The
publication Seers-in-Residence (to
which I have contributed both text and image) will be launched on 5 February at Bonington Gallery, Nottingham, with readings and performance. Seers-in-Residence is an interactive research model
for creative practices by Traci Kelly with: Emma Cocker, Dr Simon Cross, Ben
Judd and Joanne Lee. Seers-in-Residence was an invitation issued
by Traci Kelly to Nottingham Trent University researchers to spend time with
the evolving monoprint installation Feeling It For You (Perspective) which was exhibited in Bonington Gallery, January 2013. The
project investigated the eclipses and slippages of a live art practice through
a series of micro residencies.
As part of this event, I elaborated on my introduction to the publication, entitled Stepping Towards Stepping Away, which used the motif of the bridge for exploring ideas around artistic research models.
“To step
onto a bridge is to abandon something of the terra firma of solid
ground, as a step towards the other is a step away from oneself, one’s comfort
zone. A bridge can lead first in the direction of open water before it reaches
the far shore. A vertiginous pleasure can be experienced in stepping off, into
the brink, away from what is known or certain. A bridge is not always
constructed for the purposes of getting to the other side. There are certain
perspectives that can be encountered only by inhabiting the points between, by
relinquishing fixed positions, through loss of stable ground.
To engage
in artistic research is one of inhabiting a bridge – to locate oneself between
the competing and at times contradictory demands of art world and academia.
Henk Borgdorff describes artistic research as ‘boundary work’ highlighting its
borderline status, where the ‘boundary objects’ emerging through the process of
artistic enquiry have the capacity to change their “ontological and
epistemological nature depending on the context”. Artistic enquiry is
distinctly slippery, the knowledges emerging therein often hard to discern in
concrete terms, not always measurable by quantifiable outcome. Traci
Kelly’s Seers-in-Residence project took place in Bonington gallery at
the same time as attempts to catalogue and rank research activity within the
university system (through the Research Excellence Framework) was reaching
fever pitch. In many senses, the project highlighted many of the attributes of
artistic research activity that the REF process bypasses or fails to measure: a
focus on the process rather than the product of artistic enquiry; the
importance of an open, speculative approach; the value of saying ‘yes’ to
something without knowing its outcome in advance; the importance of generosity
and opportunity within artistic labour – of invitations issued and seized, of
time given without expecting anything back in return, the necessity within
shared research practices of trust and goodwill. The project advocated a model
of exchange, not in order to maximize resources nor capitalize on the expertise
of many, but instead perhaps to put the idea of individual research practice
into question, for in a gesture towards the other the limits of the self are
rendered porous, vulnerable. Yet, the Seers-in-Residence project
was not so much a critique of those systems which attempt to measure and
attribute value to research based on outcome, based on the originality of
individual enquiry, but instead one of affirming the importance of other
ways of valuing artistic enquiry. A research culture is a living, breathing
ecology – that needs to be nurtured with due care and attention. Projects that
support germinal activity, the seedbed of ideas and emerging thought, are as
critical to this ecology as those that are established, leading in their field.
Any ecologist or even common gardener will be able to tell you about the
delicate balance between the established and the emerging, and about the need
to support new growth. Artistic research needs space and time, but sometimes
the quick, short or responsive opportunity is as important as any large scale
or long-term project”.