism, deconstruction and the creative arts, which are cultural, educational and political arenas that tend to be both profiled and marginalised at one and the same time. They can be profiled as fashionable intellectual positions when the creative scholar or artist is at work, particularly in the international world of the art market or contemporary cultural theory, and they are marginalised with disarming facility in the practical exigencies of education when quantitative measures and the politics of managerialism are leading the way. From what ground does such attention or silencing reverberate? Names and categorisations in themselves serve to demarcate boundaries, borders and limits; they lend order and offer seeming clarity to a social, educational or political terrain. Thus, as much as raising questions about the arts in education as a research field, this discussion also raises questions about institutional thought, organisational limits, and ways of archiving and analysing the discursive formations of which Michel Foucault speaks (see in particular Foucault, 1994, pp. 31–39). It also raises political issues surrounding the constitution of knowledge, including normalising assumptions in discourses of creative arts in education where creativity is deemed too often to be attached to a natural state of existence coming from an expressivist way of positioning art and the artist. To speak of creative arts as a postructuralist event is to dismantle some long held beliefs in creativity as a natural expression of one’s inner core or spiritual centre or real self arising from the notion of a unified subject. My work is seeking to problematise the naturalist state of creativity, creative arts and subjectivity, moving away from the inner core model of expressive being. It seeks to open for question the ever self-perpetuating model of “ontological individualism” of nineteenth century romanticism and twentieth century psychologism (Guignon, 2007, p. 273), to find a way to bring creativity into alignment with its time of being, as in the work of German philosopher Martin Heidegger in Being and Time (1996). It also raises political issues surrounding the constitution of knowledge in educational practice and research, including the normalising assumptions in dominant discourses and practices that constitute a popular identity of creativity and the arts. Overall I am seeking a Nietzschean historical sense to the present terrain of creative arts research in education through a demystification of poststructuralist theories within applied fields of creative research. ACTIVATING A DECONSTRUCTIVE APPROACH

From the specific field of my work in the creative arts my comments apply to a wider field of educational discourse where the disciplines are undergoing transformations, as interdisciplinary and transdiscipilinary modes of enquiry are 150

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reshaping the borders of institutional practice. My interest is to activate a deconstructive approach through the methodological or theoretical procedures of poststructuralism, thus raising questions about discursive formations of knowledge in research. When one speaks of poststructuralism the names of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva, for example, come to mind. Each of these engages with a form of poststructuralist thought in a lineage from Frederic Nietzsche, through Martin Heidegger and into German or French philosophical discourses, and thereby through Anglo-American and Antipodean scholarship. However in proposing poststructuralism as a methodological procedure this is not to suggest any sort of reduction of the complexities of poststructuralist writings and approaches. There are many ways of speaking, thinking, writing, reading poststructurally and deconstruction is but one way. Deconstruction is the philosophical methodology most associated with Derrida, although it is not defined as a methodology or a philosophy, more a way of thinking, or as Brooker says, it “stands in a relation to philosophy as a critical attitude or way of reading” (Brooker, 1999, p. 63); and citing Derrida, “it is a question of explicitly and systematically posing the problem of a discourse which borrows from a heritage the resources necessary for the deconstruction of that heritage itself” (Derrida, 1967/ 1978, p. 282, in Brooker, 1999, p. 63). When Derrida deconstructed philosophy he worked within the discourses of philosophy not outside of them. In his seminal conference on Structuralism at John Hopkins University, Derrida (1966) first critiqued “structure” as inhibitor of the play of meaning in language and text. His methodology was not of the Hegelian dialectic, but of working within the logic of difference. Derrida shows the logic of difference not as contradiction that requires resolving, but as a productive site of deferral. This is a way of reasoning that allows for difference to remain as difference; and for this Derrida coined the term différance to gesture at the way words and forms differ from each other and defer one to the other in the search for meaning. In a lineage of practice from Nietzsche, Derrida was putting philosophy to work in new ways, activating philosophy as a living discourse rather then a foundational set of principles. So it is with creativity and the arts, the researcher must acknowledge and grapple with the lineage or heritage of their own practices, not assume or privilege certain values or worth just because that is what they have always done. The heritage of the creative arts in education is one that is steeped in the metaphysical ground of liberal, humanist, identity politics. Kantian aesthetics and civilising discourses of Western, rationalist, philosophical principles tend to be applied conveniently to artistic practice and reiterated through uncritical practices in the field. Applying Derridean or Nietzschean ways of thinking to discourses of the creative arts is a way of prising open the assumptions and putting them to the test of scrutiny, and acknowledging the inevitable sites of struggle in which one finds oneself and enabling the creative forces of the affirmation of affirmation to invigorate these sites. Throughout educational policy and practice dominant forms of institutional thought are normalised and legitimated through the agency of use, or they may be 151

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politically inscribed to appeal to Western metanarrative defining structures and liberal discourses of progressive reason, betterment and progress. However, the purpose of this discussion is not to undertake a deconstruction of the foundations of those discoursal conditions, but to engage critically with the methodological procedures whereby such a deconstruction might take place. This approach has sustained my work in education in the arts over many years. It found form in my doctorate research on the politics of knowledge in visual arts policy and practice. Through poststructuralist approaches I was asking questions of the discourses and defining structures and practices of art and education seeking to register difference as a cultural and political need within those discourses (Grierson, 2000). By engaging poststructuralist methodologies I was seeking a critique of propositional meaning, truth regimes and the privileging of naturalist frameworks of the human subject and aesthetics in institutional practices of the creative arts. In his work on multiculturalism and the arts, Fazal Rizvi (1994) makes clear the profound importance of bringing a deconstructive eye to the arts in education. Rizvi speaks of the repetition of an attitude towards the arts, whereby educators approach them in “a culturally blind manner” or “neutral with respect to particular values they might embody or express” (1994, p. 55). The regard of creative arts as politically neutral is endemic to an attitude of technological determinism that too easily pervades the rhetoric of art and creative media industries, and is certainly present in educational policies and practices, whereby the arts are politically reinvested with a heady concept of progress suggesting Enlightenment metanarratives in new guise. Such narratives are found wanting when they are put to the test of critical scrutiny through poststructuralist methodologies. Tracing through this approach is a profound questioning of the metaphysical foundations of the liberal and neoliberal subject in the economies of knowledge. Throughout this work my aim is to raise political implications within social, cultural, and philosophical dimensions, and scrutinise the constituent rules which frame and form dominant discourses and practices. POSTSTRUCTURALISM

“Poststructuralism offers very different ways of looking at and beyond the obvious and puts different sorts of questions on the agenda for change,” said Ball (1994, p. 2). Thus if one is seeking to grapple with different ways of knowing, being, and making new in a material world of creative practice, poststructuralist methodologies can disclose horizons of knowledge and reveal pathways hitherto concealed. It was Martin Heidegger who showed how art, or the arts, can work as a way of revealing (Heidegger, 1999b, pp. 139–212; Grierson, 2008, pp. 45–64). For some researchers poststructuralist theories and methodologies require demystification if they are to find a practical application in the field of creative arts research. I suggest poststructuralism, as a theory or philosophy, was made a mystery through the density of academic language by the way it was first written in the late 1960s by French philosophers, enthroned as it was in the language of philosophy, and then by the way it was permitted entry into the English speaking world via the empirical 152

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discourses of British or American academia in the 1980s—and this the very discourse that poststructuralists sought to unravel and critique. With seemingly endless semantics of analysis, poststructuralist theories became clouded and attenuated by the agency of use, but translating their intentions and examining their applications within an arts research context can be fruitful. Poststructuralism is a way of reading, writing and thinking that displaces or deconstructs the structuralist basis of the centred or determinate text and the meanings that go with it. In acknowledging the structuralist theory that language and texts act as codes or signifiers of meaning, poststructuralism works both within and away from structuralism at one and the same time. Unlike structuralism, poststructuralism de-centres the text, recognising the play of signifiers in the search for meaning. If one recognises the play of difference in textual encounters, in the arts, in literature, in language, in texts of all descriptions, then one can work with the relationality of unlike or disparate elements. For example in creative arts research there is always the movement between conditions of theory and practice. In a sense they are constantly in play through the process of creative research. To separate them, or to claim one as superior to the other, is to destroy their potential for différance as an activating and empowering force of knowledge generation. Why then do so many researchers in the creative arts have difficulty with the business of these relationships? Why do they feel concerned or even go so far to overtly negate theory in the face of privileging practice and then find the writing of an exegesis an unbearably difficult task? If one applies the work of Michel Foucault to this question, one finds that relationships between what one thinks, does, hears, sings, sees, makes, selects and interprets, can be identified as a power/knowledge relationship. In other words the way knowledge comes to be the way it is, is determined via the dominant discourses and the marginalising practices and restrictive forces within the discourses, which delimit what one can and cannot believe, say or do. One soon finds that the research field, and oneself within it, is controlled or formed by the workings of power within those discourses. If one applies poststructuralist methodologies to the task of knowledge generation and transfer one might see how the power/knowledge equation operates through the discursive formations of institutional and material practices that prioritise some modes of thought and practice while disallowing others. Disclosing the praxes of institutionalised thought and action, this sort of engagement through Foucault enables analysis of thought, language and actions within social institutions of both thought and practice. There is a political lineage to such normalising practices and the arts researcher needs to be alert to those sites of inheritance and prise them open for analysis and question. Then they might find that the lineage of creative arts in the narratives of Western knowledge bespeak normalised rules and conditions of self-reflective practice (a-politicised, assumed and unspoken, even as they are reproduced). By these means our knowledge is legitimated, and claims that we might be present before such knowledge are formulated and cemented as fact or the way it is. This is the way robust discussion or struggle is closed down in the interests of appeal to consensual agreement, arising in many ways from a fear or disregard of difference. Michel Foucault’s analysis of discursive practices of truth regimes and the making 153

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of the modern disciplinary subject shows how knowledge and history may be considered in ways other than those which privilege a priori truth and unified formations of identity. As a way of revealing, reading and working within cultural texts and discourses, genealogical or archaeological analysis, to use Foucault’s methodologies (see Foucault, 1981, 1994), or deconstruction, from Derrida (1967/1978), provide strategies for researchers to situate their work in the specific contexts of their occurrence. These approaches enable critique, contestation and questioning of binary oppositions upon which certain conditions are formulated, assumed and valued in Western knowledge, and others marginalised and rendered impotent. Privileged discourses may then be open to scrutiny on a horizon of radical questioning —such as the authenticity of the rational, liberal and neoliberal human subject, and discoursal appeals to transcendental truth claims, judgements of taste and their partnership with morality and aesthetics, dominant concepts of higher truths and the authority of cultural authorship. The aim is not one of the destruction of long-held values or traditions (often the criticism levied against deconstruction and poststructuralism); it is certainly not nihilistic (a claim often levied against Frederic Nietzsche); but is one of the deconstruction of a priori states of being and thinking whereby foundational assumptions of naturalist, idealist scaffolds can be put to the test. Genres, conventions, and frontiers of practice may be then put into question, as the seemingly stable categorisations of art, identity and subjectivity are rendered fragile—and no more so than in the present age of globalised technologies of new media with the proliferation of information and the casting of knowledge into a futurist mode of global economic progress. A CRITICAL APPROACH

The twenty-first century has seen a shift from thinking about the art object as a discrete bearer of meaning or truth of the visible world, to seeing the image, object or artefact as a signifier of multiple meanings situated in the multidimensional social, cultural and political domains of a global world (Grierson, 2003a). A critical approach to creative arts research design and practice opens spaces of knowledge beyond binary prescriptions and categories. It seeks the particular in a given situation where there is always more than one. It is the multiple that we seek: multiple layers of meaning, multiple voices and multiplicities of possible connections. As Derrida said: —Sorry, but more than one, it is always necessary to be more than one in order to speak, several voices are necessary for that… (Derrida, 1995, p. 35). By engaging a critical practice in research there is attention to the aesthetic, epistemological, ontological, genealogical, cultural, social, economic, political and personal terrains of practice. They may be prised open, their discursive formations dismantled. 154

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Through a critical approach questions of how and why can take precedence over the what of research as attention to creative possibilities and unthought potentials opens new horizons of thought.

Figure 2. Beyond the Horizon. Oil on canvas. Elizabeth Grierson. 1984

In his statement about risks, imagination and reflexivity at the start of this chapter, Stephen Ball (1994, p. 2) uses the term critical in respect of an analyst— one who maps and analyses the discourses of the terrain under scrutiny by looking at and assessing the particular conditions of policy and practice in present political conditions and forecasting strategic moves for the future. A critical approach to such a move involves an active engagement with risks, imagination and reflexivity. Through these means there is identification and analysis of discursive processes in a critical process of investigation, with the aim, in terms of political analysis, to clarify the ways to move forward. In contemporary social and political analyses developed from critical theory, such as the work of German social theorist Ulric Beck (1992) and British sociologist Anthony Giddens (Beck, Giddens & Scott, 1994; Giddens, 1999), a form of critical analysis of the political conditions of globalisation is proposed whereby, as Brooker (1999, p. 50) explains, “principles of modernity would be simultaneously critiqued and radicalised” as a response to those new conditions. Thus arts researchers might respond to the research field in much the same way, and with attention to the conditions of the past, bringing a critical understanding to the present situation. If one approaches the question of time, past-present-future, via poststructuralist theories and methodologies the aim would be to trace the discourses of the present by undertaking a genealogical excavation of lineages of present conditions. If arts research is aiming to understand the present moment of transformative action of the present then research must adopt a methodology whereby this is possible and a critical history of the present can be made visible (see Nietzsche, 1874/1997).

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Michel Foucault suggests a way of accessing, constructing and understanding history from Nietzsche’s discourses. Foucault uses methodologies of archaeology and genealogy to examine the conditions of knowledge and the knowing subject. The Foucauldian formulation of archaeology and genealogy comes from Nietzsche and his call for a critical history, which as McHoul and Grace put it (1995, p. 27), “is geared towards a counter-reading of historical and social conditions and offers possibilities for social critique and renewal” (italics added). RISKS

Ball (1994, p. 2) claims “the critical analyst must take risks…” Counter-readings are risky when dominant readings serve to reinvent, legitimate and reproduce social investments in certain practices. Critical theory produces counter-readings, such as Ulrich Beck’s (1992) radicalisation of modernity, involving critique, reflexivity and renewal. Poststructuralism also produces counter-readings. Risks are taken through undertaking archaeological excavations into the archives of knowledge and opening the terrain of the present for critical scrutiny. I use the term “archive” in the Foucauldian sense, not solely as a body of empirical data but as a wider form of organisation of discourses such as the limits and forms of expressibility, memory, conservation and reactivation (Foucault, 1968/1978, pp. 14–15). According to Foucault (1977, in Bouchard, 1996, pp. 199–204) such organisational limits and forms constitute discursive formations, and all discursive practices have historical specificity. Through the documentation of these formations, the aim in research practice is to build an anatomy of archives in the discourses of one’s creative research practice, to reveal and understand the subject’s location and thereby to deconstruct the power/knowledge formulations and identify the assumptions in the way the knowledge field is presented. The archives are not merely the documents; they are the practices or conditions through which it is possible to know something, or not to know something, at a particular time and place, i.e. what is and is not said, what can and cannot be said. The multi-layered texts in the archives are indicative of multi-layered cultural, economic, political substrata through which power as a productive site constitutes knowledge. This acts as a way of naming and defining whereby, it could be said, things are seldom what they seem; or as Heidegger said, “What is spoken is never, in any language, what is said” (1999c, p. 393). Such imperatives offer a challenge to researchers. Risks and difficulties mark the contours of research in the arts. The greatest risk for the poststructuralist researcher, whose critical attitudes open up concepts of truth that history too easily closes down, is ironically the risk of engaging with risks. The challenge is one of taking the first step to engage with poststructuralist discourses for the simple reason that they are highly appropriate to the complex task of untangling or teasing out the fragile tissues in the archives of the creative arts. Taking these steps, however precarious they seem, allows for an engagement with the philosophical foundations upon which the disciplines are based, at the same time opening them for scrutiny. The supplementary risk lies in applying and perpetuating a critical method of deconstruction, in its most robust repertoire, by continuing to read the 156

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philosophical terrain “in a certain way” as Derrida advocates (Derrida, 1967/1978, p. 288, cited in Brooker, 1999, p. 63). Risks are involved in asking questions that do not entertain or reinforce a propositional logic or legitimated presupposition in their very framing. The action of dissecting institutional practices of creative arts in education may expose or disrupt the pedigrees of canonisation and enduring hierarchical practices of knowledge-systems, through which truth-claims of the liberal subject or the authenticity of aesthetic values are easily confirmed and legitimated. Furthermore, in the field of educational research, so much attention has been paid, for so long, to research in the sciences, literacy and numeracy, those guardians of the secret of progressive learning and advancement through which learners are marked and measured. So to declare oneself a researcher in the field of the creative arts is, in itself, a risky proposition. As New Zealand writer, C. K. Stead wryly observes, “We get an agreement, a consensus about where we are and what’s right to say about it, and anybody who challenges that is not welcome. You don’t stand up in the dinghy” (Stead, 2000, p. C8–9). Tracing through my discussion is the concern that so few researchers and educators in the arts “stand up in the dinghy”. How much engagement is there with “art as a crucial site and strategic force” (Giroux, 1999, p. ix)? In education today we witness little perceived need for a critical approach to the politics of knowledge through the arts, diminishing debate on art as a political site, silencing of overt critiques of the liberal humanist subject (a form of subjectivity repeatedly reinscribed through the creative arts), and often glib acknowledgement of contingency and difference in the production of knowledge through pedagogical practices in the arts. The combination of the arts and poststructuralism doubles the risk as it doubles the displacement from dominant discourses, and it is from a doubling position that this speaking voice locates its place and purpose. Poststructuralist theories frequently attract battle at the interface with those neoliberal, humanist proclivities that mark the probity of place and progression of incorporated knowledge. Too easily there is a return to the valuing of methodological certainties of propositional logic whereby knowledge is incorporated into the metanarratives of progress (see Lyotard, 1979/1984). To the extent that poststructuralist thought offers a methodological procedure for opening up any field of knowledge to the interrogations of critical enquiry through deconstructive processes, it is important to reiterate that poststructuralism does not set out to destroy and eliminate the discourses within which it operates. It does not work from the double negation of Hegelian dialectics. It draws attention to the ontological foundations of discourses while seeking to displace the metanarrative appeal to their foundational assumptions in social institutions. Critique as a process of enquiry usually implies a dialectical debate by question and answer to resolve differences between two views as a detailed analysis and assessment of a set of principles or conditions: the origin, Greek kritikos, able to discern, or kritike tekhne, critical art. In this act of discernment, poststructuralist critique involves procedures that are not dependent upon the Hegelian dialectic of fixed poles and the double negation of otherness. As Deleuze explains:

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The Hegelian dialectic is indeed a reflection on difference, but it inverts its image. For the affirmation of difference as such it substitutes the negation of that which differs; for the affirmation of the self it substitutes the negation of the other, and for the affirmation of affirmation it substitutes the famous negation of negation (Deleuze, 1983, p. 196, in Peters 1996, pp. 22–23). Engaging poststructuralist methodologies is a way of working through questions of dominant practices and assumptions, examining the conditions of those assumptions, questioning exemplars and claims of best practice especially when other practices are marginalised; it is a way of scrutinising truth claims and regimes, and asking why some voices are legitimated and others are simply rendered valueless, mute and futile. Poststructuralist methodologies can prise open questions to do with reinscriptions of truth that are enacted merely to confirm the dominant discourses. A deconstructive methodology sites the foundational assumptions of the field of enquiry and at the same time displaces those assumptions. This can be called a Derridean “double play”. Traces of the foundations of the discourse may still be visible while at the same time they are put under erasure, to use the Derridean term. Speaking thus is a risky procedure for the researcher who seeks to work “in the service of life” to use Nietzsche’s expression of affirmation (Nietzsche, 1997, p. 75). IMAGINATION

Following Ball (1994, p. 2) imagination proclaims a stake in the territory of movement or slippage in the episteme or epistemological foundations of the arts. The term imagination is yet another text in contention: a word used frequently with great ease and certainty when art and aesthetics are on the agenda, particularly by those who perceive that artists have a prior claim to creative knowledge via the power of imagination as an intuitive process. Such a claim has been premised for centuries on the notion that imagination must be privileged in the creative process, even if identifying the way this might happen is unclear. Imagination is a word that claims consensual appeal in relation to the feeling or sensuous aspects of making, reflecting upon, judging, responding to or making works of art, aligned with reason through Kantian critiques. Imagination is also a word that raises a raft of questions relating to the aesthetic experience, the primacy of feeling, the creative process, the nature of intuition, the notion of artistic activity, and relationships between thought, feeling, reason and perception. A dictionary definition would show the origin of the word to be Latin imaginatio(n), from the verb imaginari “picture to oneself” from imago “image”. Self-reflective engagement is suggested thereby, through the process of picturing to oneself, rather like seeing with the mind’s eye. It may be assumed that the things or objects one pictures are not immediately available to the senses. In his Critique of Judgement Kant identifies the role of “imagination for bringing together the manifold of intuition, and understanding for the unity of the concept uniting the representations” (Kant, 1790/1973, p. 58).

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Imagination is deemed to be part of a process of fixing cognition, which is a “universal communication”. However, when a Nietzschean and Foucauldian sense is engaged, imagination may be considered a mode of presenting whereby the Nietzschean “will to power” is induced and sustained (see Grierson, 2003b). I suggest that what is required in researching through the creative arts is to constantly test the limits of the generally understood concept of imagination; open it, like beauty, to scrutiny through a deconstructive process, dismantling hegemonic constructions of its meaning, thereby testing its epistemological foundations across social, aesthetic and political fault-lines. The Nietzschean sense of discharge of force in life’s will to power is the thrust that makes the process of questioning and enquiring an unending impetus for the artist as for the arts researcher.

Figure 3. On the Balcony. Oil on canvas. Elizabeth Grierson. 1984 REFLEXIVITY AND REFLECTIVITY

Through deconstructive engagements with the present I claim the necessity to be reflexive about what we do or do not do as researchers, and why we do it or do not. Reflexivity is a term that Ulric Beck (1992) introduces in respect of “reflexive modernization” (see Brooker, 1999, p. 215). It may open possibilities, albeit via the ravages of doubt, to engage with un-clarity and non-certainty, while it questions the premises of an argument, such as progressive accounts of the human subject in history that are inherent in the political economies of the arts and modernity. Making a case for reflexivity in research practice, Frederick Steier writes, “if we begin to examine how we as researchers are reflexively part of those systems we study, we can also develop an awareness of how reflexivity becomes a useful way for us to understand what others are doing” (Steier, 1995, p. 3). Further, he claims that reflexivity is a way that “we contextually recognise the various mutual relationships in which our knowing activities are embedded” (1995, p. 163).

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However, the arts’ researcher might be aware that with rhetoric like “embedded” and “a turning back onto a self” there is an invoking of modernist tenets of Cartesian thought through which, as Rodolphe Gasché (1986, p. 13) argues, “reflection shows itself to be primarily self-reflection, self-relation, self-mirroring”. This self-reflecting process articulates the Descartean sense of “the apodictic certainty of self as a result of the clarity and distinctness with which it perceives itself” (Gasché, 1986, p. 13, italics added). Gasché offers an investigative approach to the discourse of reflection beginning with, “Reflection is undoubtedly as old as the discourse of philosophy itself” (1986, p. 13). Gasché is quick to point out that the philosophical concept of reflection is “a name for philosophy’s eternal aspiration towards self-foundation” and that “only with modern philosophy — philosophical thought since Descartes—did reflection explicitly acquire this status of a principle par excellence” (1986, p. 13). If the notion of reflexivity involves, as Steier said, “a turning back onto a self”, then reflexivity may engage a process of questioning the Enlightenment modernist prioritisation of reflectivity, displacing or erasing it at the same time as acknowledging its pulsing course through the veins of metaphysical enquiry in the present. In acknowledging this, one would take account of the situation of knowledge in the creative arts, as in other knowledge fields, as a political condition. FINAL COMMENTS

Through highlighting poststructuralist methodologies this chapter has constructed a discourse that examines discourses. It engages a methodology that destabilises and questions the assumed value of progressive enlightenment upon which Western knowledge systems flourish. Thus I am opening the dominant narratives of progress and transcendence “to the phenomena of rupture, of discontinuity” (Foucault, 1963/1994, p. 4). This approach to research aims not to confirm the principle of coherence and continuity as a given in the creative enterprise, but to engage, even expect, the disarming rights of discontinuity and difference in the promotion of transformative practices through research; not to seek the a priori locus of meaning as an essential technique of consensual agreement among parties whose inclinations may be to disagree because they have no common basis upon which to settle agreement over the basic goals of knowledge, but to accept incommensurable differences in discourse where there is no universal rule of judgement to settle disputes in the game of knowledge (see Lyotard, 1988), and to go so far as to celebrate the play of difference. If certainty, continuity, containment and consensual agreement be the aim, then the question arises—is this new knowledge adding to the stock of knowledge in our present times? The rule-governed genres of discourse in the lineages of such reinvestments will be seen as claiming the hierarchical positioning of Western Enlightenment historiography to frame transcendental values and a universal teleological sense. In this model of knowledge, difference is disavowed in the claim to re-speak canons of progressive knowledge as a self-confirming mode of practice. Research calls for more than this. The aim is to displace and deconstruct such deterministic modes. 160

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Through my discussion I have attempted to displace the assumptions that can so easily frame artistic research and practice and to rattle what David Krell calls “the epistemological labyrinth of modern subjectivist philosophy” (Krell, 1999, p. 12). Upon such a labyrinth the histories and practices of the creative arts have a lineage in the Western academic system. Over investment in such an approach, I venture to suggest, will easily overlook the values of criticality, risks, and imagination addressed through this chapter. My research is not dedicated to the detection and isolation of exemplars in order to put before the community an exemplary researcher, artist or teacher, an exemplary artwork, practice or belief, for such would be at odds with the very methodologies and interpretive procedures it engages. Working critically and poststructurally through risks, imagination, and reflexivity, this particular discussion has posed some questions and possible moves in the game of knowledge that is known as creative research in the academy. Methodologically it opens the discourses of knowledge to illuminate demarcations of pre-legitimated social and institutional truths, to isolate and map the fault-lines and slippages, detect the cracks and crevices where displacements and counter-readings can occur. Poststructuralist theories and methods engage with those counter-readings, posing a critique of propositional meaning and disrupting history’s heavy emphasis on the unitary autonomy of the cognitive self coursing through history as an agent of progressive betterment of the civilised condition. Metaphysical foundations of knowing and being are thereby interrupted via a radical critique in the present conditions of history, meaning and the subject. This discussion set out to demystify poststructuralism as theory and methodology. Also to make it available to creative arts researchers as a way of engaging critically with the territory of their research, and to effectively reveal and understand present forces in the knowledge field of the creative arts. Through activating a Nietzschean sense of knowing researchers thus becomes present to the horizon of radical questioning in their research terrain.

Figure 4. Becoming Present to the Unknown and Unknowable. Photo. E. Grierson. 2006

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NOTES 1

This chapter draws from a conference paper, Grierson, E. M. (2004). Methodology and interpretive procedures in education: Risk, imagination, reflexivity. In Educational Research, Risks and Dilemmas. Proceedings of the NZARE AARE (New Zealand and Australia) Association of Research in Education Conference, Auckland, New Zealand, November 29 – December 3, 2003. [CD-ROM]. Website: http://www.aare.edu.au/03pap/gri03172.pdf

REFERENCES Ball, S. J. (1994). Education reform: A critical and post-structural approach. Buckingham: Open University Press. Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage. Beck, U., Giddens, A., & Scott, L. (1994). Reflexive modernization: Politics, tradition and aesthetics in the modern social world. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Bouchard, D. F. (Ed.). (1996). Michel Foucault: Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected essays and interviews. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Brooker, P. (1999). Cultural theory: A glossary. London: Arnold. Derrida, J. (1967/1978). Writing and difference. (A. Bass, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, J. (1993/1995). On the name. (T. Dutoit, Ed., D. Wood, J. P. Leavy, & I. McLeod, Trans.). California: Stanford University Press. Foucault, M. (1977). Nietzsche, genealogy, history. In D. F. Bouchard (Ed.), (1996). Michel Foucault: Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected essays and interviews (pp. 139–164). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Foucault, M. (1968/1978). Politics and the study of discourse, ideology and consciousness, 3, 7–26. Foucault, M. (1981). Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writing (C. Gordon, Ed.). New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1963/1994). The archaeology of knowledge (S. A. Smith, Trans.). London: Tavistock Publications. Gasché, R. (1986). The tain of the mirror: Derrida and the philosophy of reflection. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Giddens, A. (1999). The third way: The renewal of social democracy. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Giroux, H. A. (1999). Series Foreword. In M. A. Peters (Ed.), After the disciplines: The emergence of cultural studies (pp. vii–x). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Grierson, E. M. (2000). The politics of knowledge: A poststucturalist approach to visual arts education in tertiary sites. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy thesis, The University of Auckland, New Zealand. Grierson, E. M. (2003a). Framing the arts in education: What is really at stake? In E. M. Grierson & J. E. Mansfield (Eds.), The arts in education: Critical perspectives from Aotearoa New Zealand (pp. 93–117). Palmerston North, NZ: Dunmore Press. Grierson, E. M. (2003b). The arts and creative industries: New alliances in the humanities [CD-ROM]. Proceedings of Hawaii international conference on art and humanities, Honolulu, USA, January 12–16, 2003. Hawaii: University of Hawaii. Grierson, E. M. (2004). Methodology and interpretive procedures in education: Risk, imagination, reflexivity. In Educational research, risks and dilemmas. Proceedings of the NZARE AARE (New Zealand and Australia) Association of Research in Education Conference, Auckland, New Zealand, November 29–December 3, 2003. [CD-ROM]. Website: http://www.aare.edu.au/03pap/gri03172.pdf Grierson, E. M. (2008). Heeding Heidegger’s way: Questions of the work of art. In V. Karalis (Ed.), Heidegger and the aesthetics of living (pp. 45–64). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

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Guignon, C. B. (Ed.). (2007). The Cambridge companion to Heidegger (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Publishing. Heidegger, M. (1996). Being and time. (J. Stambaugh, Trans.). Albany, NY: State University of New York. Heidegger, M. (1999a). General introduction: The question of being. In D. F. Krell (Ed.), Basic writings: Martin Heidegger (pp. 1–35). London: Routledge. Heidegger, M. (1999b). The origin of the work of art. In D. F. Krell (Ed.), Basic writings: Martin Heidegger (pp. 139–212). London: Routledge. Heidegger, M. (1999c). The way to language. In D. F. Krell (Ed.), Basic writings: Martin Heidegger (pp. 393–426). London: Routledge. Kant, I. (1790/1973). The critique of judgement (J. C. Meredith, Trans.). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Lyotard, J-F. (1979/1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge (G. Bennington & B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Lyotard, J-F. (1988). The differend: Phrases in dispute. (G. van den Abbeele, Trans.). Oxford, UK: Manchester University Press. McHoul, A., & Grace, W. (1995). A Foucault primer: Discourse, power and the subject. London: UCL Press. Nietzsche, F. (1874/1997). On the uses and disadvantages of history for life. In D. Breazeale (Ed.), Nietzsche: Untimely meditations (R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.) (pp. 57–123). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Peters, M. A. (1996). Poststructuralism, politics and education. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Rizvi, F. (1994). The arts, education and the politics of multiculturalism. In S. Gunew & F. Rizvi (Eds.), Culture, difference and the arts (pp. 54–68). St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Stead, C. K. (2000, January 1). Interview. The New Zealand Herald, pp. C8–9. Steier, F. (Ed.). (1995). Research and reflexivity. London: Sage Publications.

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11. WAYS OF LEARNING FROM CREATIVE RESEARCH A Postscript

LEARNING FROM THE PROJECT

The creative research methodologies described by the authors in this book have been informed by arts-based and arts-led, ethnographic, phenomenological, performative and poststructuralist perspectives, by the postmodern principles of multiple ways of knowing and by the culturally inclusive practices articulated by Indigenous researchers. The authors’ contributions theorise and provide practical examples of forms of creative research from different fields including art, creative media, education, architecture and design. “Knowledge creation is a social affair”, writes Eliot Eisner in the Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research (2008, p. 10). The writing of this book has been shaped by the relationships we formed as a community of scholars while undertaking this project. Our experience of working together revealed our commonalities and differences. It has not always been comfortable. In crossing disciplinary boundaries we needed to challenge organisational structures as well as our own methodological and epistemological assumptions. The process of coordinating the creative arts methodologies course, Creative Research Strategies, and of undertaking this book project has been both intense and formative. The questions we explored about the nature of creative arts research have taken us into a new and liminal terrain. The sense of excitement that has been generated by this proximity to the liminal (Turner, 1982; Carlson, 1996), has been linked closely to the discomfort that accompanies the disintegration of familiar patterns and expectations of form (Broadhurst, 1999). Our constructs of research and scholarship have been challenged by the differences in disciplinary approaches. We have found ourselves needing to return to the core questions posed by Jipson and Paley: What counts as research? What matters as data? What procedures are considered legitimate for the production of knowledge? What forms shape the making of explanations? (Jipson & Paley, 1997, p. 2). What has made it possible to work together has been a commitment to reflexivity, multiplicity and complexity. Throughout we have been guided and sustained by the epistemological premise that there are multiple ways of experiencing, knowing and communicating (Jipson & Paley, 1997). As a community of scholars we have E. Grierson and L. Brearley, Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices, 165–173. © 2009 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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shared the doubt articulated by Laurel Richardson that any single methodology or theory has a universal claim of authoritative knowledge (Richardson, 2000). Similarly, Patti Lather’s contention that there is no one, correct way to have an experience or to transmit knowledge of that experience (Lather, 1991; Lather & Smithies, 1997) has guided our work. A combination of epistemic reflexivity and a commitment to making a difference in the social world have characterised the project. In linking reflexivity and action in this way, this approach to creative research can be framed as a process of developing a critical consciousness. “The direction of research is tailored by desire”, said Peter Downton in a previous chapter. Following that desire we began with a gathering of sorts, inviting the readers and writers, artists, performers and audiences to become participants in our community of practice. Heidegger called it a way of sheltering. We end with that same desire to shelter and give life to creativity through robust and well articulated methodologies for the arts-based and arts-led researcher. Laura The boundaries of creative arts research are not clearly defined. The dissolution of the boundaries of convention makes the exploration possible, but also generates the risks. Risk-taking in creative research invites us into a deeper awareness of complexity and revelations through paradox. After I completed my arts-based research doctorate, I felt both exhausted and transformed. As part of my process of learning from and making meaning of the experience, I undertook a project in which I worked with twenty-two arts-based researchers from six countries to explore their own processes of becoming researchers. The research participants drew images and told stories about their research journeys. I worked with the transcripts of interviews and framed the data into songs and poetic text. I use these creative resources now in my work with research students and supervisors to make overt the complexities of research, which are often unacknowledged or unexamined. Included here is a poetic response from this research, reflecting the substance and emotional intensity of learning to become a creative researcher. Peeling off the Layers I am fascinated by the epistemology of art The relationship between how one makes images And how one makes sense of the world For me the process is the most important thing And how things come to you The process of adding and washing and scraping My painting is like my dissertation Like a conversation with myself Textured and layered 166

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The work is about peeling off layers that we show to the world I would never trade this experience It was incredible even the painful parts On the Edge The risk of not being ourselves is real The fear is not about going public It’s about discovering what might be within The opportunity of my dissertation Is to work right on the edge Of creating myself Some people say I take risks I would say I’m just becoming myself I don’t see the risk in that Getting Lost You die to your old self during the research process I think unless you do You don’t find life It’s important to get lost and confused You’re supposed to be You’ve got to go into the deserts and be blown away It’s important that they’re there You should see some of the deserts They’re amazing Going to the Edge I came into research so I could make some changes The research has given me a way to understand The conflicts and confusions in the world and in me Having been through the experience I feel both brighter and greyer So many shades of grey have hints of rainbows in them It’s a struggle at times I often go to the edge It has been so difficult at times and so beautiful. (Brearley, 2004, pp. 8–10). With all of the accompanying risks, and probably because of them, the experience of undertaking creative research has the potential to generate new ways of being in the world. If I were to distil what I have learned from undertaking this project, from listening to other researchers and from my own experience as a creative researcher, it would be this: 167

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Question what lies beneath, between, beyond Work in the cracks and at the edges Pull things apart and play with new connections Build a network of support with people who are on a similar path Listen to the stories of others and ask for the help that you need Learn to give and receive feedback in respectful ways Be prepared to get lost Expect to feel a bit lost and crazy at times Use the lostness to dig a little deeper to the core Be prepared for seasons of fruitfulness and drought Give yourself permission not to know or understand Find and hold the focus within the complexity and paradoxes Be brave Question everything and be open to reframing your assumptions Always be open to unlearning. (Brearley, 2003, pp. 15–16). Elizabeth We all have stories to tell and listen to, to learn from and critique. The aim of this book was to present some of these stories. Reflecting on what I have learnt takes me back to my doctorate journey and my growing awareness of knowledge as a politic. Formalised processes of research can teach a great deal. Methodologically and theoretically my PhD project was a poststructuralist affair. I was reading Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard and Cixous, and found myself immersed and in love with the luxury of spending time with texts that were opening the mysteries of “the way”. Yet I was also aware after writing the first chapter of the PhD that there was a need to find a language for the petit récit (little narrative) to speak of its place and difference, my difference, as a way of intervening in the defining metanarratives of our cultures (Lyotard, 1979/1984). So I decided to take the risk and write my own small stories of my tentative steps into the research terrain. Adrienne Rich gave me the way (Grierson, 2000, pp. 72–73): Diving into the Wreck Adrienne Rich (1972).1 First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers 168

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the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. I am reminded of Foucault’s thesis that ‘the local and the particular ... are always inserting their differences’ (McHoul & Grace, 1995, p. 2) as I situate my art-life in community, secondary and tertiary settings, studio arts, art history, theory, philosophy, cultural studies. These narratives will not attempt to ‘advance any historical causes’ (as Marshall writes of Foucault, in Ball 1990, p. 16), but perhaps they will mark my space of enunciation within discourses of the politics of knowledge presently under construction in this doctorate thesis. How to proceed with my narrative? That is the question. There is a ladder. the ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it … I go down. rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me … I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin … Somehow I did begin and I felt the water. I found a way to mark my space of enunciation, but these words of Adrienne Rich continued speaking to me of the crisis of being alone in the journey. I reflect on that. Even when one has supervisors and colleagues, methodologies and structures, content and themes, research questions and leviathan ideas, one can be alone and crawl like an insect down the ladder. It takes courage to dive into the wreck of one’s own limitations and our profound intentions. Research is about facing that risk and finding the courage to construct a methodology that is workable and sustainable. I remember one day phoning my supervisor and asking, “If I am working poststructurally then what is my methodology? Is it discourse analysis, genealogy, deconstruction or …?” I realised after a while that for the poststructuralist researcher there is little difference between the methodologies and the theories. Each works in close proximity with the other. One cannot write poststructurally without writing theoretically. The language moves in that direction. But what if theory were poetic? How does one conjugate 169

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both technë and poëisis in the travel of the words? I have never lived or felt a separation of theory and practice as they work in relationship within my art self and my scholarly self. I became aware that the way I was writing had a life of its own and I needed to trust to that way as a narrative voice appropriate to the task and its text. I turned to Jean-François Lyotard for his explanations of narratives and the incommensurability of different narratives when they are tested against the same truth claim. The discussion continued in this particular chapter of my doctorate with an explanation of Lyotard’s work and the legitimising principles of societal narratives. I wrote: In Quebec 1979, Lyotard was reporting on the ‘condition of knowledge in the most highly developed societies’ (Lyotard 1984: xxiii) at the request of Conseil des Universites of the government. Through his work Lyotard makes connections between science and technology, and epistemic, cultural and political trends. He examines the flow of information and knowledge and its controls in the Western world, with reference to the status of science as a discourse that has, as Lyotard puts it, ‘always been in conflict with narratives’ (p. xxiii). Speaking of legitimation of knowledge, Lyotard asks, ‘how do we legitimate the criteria for sorting true statements from false?’ (p. xxiii). Lyotard shows how ‘in the modern era, legitimation took the form of a narrative in a set of stories about the growth of knowledge and culture’ (p. xxiii). He calls this underlying narrative to which knowledge makes appeal as the ‘metanarrative’ or ‘grand narrative’, which acts through language as a legitimising force serving to unify knowledge statements. Lyotard identifies the end of the modern era as ‘the collapse of metanarrative as a legitimizing or unifying force’, and designates ‘postmodernism’ as ‘the state of our culture following the transformations which, since the end of the nineteenth century, have altered the game rules for science, literature, and the arts’ (p. xxiii). This, Lyotard calls ‘the crisis of narratives’ (Grierson, 2000, pp. 77–78). This particular chapter of my doctorate to which I refer, chapter two, was entitled Researcher’s Narrative. It had begun with this question from Lyotard, “Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?” (Lyotard, 1984, p. xxv), and then traced a path through the narratives of experience over forty years of remembering. Reflecting on attitudes in my student days when legitimising principles of knowledge were founded upon assumptions of truth and correctness, I observed “the crisis of narratives” within my own experiential archive: It became clear to me, at some time in the past that somehow my university years were caught in this crisis. … Methodologies of fine arts and art history were premised on the Enlightenment metanarrative of progress, placing ‘the hero of knowledge’ (Lyotard, 1984, p. xxiv) at the centre, working towards ‘a good ethico-political end—universal peace’ (p. xxiv). Lyotard shows that the term modern designates ‘any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse … making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth’ (p. xxiv). Such a grand 170

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narrative depended for its legitimation on agreement, or ‘the rule of consensus between the sender and addressee of a statement with truth-value … cast in terms of a possible unanimity between rational minds’ (p. xxiii). It never occurred to us, as students, that we could or might see fit to disagree or contend this legitimating premise of knowledge. Was it simply a matter of oversight? The pedagogy of fine arts, english literature, and art history made such explicit appeal to meta-discourses, through assumptions of agreement between ‘sender and addressee’, that such oases were assured in the humanist disciplines of liberal enlightenment and civilised academic progress, and who would have dared step into the aridity of the alternative? Through my roles of drama and art educator, and as a woman, I became aware of other narratives that remained unspoken.2 However, in spite of Janet Frame and the poet Adrienne Rich, in spite of The Women’s Art Movement … a locus of critique did not become effectively radicalised until the mid1980s, when I engaged critically with the politics of knowledge in the disciplinary practices of art history through a concentrated period of research on women in art3 (Grierson, 2000, pp. 78–79). Thus my work followed a path of investigating knowledge as a political process with social, cultural, personal and philosophical fracture. Although my research was tied to art as a political field the growing implications were broader than art. The challenge was to find a way to articulate these implications. THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE

From this crisis of narratives this collection has presented its narratives of difference to activate an emancipatory politic. By finding a space for enunciation and exercising the right to difference, the creative arts researchers have found themselves alongside the dominant narratives of science. Artists’ ways of working, ways of speaking, ways of discovering are not the same ways as the positivist methodologies that legitimate the ways of science and the grand narratives of history. The arts-based and arts-led projects cannot be chained and held accountable to the truth claims of science. Today new technologies have become bedfellows of both arts and sciences, and are soldiering at the frontiers of new knowledge to embolden the entrepreneurial subject of our times. However the slender narratives of creative workers can be heard above the technological din of twenty-first century innovations. Throughout the chapters in Creative Arts Research there has been a concern to enable creative voices to be enunciated and diverse methodologies of practice legitimated. There is a sense of an historical need to be respectful of different perspectives upon the landscape of academia and the terrain of life’s exigencies, even if those perspectives are partial and the views are brief. “Homi Bhabha asks, ‘How is historical agency enacted in the slenderness of narrative?’ (1995, p. 198). A whole Willow pattern plate from Shropshire4 may not be necessary to identify the Pearlware, Earthenware or Ironstone.5 A maker’s marks may give account of authenticity; silt marks or spur marks may provide clues of making and method; 171

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but what of the stories others could tell and in the telling what might be told?” (Grierson, 2000, p. 87). This book is about those tellings whether they have a beginning or an ending. It is about revealing what might be told. “Narrative and story telling may make sense of small moments, particular locations, unspoken memories” (Grierson, 2000, p. 87). This book is substantiating a way to further thought and we hope that, in the words of Bhabha, “Its performative power of circulation [will] result in the contagious spreading” (1995, in Grierson, 2000, p. 87). Collating these texts we have been mindful of the epistemologies of difference. Ultimately we were seeking a focus on creative methodologies through actual projects to under gird the politics of difference and identify research that can account for that field of difference. Each writer has contributed “their creative energies in Proustian6 fashion through discursive processes of history, in people as well as objects, images as well as places, assumed fictions as well as legitimated facts” (Grierson, 2000, p. 87). Now the book is done and as authors we recognise that we remain wedded to the importance of identifying methodological frameworks for the creative arts and enabling the multi-layered voices of Indigenous and non-Indigenous arts practitioners. These voices can act as powerful modes of intervention into Western authorities of knowledge. Our abiding concern has been to achieve a sustained critical focus on methodology for researchers dedicated to the creative arts. As long as such methodologies remain under-articulated creative knowledge will be perpetually mystified and de-legitimated. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done And the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp Slowly along the flank Of something more permanent Than fish or weed. (Diving into the Wreck Adrienne Rich). We trust that these texts and images, through taking account of difference in their defining epistemologies, will shed new light on creativity as an abiding condition of our times. NOTES 1

2

Adrienne Rich is a major American poet. Diving into the Wreck is the title of her 1973 book, which won the 1974 National Book Award for Poetry. This poem, part of which is quoted here, is published in Adrienne Rich: Poems selected and new 1950–1974 (1975). My career was in performing arts prior to art education, with work in speech, drama, and communication in secondary and tertiary institutions as well as community locations.

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4

5 6

My Master of Arts thesis, The Art of Louise Henderson, 1925–1990, was on the life and work of Dame Louise Henderson, who was born Louise Sidonnie Sauze in Paris and worked for seven decades as an artist in New Zealand. “The Willow pattern must be the best known design on pottery and, because it is printed in blue, many people use the name to describe almost any blue and white ware. This was so even in 1817 when a salesman’s order to Wedgwood instructed: ‘It must be Blue Willow in any pattern’” (Copeland, 1997, p. 3). For definitions of these terms see R. Copeland (1997). Marcel Proust (1871–1922) was a French novelist, essayist and critic. His central theme of A la recherche du temps perdu (1913–1927) is “the recovery of the lost past and the releasing of its creative energies through the stimulation of unconscious memory” (Pearsall, J. (Ed.), The new Oxford dictionary of English, p. 1492).

REFERENCES Brearley, L. (2001). Exploring the creative voice in an academic context: Representations of experiences of transition in organisational change. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy thesis, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Brearley, L. (2003). Exploring the multi-layered experience of undertaking creative doctoral research (pp. 15–16), Australian Association of Educational Research, Conference Paper, Defining the Doctorate, Newcastle. Retrieved May 5, 2008, from http://www.aare.edu.au/conf03nc/br03012z.pdf Brearley, L. (2004). Becoming a researcher, An arts-based aesthetic approach (pp. 8–10), Australian Association of Educational Research, Conference Paper, Melbourne, Australia. Available: http: //www.aare.edu. au/04pap/bre04971.pdf Broadhurst, S. (1999). Liminal acts: A critical overview of contemporary performance and theory. London: Cassell. Carlson, M. (1996). Performance: A critical introduction. New York: Routledge. Copeland, R. (1997). Blue and white transfer-printed pottery. Buckinghamshire: Shire Publications Ltd. Eisner, E. (2008). Art and knowledge. In J. Gary Knowles & A. L. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples and issues (pp. 3–13). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Grierson, E. M. (2000). The politics of knowledge: A poststructuralist approach to visual arts education in tertiary sites. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy thesis, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. Jipson, J., & Paley, N. (Eds.). (1997). Daredevil research: Re-creating analytic practice. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Lather, P. (1991). Getting smart: Feminist research and pedagogy with/in the postmodern. New York: Routledge. Lather, P., & Smithies, C. (1997). Troubling the angels: Women living with HIV/AIDS. Colorado: Westview Press. Lyotard, J-F. (1979/1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge (G. Bennington & B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Pearsall, J. (Ed.). (1998). The new Oxford dictionary of English. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Rich, A. (1975). Diving into the wreck. In Adrienne Rich: Poems selected and new 1950–1974 (pp. 196–198). New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Richardson, L. (2000). Writing as a method of enquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 923–948). California: Sage Publications. Turner, V. (1982). From ritual to theatre. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications.

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architect(s)(ural)(ure), 1, 4, 6, 13, 22, 111, 115, 118-122, 124-126, 165 archive(ing)(s), 13, 21, 23, 27, 29, 76, 150, 170 Arieti, Silvano, 99 Armstrong, John, 56 art(s), 1-7, 9-11, 13-14, 17-18, 20-29, 34-35, 38, 40-42, 45, 51, 55-56, 57-58, 61, 63, 65-66, 71-73, 75-77, 80-85, 90, 98-99, 101-102, 114, 117, 129, 131, 133-138, 142-145, 149, 154-161, 165-166, 169-172 articulate(d)(s), 4, 8, 43, 47, 49-50, 76, 78-79, 81-82, 89, 107-108, 160, 165-166 artifact(ual)(s), 7, 11, 14, 18, 21, 66-67, 73, 154 art-making, 38, 138 arts-based, 1-3, 5-6, 10, 14, 35, 43, 129, 137, 146, 165-166, 171 arts-led, 1-2, 5-6, 14, 146, 165-166, 171 artwork(s), 11-12, 21, 40-41, 51, 55, 57-63, 73, 76-77, 85, 88-89, 143, 146, 161 Asia(n), 76, 131 atmosphere(ic), 58-61 attention, 4, 6, 9, 18, 20, 23-24, 26, 40, 60, 72, 79-80, 92, 98, 109, 150, 154-155, 157 audience(s), 3-4, 9, 12-13, 57, 78, 91, 98-101, 104, 106, 109, 122, 126, 129-130, 132-133, 135-137, 143-146, 166 audio, 3, 133 Auntie Gracie, 36 Australia(n)(ns), 2-3, 6, 13, 33-35, 39, 45, 75-77, 79, 85, 90, 98, 116-117, 126, 129, 132-137, 142-146 authentic(ity), 1, 36, 44, 62, 141, 143, 154, 157, 171 author(s), 2-3, 9-10, 12-14, 17, 27, 87, 92, 101, 107-108, 125, 130, 165, 172 autoethnography, 5, 43, 135, 144, 146 autonomy, 26, 161

A Aboriginal(ity), 33, 35-37, 48-49, 134, 138, 141, 143, 146 abyss, 10, 26 academia, 41, 67, 102, 107-108, 142, 153, 171 academic(s), 1-3, 8-9, 12, 18, 22, 34-35, 41, 55, 77, 85, 87, 102, 106-110, 133, 144-146, 152, 161, 171 academy, 3-4, 7, 33-34, 47, 50, 97, 161 accountability(ies), 4, 132-133, 145-146 action(s), 5, 7, 10, 12, 14, 17-21, 43, 49, 68, 70-71, 80-81, 84, 98, 100, 103, 129-133, 135-137, 143-146, 153, 157, 166 action research, 5, 10, 43, 100, 144 active(ly), 3, 7, 14, 27, 49, 56, 59, 61, 85, 97, 108, 155 activism(t), 133-136 Adelaide River, 137 aesthetic(s), 4, 7, 14, 18, 25, 40, 57, 71, 82, 84, 100-102, 107, 109, 121, 129-130, 132-133, 143, 145-146, 151-152, 154, 157-159 alternative(s), 5, 11, 23, 42, 46, 65, 71, 73, 75, 171 America(n), 6, 80-81, 89-90, 105, 131, 153 Amsterdam, 119 Anglo-American, 151 Antipodean, 151 analysing, 5, 9-10, 13, 55, 74, 81, 97, 102, 104, 111, 150 analysis, 5, 7, 12, 19-21, 27, 66-67, 72-73, 77, 82, 85, 88, 97, 99, 101-103, 104, 106-108, 113, 122, 124, 132, 138, 142-143, 153-155, 157, 169 analytical, 12, 107, 144-145 anatomy, 5, 22, 25, 81, 102, 156 Ancestor(s), 37-38, 40-41, 43, 47, 86, 141 animals, 76, 87-88 animation, 12, 71, 98 anthropocentricism, 76 anthropological, 78, 113, 141, 143 anthropologist(s), 90, 131-132 Aotearoa, 22-23 a priori, 26, 154, 160 application(s), 4, 7, 59, 76, 98-99, 116, 152-153 appropriation, 8, 142-143 archaeology(ical), 5, 20-21, 23, 25, 28, 141, 154-156

B Bachelard, Gaston, 56 Baiami, 39 Ball, Stephen, 149, 152, 155-156, 158, 169 Barad, Karen, 65 Barnacle, Robyn, 3, 11, 65 Barrington, Daines, 86 Barrow, Emma, 3, 13, 129-130, 137-138, 144-145

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INDEX Bauman, Richard, 131-133, 145 Baylor, Andy, 13, 130, 133-134, 136-137, 144-145 Beck, Ulric, 155-156, 159 becoming, 9, 17, 24, 26-27, 29-30, 73, 116, 166 Beer, Gillian, 85, 87 being(ness)(s), 2, 4, 9, 11-12, 17, 19, 25-26, 29, 30, 45, 47, 50, 56, 67, 69-72, 77, 123, 125, 130-131, 138, 150, 152, 154, 161, 167, 169 being-with, 9, 11, 65-66, 70-71 Beuys, Joseph, 80 Bhabha, Homi, 171-172 Biganga Exhibition, 10, 39 binary, 11, 77, 143-144, 154 biography(ies), 87-88, 100-101, 103, 115 Bishop, Russell, 8, 44, 46 Bochner, Art, 46 body(ies)(ily), 4, 11, 18-21, 27-28, 45, 66, 67-68, 70, 81, 85, 87, 89, 129, 141, 156 Bolt, Barbara, 72-73 bond(s), 38, 45 book(s), 1-4, 7, 9, 14, 26-27, 42, 47, 59, 79, 8687, 109, 112, 114-115, 123, 126, 165, 168, 172 borders, 3, 41, 150-151 Borromini, Francesco, 120 boundaries, 4, 33-34, 41, 150, 165-166 Brawne, Michael, 123 Brearley, Laura, 1-3, 9-10, 14, 33-35, 41, 43, 46, 49, 51, 166 Brecht, Bertoldt, 78 Brennan, Teresa, 85, 77 bridge(s), 35, 41, 44, 71-72, 118-119 Brighton, 10, 22 Britain, 6 British, 22, 58, 143, 149, 153, 155 Brooker, P., 151, 155, 157 build(ing)(s), 1-2, 5-6, 9-10, 20, 22-23, 37, 42, 44, 50, 71, 73, 99-101, 105, 107, 112, 114-115, 119-120, 123-124, 135, 156, 168 bush, 35, 139, 141 C Cajun, 133, 136 Cambridge, 75, 85-87 camera(s), 62, 89, 100, 105, 139, 141 candidate(s), 3, 102, 117 canon(ic)(ical)(isation)(s), 13, 108, 115, 120121, 124, 160 capital(ist)(s), 18, 65, 86, 98 Cartesian, 11, 25, 71, 159 case studies, 1, 5, 12-13, 102, 104-106, 109, 118 176

Casuarina Coastal Reserve, 139 catalogue, 76, 81, 84, 89, 91 category(ies)(isations)(ised), 3, 18, 69, 85, 98, 105, 116, 124, 131, 150, 154 CD, 7, 116 Celtic, 35 centre(d), 25, 56, 69, 79, 87, 126, 133, 150, 153, 170 challenge(d)(s), 1, 4, 7, 10-12, 14, 20, 22, 55, 66, 70-71, 73, 84, 99-100, 109, 118, 130131, 143, 146, 156-157, 165, 171 change(d)(ing)(s), 8, 18, 33, 44-45, 49-50, 58, 69-70, 76, 78, 81-82, 84, 87, 90-91, 98, 108, 116-118, 121-122, 125-126, 135, 139, 145, 152 characteristic(s), 8, 11, 18, 23, 26, 44, 46, 70, 86-87, 100, 111, 118, 124-125 Chatham, 88 choreograph(ed)(s), 22, 141 children, 36, 134 Chile, 75, 88-89 China, 12, 78-79 cinema, 104-105 Cixous, Hélène, 9, 21, 25, 30, 151, 168 climb(ing), 62, 81 cognitive, 4, 82, 161 collaborate(tion)(tive)(tively)(tors), 2, 13, 34-35, 37, 44, 46-47, 100, 128-129, 137-139, 142, 144, 146 colleague(s), 38, 41, 139, 169 collective, 1, 44, 49, 111, 118, 124, 132 colonial(ism), 8, 138, 141, 143 colonise(ation)(ing), 7, 33, 87 comedy, 12, 79, 98, 101, 103-104 commercial, 7, 108, 116 communication(s), 4, 13, 18, 20, 53, 130-132, 145, 158 community(ies), 1-4, 6, 10, 33-38, 40, 44-46, 48-51, 67, 99, 102, 106-110, 133, 161, 165-166, 169 composition(al)(s), 4, 118, 126, 136 computer(s) 12, 62, 98, 102, 108, 125-126 condition(s), 1, 3-4, 6, 9-10, 17-18, 23-29, 55, 57-58, 60-61, 65-66, 71, 88, 98, 107, 116, 130, 132, 143, 152-158, 160-161, 170, 172 connect(edness)(ing)(ion)(ions)(ivity)(s), 8, 14, 28, 34-35, 44-47, 49-51, 56, 59-60, 71, 79, 99, 108-109, 138, 141, 154, 168, 170 Connor, Bruce, 83 conscious(ly)(ness), 10-11, 14, 28, 36, 46, 56, 58, 61, 68, 85, 91, 103, 122, 166 Constable, John, 61-63

INDEX construct(ed)(ing)(ion)(ions)(s), 2, 5, 7-9, 11-13, 17-18, 21-23, 25, 28-29, 46, 55, 57, 59, 61, 69-71, 76, 107, 109, 111-112, 118-120, 122, 124, 127, 130, 132, 139, 144, 149, 155, 159-160, 165, 169 constructivism(t), 5, 21 contemporary, 22, 39, 59, 69, 73, 75, 104-105, 109, 136-137, 141, 143-144, 150, 155 convention(al)(s), 11, 34, 66-67, 69, 90, 105, 109, 146, 154, 166 Copley, Nicole, 139, 141 counter-reading(s), 13, 156, 161 Cox Peninsular, 137 craft(ed)(ing)(s), 10, 20-22, 25, 67, 99, 108, 124 Cram, Fiona, 47 create(ing)(d)(s), 10, 13, 21, 33, 38-39, 43, 46, 55, 58-59, 61-62, 66, 69, 76-77, 81-82, 123, 130, 133, 137, 144-145 creation(s), 11-12, 14, 38, 40, 45, 47, 61, 67, 100, 103, 109, 165, 170 creative(ing)(ity)(ly), 1-7, 9-14, 17-18, 20-21, 24-27, 29, 33-34, 40, 43-46, 55-57, 64-68, 72-76, 97-100, 102-110, 118, 129-131, 137, 139, 141-146, 149-161, 165-167, 171-172 creative arts research(ers), 1-3, 5, 9, 11-14, 17, 20, 27, 34, 57, 150, 152-153, 161, 165-166, 171 creative research, 1-5, 7, 9, 11-14, 17-18, 33-34, 57, 67-68, 73-74, 97, 99-100, 105-109, 150, 153, 156, 161, 165-167 Creative Research Strategies, 1, 3, 7, 175 critical(ly), 1, 4-5, 7-8, 14, 21, 24-25, 29, 50, 109, 115, 145-146, 149-152, 154-157, 161, 166, 171-172 critique(s), 14, 21, 47, 85, 113, 121, 131, 151-158, 161, 168, 171 Crosby, Bing, 104 cross-cultural, 34, 138-139, 142, 154 crossing, 27, 72, 154, 165 cultural(ly), 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 14, 18, 22, 29, 34-36, 38, 75, 91, 99, 104, 107, 109-110, 122, 129-139, 143-146, 150, 152, 154, 156, 165, 169-171 culture(s), 8, 12, 18, 23, 25, 29, 35, 38-39, 41, 40-45, 47-49, 51, 65, 68, 73, 75, 78-79, 85, 90, 97-100, 104-106, 108-109, 122, 130, 132-134, 136-137, 139, 141, 143, 145, 168, 170 D Dadirri, 37, 136, 144-146 Daly River, 37

dance(d)(ing)(r)(rs)(s), 3-4, 6-7, 13, 18, 22, 37, 77, 81-82, 91, 101, 130-131, 134, 139, 141-146 Darriba Nungalinya, 139 Darwin, 13, 76, 79, 86, 129, 137-139 Darwin, Charles, 12, 75-76, 79, 85-88 Darwin Translations, 11, 75-77, 84, 91 data, 5, 22-23, 28, 70, 113-115, 117, 156, 166 daydream(er)(ing), 56, 58, 99-100, 108 Decartes, René, 68-70, 72, 160 debate(d)(s), 35, 41, 49, 106, 109, 117, 141-142, 157 decolonisation, 8, 50, 145 deconstruct(ing)(ion)(ive), 5, 7, 9, 13, 15, 21, 25, 130, 149-154, 156-160, 169 deep listening, 5, 10, 21, 43-44, 136, 144-146 degree(s), 6, 34, 37, 65-66, 103, 108, 117, 122, 129, 135, 146 Dei, George Sefa, 44, 46 Deleuze, Gilles, 151, 157 Denzin, Norman, 7-8, 10, 49-50, 135 Derrida, Jacques, 21, 23, 151, 154, 157, 168 design(ed)(ers)(ing), 1-8, 10, 12-14, 22, 46-47, 65-66, 72, 88, 103, 111-118, 121-127, 129, 154, 165 designer-maker, 13, 112, 121-123 design research, 12, 111, 114, 116 desire(s), 13, 19, 22, 45, 112, 117-121, 123, 127, 143, 151, 166, 176 Desmond, Adrian, 87 Dethridge, Lisa, 3, 12, 97 develop(ed)(ing)(ment), 2-3, 6-7, 10, 14, 33, 39-40, 42, 44, 49, 51, 59-60, 67, 75, 77-82, 86, 90-91, 100-104, 107-109, 114, 123, 126, 155, 159, 166, 170 Dhungala, 39 dialogue(s), 11, 34, 38, 42, 49-50, 66, 72, 105-106, 131, 142-144 diary(ies), 27, 59, 86, 88 difference(s), 1-5, 7, 10, 13-14, 18, 20, 22-24, 26, 28-29, 33-34, 42, 49, 56, 58, 62, 67, 73, 82, 87, 126, 144, 146, 151-153, 157-158, 160, 165-166, 168-169, 171-172 différance, 13, 151, 153 digital, 3-4, 6, 18, 71, 73, 98, 101, 105, 133 dimension(al)(s), 14, 17, 35, 44, 46, 67, 76, 100, 129, 131-132, 152, 154 direction, 17, 44, 59, 62, 101, 115, 117, 166, 169 director(s), 105, 100, 107 discern(able)(ed)(ment), 60-61, 122, 124, 157

177

INDEX discipline(ary)(d)(s), 3-4, 11, 18, 23, 27, 34, 55, 66, 69, 76-77, 81, 99, 106-107, 115, 117, 124, 126-127, 150, 154, 156, 165, 171 disclose(ing)(s)(ure)(ures), 5, 9, 11, 13, 20, 22-23, 29, 72, 131, 149, 152-153 discourse(s), 6, 8-10, 13, 17-26, 29, 34, 48, 73, 99, 125, 144, 146, 149-158, 160-161, 169170 discursive(ity)(ly), 2, 13, 20, 22-23, 26, 28, 69, 97, 108-109, 138, 143, 145, 150-151, 153-156, 172 displace(d)(ment)(s), 69, 130, 132, 141, 153, 157, 163-164, 167-168, 170-171 distributor(s), 100, 107 diversity, 1, 45 division(s), 3, 5, 68, 130 doctorate, 3, 6, 10, 17, 21, 23, 29, 129, 152, 166, 168-170 document(ary)(ation)(er)(ing)(s), 23, 36-37, 62, 97, 100, 102, 106, 108, 135, 139, 143, 156 domain(s), 4, 14, 27, 63, 65, 68, 117, 123, 132, 145, 154 dominant discourses, 150, 152-153, 157-158 Downton, Peter, 3, 12, 111, 166 drama(tic), 101, 171 Duchamp, Marcel, 80 Duxbury, Lesley, 3, 10-11, 55 DVD, 7, 116, 146 dwell(er)(ing), 2, 9, 36, 71 E earth, 6, 34, 44, 45, 47, 71 ecologies(ical), 6, 130-131 economy(ic)(ies), 3-5, 6, 14, 18, 22, 34, 39, 98-99, 107, 138, 149, 152, 154, 156, 159 Ecuador, 75, 88 education(al), 1-5, 7, 13-14, 21-27, 38, 41, 47, 99, 115-117, 135, 149-152, 157, 165 educator(s), 2-4, 14, 23, 27-28, 33, 152, 157, 171 Eisner, Eliot, 165 Elders, 33, 35-39, 43, 45-46, 48-49, 51 Eliasson, Olafur, 55, 60 Ellis, Carolyn, 46, 135 Einstein, Albert, 116 emancipatory, 8, 10, 171 embody(ied)(iment), 5-7, 9, 12-13, 19, 28-29, 58-59, 67, 71, 73, 89, 111, 118, 121, 123-127, 129-132, 135, 143, 146, 152 embrace(s), 12, 17, 77, 79 emotion(al)(ally), 6, 36, 45-46, 60, 132, 134, 136, 166 178

empirical(ly), 4-7, 11, 21, 25, 56, 66-67, 152, 156 encounter(ed)(s), 3, 10-12, 61-63, 80, 104, 131-133, 145-146, 153 engage(d)(ing)(ment)(s), 4-7, 9-14, 17-18, 20-22, 33, 44, 46, 50, 55-57, 61, 63, 66, 69, 79, 82, 85, 90, 97, 100, 102-104, 106, 108-109, 111, 114, 123, 125-126, 129, 131-132, 137-138, 145-146, 149, 151-153, 155-161, 171 England, 23, 58 English, 22, 35, 75, 114, 138, 143, 152, 171 Enlightenment, 26, 70, 152, 160, 170 enquiry(er)(ies)(ing), 2, 3-5, 8-10, 13, 20-21, 36, 43, 45-47, 50, 55-56, 67, 69, 73, 76, 97-98, 102, 109, 115-117, 124-127, 135, 138-139, 144-146, 150, 157-160 environment(al)(s), 27, 34, 94, 98-99, 107, 138-139 Ephron, Nora, 103 epistemic, 12, 111, 166, 170 epistemology(ical)(ies), 3, 5-8, 11-14, 17, 21, 27, 33, 42, 46, 58, 69-71, 98, 115, 123, 126, 154, 158-160, 165, 172 essentialism(t), 26-27 ethnography, 5, 10, 21 ethnomusicologists, 131 ethic(al)(s), 7-8, 26, 50, 131-132, 142, 146 eurocentric, 50, 135 Europe(an), 76, 108 examine(ation)(d)(ing)(s), 1, 7, 10, 12-13, 20-21, 24-25, 27, 75-76, 78, 100-101, 104-106, 108-109, 114-115, 117-118, 121-122, 124-126, 131, 133, 136, 146, 149-150, 153, 156, 158-160, 170 exegesis, 7, 12, 58-59, 97, 102, 106, 108-109, 136-137, 153 exhibition(s), 5, 7, 10, 39, 43, 58-59, 76, 80, 89, 112, 126, 146 experience(d)(s), 3, 9-14, 17, 19, 23, 26-29, 33-35, 38, 40, 42-46, 49, 51, 55-63, 79, 81-85, 90, 100, 123-125, 130, 132, 134-139, 143-146, 158, 165-166, 170 experiment(al)(ation), 17, 59-60, 67, 114 external, 35, 70, 122, 129, 137, 146 exchange(d)(s), 14, 18, 132-133, 137 existentialism, 25 explore(ation)(d)(s), 8, 10-11, 13, 17, 28-29, 34, 45, 58-59, 66, 69, 87, 98-99, 102, 104, 106-107, 109, 112, 114, 131, 165-166, 172 eye(s), 9, 43, 59, 61, 72, 75, 81, 100, 139, 141, 152, 158

INDEX F family, 35-36, 39, 45, 115 fault-lines, 159, 161 feeling(s), 12, 45, 56-57, 77, 86, 100, 133, 136, 144, 158 Feldenkrais, Moshe, 82 field(s), 1-2, 4, 7, 9, 11, 13-14, 18, 20-21, 23, 26-27, 29, 47, 57, 72, 81-82, 98-99, 102-109, 115, 123, 133-134, 136, 143, 149-153, 155-158, 160-161, 165, 171-172 film(ed)(ing)(making)(s), 3-4, 6-7, 12-13, 67, 70, 76, 83, 97-99, 101-105, 121, 129, 137, 139, 142-143, 145-146 fine art(s), 3, 6-7 Florida, Richard, 6 fluxus, 80 focus(sed)(sing), 5, 10-13, 18, 20, 49, 68-69, 72, 75-77, 80-81, 89, 98-103, 105, 107-108, 114-116, 130-131, 138, 149, 168, 172 Fontana, Lucio, 80 formal(ised), 18, 47, 111, 120, 123, 139, 142, 168 forms, 3, 6, 9, 17, 29, 34, 36, 40, 42, 55, 67, 70, 85, 87, 105, 118-122, 127, 129-130, 132, 141, 143, 151, 156, 165 Foucauldian, 27, 156, 158 Foucault, Michel, 9, 13, 18-21, 23-29, 150-151, 153-156, 160, 168-169 Frame, Janet, 171 framework(s), 1, 5, 18, 21, 37, 49-50, 62-63, 72, 97-99, 102, 104, 108, 129, 138-139, 143, 152, 172 Framlingham Mission, 36 Frankland, Richard, 13, 130, 133-137, 144-145 Frayling, Christopher, 114 freedom, 27, 41, 134 French, 23, 68, 85, 151-152 friend(s)(ship), 23, 34, 78, 82, 114 frontier(s), 6, 18, 154, 171 function(al)(ing)(s), 5, 14, 20, 25-27, 29, 69, 100, 104, 112, 131, 144-145 funding, 4, 89, 116 future(ist)(s), 7, 14, 38-39, 44, 51, 75, 116, 125, 135, 143, 154-155 G Galapagos Islands, 75-76, 88 gallery(ies), 35 Gasché, Rodolphe, 159 gather(ing), 1-4, 14, 17, 20-21, 71-72, 132, 166 gender(ing), 29, 104, 131 genealogy(ical)(ies), 5, 9, 17-19, 21, 23, 25-28, 154-156, 169

generation(s), 11, 34, 38, 43-44, 46, 51, 67, 70, 97, 133, 135, 142, 153 genre(s), 27, 98, 100-105, 108, 154, 160 German, 23, 35, 70, 150-151, 155 Giddens, Anthony, 155 gift(s), 40, 134 global(isation)(ised)(ly), 3-4, 6-7, 14, 18, 23-24, 35, 97-100, 108-109, 154-155 govern(ance)(ing), 4, 26-27, 98, 102-103, 114 government(ality), 4, 24, 26, 41, 170 Goulthorpe, Mark, 119 grand narrative, 170-171 grant(s), 76, 126 Greek, 23, 27, 73, 157 Green Park, Kunming, 78 Grierson, Elizabeth, 1-3, 9-10, 13-14, 17, 97-100, 102, 129, 145, 149, 165 ground(ed), 5, 20-21, 23, 27, 57, 66, 69, 89, 111, 139, 150-151 group(s), 1, 3, 33, 35, 37-38, 41-42, 44, 90, 100, 136-137, 142-143 guide(ed)(ing), 25, 35, 45, 49, 71, 97, 101, 109, 117, 129, 137, 145, 165-166 Gulpa Ngawal, 37 Gunditjmara, 134-136 Gunyangara, 134 Gurambai (Rapid Creek), 139 H habitus, 3 Hall, Buff, 44, 46 Hamm, Treahna, 3, 10, 33-35, 37-38, 42, 45-47, 51 Hampstead Heath, 61-63 heal(ing), 35, 38, 41-42, 82, 134-136 heart(s), 9, 34, 44, 50, 132, 136-137 heartland, 38, 49 Hegelian, 151, 157-158 hegemony(ic), 8, 159 Heideggerian, 11, 73 Heidegger, Martin, 1-3, 9, 17, 20-21, 66, 69-73, 81, 131, 150-152, 156-166, 168 heritage, 13, 35-36, 137-139, 141, 143, 151 hermeneutic(al)(s), 5, 21, 146, 170 Herzog and de Meuron, 119 heterogeneous, 26, 69 heuristic(s), 5, 21, 146 history(ian)(ic)(ical)(ically)(ies)(iography), 1, 3, 7-8, 11, 14, 18-19, 26, 29, 39, 43, 49, 57, 65, 71, 73, 85, 87, 91, 101, 104, 107, 115-116, 124, 130, 135-139, 141, 143-144, 146, 150, 154-156, 159-161, 169-172 homeland(s), 35, 40, 138 179

INDEX hooks, bell, 50 Hope, Bob, 104 Hopkins, Gerard Manly, 87 horizons, 29, 49, 116, 152, 154-155, 161 Horn, Kipps, 3, 13, 129, 144-145 Horn, Rebecca, 80 Horrocks, Roger, 81 Howard Springs, 139 human(ist)(ities)(ity), 4, 6, 23-26, 29, 45-46, 50, 68, 70, 76, 87, 116, 133, 135-136, 151-152, 154, 157, 159, 171 Husserl, Edmund, 81 I identity(ies), 3-4, 6, 23, 26, 36, 38-39, 42, 47-48, 129-131, 133, 136-139, 141, 146, 150-151, 154 illustration(s), 11, 60, 77 image(ry)(s), 7, 10, 13-14, 18, 21, 45, 55-63, 76-78, 80, 82-84, 88, 91, 105, 109, 113-115, 119, 121, 125, 129-130, 137-139, 141, 146, 154, 158, 166, 172 imagination(s), 6, 10, 12-13, 18, 33, 56-57, 59-60, 97, 99-100, 108-109, 149-150, 155, 158-159, 161 immediacy, 116, 144 imperialism(t), 7-8 improvisation(s), 34, 79, 131, 136-137 incorporate(d)(ing)(ion)(s), 1, 7, 10, 14, 33, 39, 49, 55-56, 60, 124, 139, 157 inclusion(ive), 8, 21, 36, 41, 43, 91, 122, 141-142, 144, 165 independent(ce)(ly), 27, 68, 123-124, 126, 139 indigene(ity), 8, 129, 139, 143 Indigenous, 2-5, 7-8, 10, 13, 21, 33-47, 49-50, 129-130, 133-139, 141-146, 165, 172 individual(ism)(ly)(s), 12, 18, 26-27, 34-35, 38, 42, 44-45, 58, 61, 77, 82, 85, 90, 104, 111, 113, 115, 117, 126, 132, 138-139, 150 industries, 18, 97-98, 152 inner, 35, 44, 45, 99-100, 110, 114, 150 installation(s), 75-76, 84 institution(al)(ally)(s), 2, 4, 8, 13, 21-24, 26, 29, 33, 44, 91, 107, 109, 150-153, 157, 161 instrument(al)(alised)(alist)(ality)(s), 4, 9, 59, 73, 114, 133 integral(ly), 3, 131, 134 integration, 7, 134-136, 144 integrity, 38, 44, 49, 107, 136 intellect(ual)(ually), 6, 25, 33, 71, 117, 120, 136, 143, 150 180

interact(ion)(ive)(ivity)(s), 8, 18, 26, 44, 80, 124, 133 inter-cultural, 8 interdisciplinary, 2, 6, 14, 150 internal(ised)(ly), 26, 35, 111 international, 108, 133-134, 136, 150 internet, 98, 115 interpretation(s), 7, 11, 55, 61-63, 91, 114-115, 118, 133, 138, 141, 143, 146 intersection(s), 13, 41, 137-138, 144 intuitive(ly), 6, 18, 26, 38, 45, 55, 97, 99-100, 107-109 invent(ion)(ive), 4, 6, 11, 18, 81, 129 investment(s), 4, 6, 18, 156, 161 Israeli, 82 Italian style Western, 105 J Japan(ese), 6, 126 John Hopkins University, 151 Jones, Lyndal, 3, 11, 75 journal(s), 34, 86, 108-109 journey(s), 9-10, 12, 20, 22-23, 29, 33, 35-36, 38-39, 41, 45, 47, 73, 87, 112, 116, 138, 145, 166, 168-169 judgement(s), 22, 122, 143, 154, 158, 160 justice, 33, 50 K Kant(ian), 151, 158 Kaupapa Mäori, 8 Khourie, Callie, 104 Kim, J. H., 133 kinaesthetic(s), 3, 29, 80-83, 129-130, 132-133 Kincheloe, Joe, 8 King George IV, 22 Kngwarreye, Emily Kame, 80 knowing, 2-4, 6-11, 17, 19, 27, 29, 33-35, 37, 41, 43-45, 55, 63, 67, 70, 78, 97, 112, 114, 118, 123, 125-126, 131-132, 134-135, 137-138, 143, 145-146, 152, 156, 159, 161, 165 knowledge, 1-14, 17-18, 20-23, 25-29, 33, 35-36, 38, 40-41, 44-47, 49-51, 57-58, 61, 66-71, 73, 75, 87, 90, 97-99, 104-105, 107-109, 111-114, 116-118, 121-127, 129, 131-137, 141-146, 149-154, 156-158, 160-161, 165-166, 168-172 Koori Cohort, 3, 7, 33-34, 37, 41, 42, 44 Krell, David, 160 Kristeva, Julia, 151 kritike tekhne, 157

INDEX kritikos, 157 Kunming, 78 L Laban, Rudolph, 82 land, 38, 42-43, 47, 53, 71, 129-130, 134, 137-139, 141-145 landscape(s), 9, 23, 47, 49, 71, 77, 85, 117, 125, 171 Langton, Marcia, 143 language(s), 3, 6, 9-10, 17, 19-22, 29, 37, 41, 58, 65, 68, 82, 85, 90, 122, 129-130, 137, 146, 151-153, 156, 168-170 Larrakia, 13, 137, 129, 138-139 Lather, Patti, 166 Latin, 18, 27, 158 law(s), 25, 81, 134, 136 Law, John, 11, 66-67 layer(ed)(ing)(s), 23, 27-28, 45, 75-76, 136, 141, 146, 154, 166 learning, 3-4, 8-9, 14, 34, 38, 40-41, 43-46, 49-51, 78-79, 114-115, 124-125, 145, 157, 165-166 Le Corbusier, 119 lecture(rs)(s), 3, 7, 71, 89, 112, 115, 126 Lee, Garry Mura, 137 legitimate(d)(s), 4, 8, 23, 26, 67, 151, 153, 156-158, 165, 170-172 legitimation, 18, 22-23, 29, 170-171 legitimise(d)(ing), 8, 14, 170 Len Lye, 81 Leone, Sergio, 105 liberal, 26, 151-152, 154, 157, 171 life, 2-3, 6, 26-27, 33-35, 39-41, 44-45, 47, 49, 51, 55, 73, 76-78, 90, 99-101, 107-108, 112, 121, 129, 135, 137, 158-159, 166, 170-171 life-world, 28, 130, 133 light, 3, 6, 41, 59-61, 63, 104, 116, 138, 172 Lima, 88 Lincoln, Yvonna, 7-8, 10, 49 lineage(s), 1-2, 17-18, 21, 136-137, 151, 153, 155, 160-161 linguistic, 7, 65, 133 listen(er)(ers)(ing), 5, 8-10, 21, 33-35, 37-38, 41-44, 46-47, 50-51, 89, 111, 116, 124-125, 131, 133, 136, 144-146, 167-168 literature, 5, 58, 101-102, 104-105, 111, 131, 153, 170-171 local(s), 6, 14, 23, 28, 78, 108-109, 112, 138-139, 169 location(s), 62, 100, 103, 106, 109, 131-133, 139, 145, 156, 172 London, 58, 61, 63, 80

look(ing), 9-10, 20, 24, 33-34, 37, 39, 41, 44-47, 49-50, 77, 88, 90-91, 109, 116, 118, 133, 139, 141, 152, 155 Lyotard, Jean-François, 21, 23, 157, 168, 170 M macro, 24, 130 Maidens Punt, 39 management, 3-4, 26 managerialism, 4, 150 Mandarin, 79 Mäori, 8, 47 map(ping)(s), 10, 17, 47, 116, 155, 161 margin(alisation)(alisations)(alised), 23-24, 33, 150, 153-154, 158 market, 18, 23, 73, 98, 107, 149-150 Marshall, 169 master(s), 33, 100-101, 124, 129, 134-135 material(isation)(ising)(ism)(ity)(s), 1-2, 5-7, 11, 14, 18, 20-22, 25, 27, 29, 49, 55, 57-60, 65-66, 67-72, 76-77, 80-81, 83-84, 112-116, 121-124, 129, 152-153 mathematician, 56, 122 McHoul and Grace, 156 meaning(ful)(less)(s), 6, 11, 23, 35, 41, 45-46, 50, 57, 59, 61, 67, 70, 73, 76, 85, 87, 91, 106, 117, 122-123, 131-133, 135, 137-138, 144, 146, 151-154, 159-161, 166, 170 meaning making, 25, 45-46, 76, 133, 144 measure(d)(s), 4, 7, 81, 150, 157 media, 4-6, 10, 22, 55-56, 58-60, 98-101, 105-107, 109, 129, 133, 143, 152, 154, 165 medium, 39, 56, 106, 108, 118, 121-122, 134 Melbourne, 1, 36, 76, 89, 136, 138, 142 Melbourne Museum, 10, 39, 126 memory(ies), 21, 29, 45, 56-57, 62, 91, 111, 113-114, 119, 135, 156, 172 Menzies Boys Home, 36 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 81 Mernit, Billy, 103 metanarrative(s), 25, 152, 157, 168, 170 metaphor(ic)(ically)(s), 23, 70, 85, 91, 118, 120 metaphysical, 71, 136, 151-152, 160-161 method(ological)(ologies)(ology), 1-5, 7-14, 17, 19-26, 28, 33-35, 38-39, 43-44, 47, 59, 67, 77-79, 85-86, 97-98, 100, 102-108, 114, 117, 129-131, 135-137, 144-146, 149-158, 160-161, 165-166, 168-172 micro, 24, 130 Miller, Jonathan, 79 mind(s), 11, 13, 21, 43, 56-57, 59-61, 63, 68-70, 77, 80, 89, 99-100, 119, 136-137, 151, 158 181

INDEX mobile, 98, 105, 125 mode(s), 4, 22, 26, 46, 53, 85, 113, 117, 120-121, 130, 132, 138, 154, 159-160 model(ling)(s), 2-3, 6, 11, 27, 66-67, 73, 112, 119-123, 142, 150, 160 modern(ist)(ity), 24, 69, 119, 154, 160, 170 moment(s), 26, 49-50, 62, 80, 130-131, 133, 136, 155 Moore, Georgina, 71 Moore, James, 87 moral(ising)(ity), 50, 142 movement, 4, 18, 22, 27, 80-81, 121, 129, 153, 158 movie, 101, 104-105, 108-109 mountain(s), 10, 20 multi-layered, 17, 134, 138, 156, 172 multiple, 2-3, 9-10, 17, 34, 36-37, 42-43, 50, 65, 67, 69, 72, 125, 134-136, 146, 154, 165 Murray River, 35, 37, 39 music(al), 3-4, 6-7, 13-14, 22, 33-34, 42, 78, 83-84, 114, 117-119, 121, 126, 129-137, 144-146 musician(s), 33, 42, 130-131, 133-134, 136, 144 Mykinos, 10, 23 N narrative(s), 1-3, 5, 7, 9-12, 14, 17, 21, 23, 26-29, 36, 43, 46, 48-49, 87, 91, 102, 105, 121, 129, 134-135, 138, 144, 146, 152-153, 160, 168-172 Nash, John, 22 natural(ist)(ly), 62, 65, 75, 83, 90, 150, 152, 154 nature, 7-9, 11, 26-27, 66-68, 73, 82, 84, 95, 97-98, 100, 116, 122, 126, 129, 137, 158, 165 navigate(ing), 1, 10, 12, 17, 29, 134 neoliberal, 18, 23, 152, 154, 157 network(ed), 18, 55, 68-69, 81, 130, 168 neutral(ity), 5, 20, 60-61, 72, 149, 152 Ngapartji-ngapartji, 50 Ngungikurungkurr, 37 Nietzschean, 21, 24, 150-151, 158-159, 161 Nietzsche, Frederic, 7, 151, 154, 156, 158, 168 nineteenth century, 58-60, 75, 150, 170 Nolan, Sidney, 85 non-Indigenous, 2, 4, 10, 13, 33-34, 41-42, 129130, 133-135, 137-139, 142-146, 172 norm(al)(alisations)(alising)(ative)(ising)(s), 2324, 111, 126, 150-151, 153 Northern Territory, 13, 137, 129, 134, 139 notation(s), 22, 59 not knowing, 55, 63, 78 182

O object(ives)(ivity)(s), 4, 7, 12, 17-18, 25, 55-56, 62-63, 67-68, 70, 80, 82, 98, 100, 102, 113-115, 118, 121, 123, 125, 127, 130, 154, 158, 172 O’Donoghue, Dr Lowitja, 50 Old Man Rock, 139 Oleson, Ginnie, 33 ontology(ical), 5, 7-8, 11, 14, 17, 27, 46, 69-72, 150, 154, 157 opera, 78-79 oral, 3, 7, 36, 42-43, 46, 130 organisation(al), 13, 108, 150, 156, 165 orientation, 20, 22, 82 origin(s), 23, 56, 157-158 Osaka, 120 outcome(s), 1, 5, 12, 14, 55, 67, 79, 88-99, 107, 114-118, 124-127, 133-135, 145-146 ownership, 35, 44, 46, 138-139 Oxford, 117, 121 P Pacific, 83 paradigm(s), 5, 7, 10 paradox(es)(ical), 34, 63, 143, 166, 168 Paris, 119 participant(s), 7, 44, 50, 59, 130, 133, 166 passage, 27, 72 past, 7, 19, 27, 39, 43, 51, 53, 57, 61-63, 71, 77, 87, 116-117, 124, 155, 170 pedagogy(ic)(ical), 1-3, 8-9, 23, 25, 157, 171 Peking Opera, 78 people(s), 3, 8, 33-36, 38-42, 44, 46-47, 49-51, 71, 78-79, 91, 100, 115, 117, 122, 125-126, 134-139, 141-142, 168, 172 perform(ance)(ativity)(ed)(ing), 2, 4-9, 12-14, 18, 21-22, 27-29, 33, 50, 66-69, 74-76, 78-80, 82, 84, 88, 91, 98, 116, 118-119, 122, 126-127, 129-138, 141, 144-146, 165-166, 172 perspective(s), 2-3, 7, 10-11, 13, 33-34, 41-42, 51, 97, 129-130, 137, 139, 142, 144-145, 165, 171 petit récit, 168 PhD, 3, 6, 10, 21-22, 27, 33-36, 38, 58, 76, 117, 138, 168 phenomenology(ical), 5, 10-11, 21, 28, 56, 61, 70, 81, 165 photograph(ed)(ers)(ic)(s)(y), 3, 10, 13, 59-63, 100, 113, 119, 123-124 philosophy(er)(ical)(ies), 3, 7, 13, 25, 40, 49, 68, 70, 81, 87, 123, 131, 135, 137, 150-152, 156-157, 160, 169, 171

INDEX physical(ised)(ity)(ly), 6, 10, 18, 23, 36, 45, 47, 49, 55, 57-59, 62, 69-71, 75, 80-82, 84, 88, 91, 111, 120, 124, 126-127, 130, 133, 138-139, 141 place(s), 1-2, 4-5, 7, 10, 12, 18, 20, 22-23, 26, 29, 35-36, 39, 42, 45, 47, 49-50, 58, 61-62, 73, 75-76, 79-80, 87, 99, 111, 120, 125-126, 130, 132-134, 136, 138, 141-142, 146, 152, 156-157, 168, 172 plants, 76, 88 plot(ting), 83, 100-101, 103, 105-106, 109 Poincaré, Henri, 56 politic(al)(ally)(ised)(ising), 1-8, 13-14, 18, 20-25, 29, 49, 84-85, 131, 134-136, 138, 142-143, 145-146, 149-157, 159-160, 168-172 Pollock, Jackson, 80 Popper, Karl, 13, 123 positivism(t), 10-11, 21, 67, 171 possibility(ies), 7, 11, 20, 27, 49-50, 55, 57, 63, 65, 69, 71-72, 84, 118, 129, 131, 155-156, 159 possum, 10, 39 Poster, Mark, 25 postgraduate, 2, 126, 133, 146 postmodern(ism), 43, 121, 165, 170 postscript, 14, 24, 165 poststructural(ism)(ist)(ly), 3, 5, 13, 21-23, 25-26, 150-158, 160-161, 165, 168-169 power, 6-8, 23, 27, 29, 41, 44, 50, 71, 76, 130-131, 134, 153, 156, 158-159, 172 power/knowledge, 25, 153, 156 practical, 1-2, 4-7, 12, 14, 18, 58-59, 82, 99, 107, 150, 152, 165 practice(s), 1-14, 17-18, 20-29, 33, 41, 43-44, 48-49, 55-58, 60, 66-69, 71-74, 77, 81-82, 97, 99, 102-103, 106, 108-109, 111-112, 115, 118, 121, 124, 129-131, 133, 135-138, 141-146, 149-161, 165-166, 170-171 practitioner(s), 5-7, 12-14, 26-27, 47, 58, 65-66, 98, 100, 102-103, 106-110, 124, 126, 130, 172 practitioner-researcher(s), 4, 6, 12, 66, 130 presence, 10, 20-21, 44, 61, 133-134 present, 1-3, 6-7, 10, 14, 18, 21-22, 24-30, 39, 49, 51, 56-57, 62-63, 72, 75, 77, 87, 106, 108-110, 112, 122, 125, 138, 150, 152-156, 159-161, 168 Prince, Stephen, 105 print media, 10, 58-60 privilege(d), 20-21, 67-68, 70, 151, 154, 158 process(es), 2-4, 7, 9-14, 17-29, 35-38, 40-42, 44-45, 56-58, 60-61, 63, 67-72, 76-77, 82,

84-85, 88, 97-98, 100-109, 111-112, 114-115, 118, 121-123, 125-127, 129-136, 138-139, 142-146, 153, 155, 157-160, 165-166, 168, 171-172 producer(s), 98-100, 105-109, 118 product(ion)(ive)(s), 7, 11-12, 56, 65-70, 72-73, 76, 88, 98-100, 102-108, 111, 114-115, 117, 119, 123, 125-127, 131, 133, 151, 156-157, 165 programme(s), 2, 6, 33, 35, 37, 103, 112, 134 project(s), 1-2, 4-6, 9-14, 17, 20-22, 25-27, 29, 33-34, 43, 55-61, 69, 71, 76-77, 80-81, 84-85, 87, 89, 97-118, 120, 123, 126-127, 129-131, 135-138, 143-144, 146, 149, 165-168, 171-172 proposition(al)(s), 5, 11, 75-77, 82, 84-85, 88-89, 91, 152, 157, 161 Proustian, 172 psychoanalysis, 25 psychology(ical)(ically)(ism), 46, 58, 99, 101-105, 150 Q qualitative, 9, 14, 49-50, 135, 165 quantifiable, 4, 72 Queen Victoria, 22 question(ing)(s), 1, 4-5, 7, 9-10, 13, 17, 20-27, 29, 34, 38, 45-47, 50-51, 57-60, 62, 64, 66-72, 74-76, 78, 79-80, 84-86, 88-92, 94-95, 97, 100-110, 112-115, 117, 120-121, 123, 129-131, 133, 136-137, 142-143, 146, 150-155, 157-161, 165, 168-170 R rational(e)(isations)(ised)(ism)(ist)(istic), 4, 12, 25, 35, 73, 85, 97-100, 106-109, 112, 146, 151, 154, 170-171 Raymond, Desmond (Kootji), 137, 139 reader(s), 4, 10, 12, 17, 91-92, 114, 123-125, 131, 135, 166 Read, Herbert, 114 reclaiming, 7, 130 reciprocity, 8, 10, 13, 34, 44 reflect(ed)(ing)(ions)(ivity)(s), 1-2, 4-5, 7, 9, 11-13, 17, 20, 38, 57-58, 60, 63, 72, 97, 100, 102, 104-110, 114, 129, 134-137, 146, 149, 158, 160, 166, 168-170 reflexive(ity)(ly), 5, 12-14, 97, 102-107, 109, 129-130, 144-146, 149-150, 155-156, 159-161, 165-166 region(al)(s), 6, 13, 35, 72, 137 regulator(s)(y), 23, 26-27 183

INDEX relation(al)(s)(ships), 4, 6, 8-13, 18, 20-21, 23, 25, 27, 34-35, 39, 41-42, 44, 46, 50, 56, 58, 65-70, 72-73, 75-76, 79, 81, 85, 98, 100, 102-103, 105, 107, 109, 111, 120-121, 126, 129-138, 143-146, 151, 153, 158-159, 165, 170 representation(al)(s), 7-8, 36, 42, 58, 60, 62-65, 120-121, 123-125, 138-139, 141-143, 158 reproduction, 76, 119 research(er)(ers)(ing), 1-14, 17-18, 20-23, 25, 27-29, 33-38, 41-47, 49-50, 55-59, 65-79, 82, 89, 97-109, 111-118, 121, 126-127, 129-131, 133-139, 141, 143-146, 149-161, 165-172 respect(ed)(ful), 8, 10, 34-35, 38, 41, 44, 46-50, 70, 80, 82, 123, 136, 145, 152, 155, 159, 171 respectful listening, 8, 34, 37-38, 41, 145 responsibility, 14, 40, 44, 50-51, 89, 132, 134 rethink(ing), 8, 33, 116 reveal(ed)(ing)(s), 1, 5-6, 9-10, 12-13, 17-18, 20, 22-23, 33, 46, 57-58, 60, 72, 76, 85, 106-107, 109, 111, 114, 121-122, 124, 131-133, 137, 139, 141-144, 146, 152, 154, 156, 161, 165, 172 reverie, 10-11, 55-57, 59, 61-63, 114 rhythms, 22, 34, 92 Rich, Adrienne, 168-169, 171-172 Richardson, Laurel, 166 risk(s), 13, 35, 63, 97, 142, 149-150, 155-158, 161, 166 ritual(istic), 144-145 Rizvi, Fazal, 152 road movie, 12, 98, 104, 108-109 role(s), 3-4, 7, 10-11, 13, 35, 41, 44, 55, 60, 66, 87, 126, 129, 131-136, 139, 144, 158, 171 romantic(isation)(ism), 139, 143, 150, 104 romantic comedy, 98, 101, 103 Romney, Jason, 98 Ronchamp, 119-120, 122 Rose, Geoff, 36 Rose, Mark, 35, 41 Rosenberg, Dorothy, 44, 46 Rosenberg, Harold, 81 Royal Pavilion, 22 RMIT, 1-2, 142 S Said, Edward, 138 Saltwater people, 137 Santiago, 88 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 81 184

scaffold(ing)(s), 1, 10, 22-23, 129, 146, 154 Scharmer, Otto, 44 scholar(ly)(s)(ship), 2-3, 9, 13, 34, 44, 66, 97-98, 100-101, 105-109, 129, 133-134, 136-137, 144-146, 150-151, 165, 170 Schneeman, Carolee, 80 science(s), 4-5, 7, 18, 21, 50, 67, 111, 116, 118, 121, 126, 157, 170-171 scientific, 4-5, 10, 56, 89, 117 screen, 4, 6-7, 61, 72, 97-99, 101, 103-106, 109, 121, 139 screenwriter(s), 12, 99-101, 103, 106-109 script(s), 12, 98, 101, 103-105, 108 sculpt(ing)(ure), 80, 100 self, 10, 18-19, 23, 25-27, 29-30, 44-46, 56, 71, 102, 130-131, 134, 136, 142, 144, 146, 150, 158-161, 170 semantics, 153 seminar(s), 3, 7, 89, 126 Senior Elders, 33, 36-37 sense(s), 5, 7, 10-11, 18, 20, 24, 34, 38, 40, 43-47, 50, 59, 63, 68, 70-71, 73, 80-82, 84-87, 91, 101, 111, 123, 125-126, 131-134, 139, 141, 144-145, 150, 153, 156, 158-161, 165, 171-172 Serra, Richard, 80 sexual selection, 75-76, 87 Shanghai, 79 share(d)(s), 8, 22, 34-35, 44, 46, 82, 100, 116, 120, 126, 132, 135, 144, 166 shelter(ed)(ing), 1-3, 118-119, 166 Shoal Bay, 137 shores, 10, 26 Shropshire, 171 site(s), 3, 21-23, 26, 29, 47, 97, 118, 139, 142, 151, 156-157, 144, 158 site-specific, 137-138 Snow, P., 130 social, 3-4, 5-7, 11-14, 18, 22, 29, 41, 45, 49-50, 69, 72-73, 77, 88-90, 109, 111, 130-138, 141-142, 145-146, 150, 152-157, 159, 161, 165-166, 171 social sciences, 4-5, 7, 50 society, 26-27, 65, 75, 90, 129, 134, 143-144 socio-political, 138, 143 software, 70-71 song(s), 21, 41, 86, 134-136, 166 Sontag, Susan, 82 sound, 6, 14, 18, 36, 38, 41, 45, 62, 73, 77, 83-84, 91, 118, 126, 129, 131-133, 139, 141 South East Australia, 33

INDEX space(s), 1, 10, 17, 22-23, 29, 33, 38, 41, 43, 45, 47, 50, 57, 60, 69-70, 73, 80, 84, 99, 109, 121, 125, 130, 132, 135-137, 145-146, 154, 169, 171 Spaghetti Western, 12, 98, 105 speak(er)(ing)(s), 2, 8-10, 13-14, 17-18, 21-22, 24, 26, 29-30, 42, 47, 68, 87, 106, 126, 130-131, 149-154, 157-158, 160, 168-171 speech, 20, 131, 138 sphere, 109, 139, 142 spirit, 7, 26, 170 spiritual, 36, 45, 47, 49, 150 Spolin, Viola, 79 sport(ing), 82, 90, 125 Stead, C.K., 157 Steier, Frederick, 159-160 Steinberg, Shirley, 8 Stockholder, Jessica, 80 Stolen Generation, 35-36 story(ies), 7-8, 10, 33, 35-40, 42-46, 48-51, 65, 72-73, 78, 98, 91, 100-101, 106, 134-136, 138, 145, 166, 168, 170, 172 storytelling, 3-4, 7, 12, 34, 36, 43, 46, 50, 98, 105-106, 130, 172 strategy, 1, 59, 106 structuralism(t), 25, 151, 153 structure(s), 12, 22-23, 43, 70, 87, 90, 97, 99-101, 103-110, 129, 138, 146, 151-152, 165, 169 student(s), 3, 29, 33-35, 37-38, 41-42, 77, 124, 166, 170-171 study(ies), 1-2, 5, 12-13, 35, 43, 61-62, 67, 69, 75-76, 79, 81, 87, 101-106, 109, 111-112, 118, 124, 131, 159 subject(ive)(ivity)(s), 3-4, 6, 9-10, 17-19, 21-27, 29-30, 35, 44, 46, 56, 59, 63, 68-71, 75, 79, 82, 102, 112-124, 130, 136, 144, 150, 152, 154, 156-157, 159, 161, 170-171 supervisor(s), 13, 35, 41, 129, 133, 142, 144-145, 166, 169 supervisor-candidate, 13, 145 surrealism(t), 25, 109 Sweigard, Lulu, 82 Sydney, 84 symbol(ic)(s), 29, 35, 43, 47-49, 66, 85, 133 system(s), 3-6, 10, 25, 27, 29, 33-34, 36, 40-41, 50, 56, 66, 81-82, 102, 121, 159-161 T talk(ing)(s), 2, 35, 39-40, 45, 76-77, 79, 82, 113, 117 Tate Gallery, 58, 80 teaching(s), 3, 39, 44, 49, 77, 111 technë, 170

technique(s), 5, 12, 39, 58, 60, 91, 99-109, 111-112, 118, 125, 160 technology(ical)(ically)(ies)(ised), 6-7, 9, 14, 18, 20, 26, 29, 69-71, 73, 80, 97-110, 116, 118, 124-125, 137, 145, 152, 154, 160, 170-171 teleological, 9, 160 television, 78, 98 temporal(ity), 12, 63, 111, 116, 129-133, 137, 144-145 Terragni, 120 terrain(s), 6, 10, 20-21, 23, 27, 34, 41, 116, 122, 149-150, 154-157, 161, 165, 168, 171 tertiary, 21, 23, 169 test(ed)(ing), 5-6, 20-22, 25, 27, 29, 72, 83, 103, 109, 146, 151-152, 154, 159, 170 text(s), 2, 4, 6-7, 9-11, 13-14, 17-18, 21-23, 25, 27-29, 34, 49, 58-63, 71, 76, 98, 122, 125, 130, 134-137, 146, 151, 153-154, 156, 158, 166, 170, 172 texture(s), 5, 9, 138 Thayer-Bacon, Barbara, 46 theatre(s), 3, 77, 79, 82, 102, 132 theory(etical)(ies)(ise)(ists), 3, 5, 7-8, 10, 13-14, 21-23, 25-26, 33, 36, 47, 57, 66-69, 75, 82, 85-87, 97, 102-110, 115, 117, 123, 125, 129-131, 136-137, 142, 146, 149-150, 153, 155-156, 161, 165-166, 168-170 thesis, 21, 23, 28, 66-67, 73, 102, 117, 136, 169 think(er)(ing)(s), 1, 4-9, 11, 14, 17, 20-21, 29, 35, 38, 40-41, 45, 57-59, 63, 65-66, 68, 7073, 75-76, 79, 82, 85, 87, 89, 98-99, 104, 111, 113, 115, 121, 130, 135, 142, 144, 151, 153-154 Thomson, Iain, 71 thought(s), 3, 5-6, 12-14, 20, 22, 26-27, 36, 41, 45, 49, 51, 55, 57, 66, 68-73, 77, 79, 81, 86, 89, 91, 99-100, 117-118, 136-137, 142, 144, 150-151, 153, 155, 157-160, 172 three-dimensional, 84, 113 time(s), 2-7, 10, 12, 18, 20-21, 23-24, 27-28, 34-36, 39-42, 44, 46, 49-50, 62, 68, 73, 76-77, 79, 82-83, 85-86, 89, 91, 99, 101, 107, 116, 118, 130-131, 136-139, 144, 150, 153, 155-156, 158, 160, 168, 170-172 Todd, Mabel Elsworth, 81 Tonkinwise, Cameron, 67 tools, 18, 20, 60, 71-72, 112, 117, 123, 125 touch(ed)(es), 19, 38, 45, 49, 69, 80, 82 tradition(al)(s), 3-4, 7, 10-11, 42, 46-47, 56, 58, 70, 104, 117, 126, 134-135, 137-139, 141, 154 trace(d)(s), 4, 10-11, 17, 19, 27-28, 77, 137, 155, 158, 170 185

INDEX transcend(ed)(ence)(ental)(s), 11, 26, 34, 40-41, 46, 49, 154, 160 transfer(red), 6, 18, 70, 123, 153 transform(ation)(ative)(ed)(s), 3, 6, 8, 13, 18, 20, 26, 44-45, 50-51, 57, 63, 73, 118, 120-122, 144-146, 150, 155, 160, 166, 170 translation(s), 11, 13, 76, 81, 115, 118, 121-122, 129, 137-138, 143-144 transmission, 12, 70, 117, 123, 125, 129, 131-132, 135-136 traverse(d)(s), 9, 23, 59, 63 Trobriand Islanders, 90 trust(ing), 6, 35-36, 38, 46, 78-79, 114, 126, 170, 172 Tuhiwai Smith, Linda, 8, 47 twentieth century, 25, 70, 75, 80, 82, 99, 150 twenty-first century, 3, 18, 154, 171 U Uncle Banjo Clarke, 36 understand(ing)(ings)(s), 6, 8, 11-13, 18, 26, 34-35, 38-42, 44-47, 49, 57, 65-68, 70-74, 76, 78, 81, 85-86, 88, 90-91, 98-99, 101-102, 106, 111-113, 116, 118, 123, 125, 132, 142, 146, 155-156, 158-159, 161, 168 understood, 10, 41, 66, 70, 72-73, 77, 114, 116, 118, 123-124, 138, 159 unearth(ed), 22, 24, 26, 59, 111 unified, 25, 150, 154, 170 United States, 6, 136 unity, 19, 158 universal(ised), 25, 144, 152, 158, 160, 166, 169-170 university, 1-2, 29, 33-34, 41-42, 89, 170 University of Auckland, 22 University of Brighton, 22 University of Sussex, 22 unknown, 4, 79, 111, 129, 143 urban, 6, 22, 101 V Valparaiso, 88 value(d)(s), 5, 7, 27, 40, 47, 50, 56-57, 67, 69, 82, 135, 138-139, 142-144, 151-152, 154, 157, 160-161 Vernon Islands, 137 Victoria, 39, 58 view(er)(ers)(ing)(s), 1, 11-12, 17, 39-40, 57-61, 63, 71, 76-77, 80, 82-83, 85, 88-89, 92, 97-98, 114, 117-118, 121, 123-124, 131, 133, 138-139, 141-143, 145-146, 157, 171

186

video, 76, 80, 84, 88-89, 111, 137-139, 141-143 vision, 3, 8, 12, 100-101, 106, 108 visual(ise)(ly), 3, 6, 21-23, 41, 57-60, 77, 80-81, 83-85, 98, 100, 105, 126, 129-130, 132-133, 137-138, 152 voice(d)(s), 1-2, 5, 7, 9-10, 12-14, 17, 27, 28-29, 33-34, 36-38, 41, 43-45, 49-50, 75, 101, 129, 133-135, 137, 154, 157-158, 170-172 voyage, 87-88 voyeur(ism), 82, 139, 143 W walk(ing)(s), 10-11, 23, 41, 59, 91, 138-139 war movie(s), 12, 105, 108-109, warrior, 134-136 Warrnambool, 36 water(s), 22, 39, 45, 134, 137, 169 ways of acting and reflecting, 9, 12, 97-110 ways of analysing, 9-10, 55-64 ways of being-with, 9, 11, 65-74 ways of constructing, 9, 12, 111-128 ways of deconstructing, 9, 13, 149-163 ways of framing, 1-15 ways of knowing and being, 9, 17-31, 138 ways of learning from creative research, 14, 165-173 ways of looking and listening, 9-10, 33-54 ways of performing, 9, 13, 129-148 ways of proposing, 9, 11, 75-96 weather, 11, 58-59, 61, 63, 125-126 West(ern)(erner), 7-8, 12, 26, 38, 65, 70, 75, 79, 81, 98, 105, 135, 138-139, 142-144, 151-154, 160-161, 170, 172 West Pier, 22 Williams, Fred, 77, 85 wisdom, 8, 34 woman(’s), 27, 35, 39-40, 43, 68, 75-76, 86, 171 women, 46, 104, 134, 171 Women’s Art Movement, 171 word(s), 8-9, 18, 21, 27, 37-38, 42, 49, 56, 58-60, 65-68, 70-71, 73, 82, 90, 100, 114, 117, 122, 124-125, 130, 136, 151, 153, 158, 169-170, 172 work(s), 2-8, 10-13, 17-18, 20-22, 24, 26-27, 29-30, 33-35, 37-42, 44-47, 50, 55, 58-61, 63, 65-67, 70-73, 75-77, 80-82, 84-91, 97-109, 112, 115, 118, 120-127, 129-131, 133-139, 141-146, 149-155, 157-158, 165-166, 168-171

INDEX work of art, 61, 73, 84 world(s), 6, 8, 11-12, 14, 18, 20, 28, 33-34, 36, 38-39, 41, 44-46, 49, 57-59, 61, 63, 65-66, 68-73, 76, 79, 81-83, 85-87, 100, 106, 116, 123-125, 130-131, 134-136, 150, 152, 154, 166-167, 170 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 119 writer(s), 4, 6, 12, 17, 21, 23, 58, 60, 77, 98-101, 105-107, 109-110, 123-124, 157, 166, 172

Y Yorta Yorta, 35, 37, 39 Yunipingu, Mandawuy, 134 Z Zaner, Richard, 70

187