My
paper, Chewing
the Cud: Conversation-as-Material, has
been accepted for inclusion in the 9th SAR - International Conference on Artistic Research, Artistic Research Will Eat Itself, University
of Plymouth, April 11-13 2018.
About the conference: The
provocation Artistic Research Will Eat Itself can be
understood as a warning against the dangers of methodological introspection, or
as a playful invitation to explore the possibilities of a field in a constant
state of becoming. In this context, the ‘cannibalism’ of
artistic research ‘eating itself’ embodies a dynamic tension
between self-destruction and regeneration.
If artistic research eats itself, digests itself and
then releases its own waste, does it stink and linger, fertilise new growth or
invade new destinations on the bottom of someone’s shoe? If we are to
constantly defend and define, are we in danger of having no art left, only the
claims for its ability to embody knowledge? When we bite off our own heads do
we grow new tails? Critical perspectives on the discourse surrounding artistic
research might be argued to already be too formulaic or self-defeating. Making
a case for its own institutional legitimacy could unwittingly reinforce some of
the very things artistic research aims to critique. Yet such
onto-epistemological paradoxes can offer a rich territory for exploration along
with generative practices that involve reflexivity, automorphogenesis, and
recursive feedback loops. In recognising auto-cannibalism as an analogy for
broader socio-political and environmental concerns, one of the challenges for
artistic research is to respond imaginatively to the dynamic tensions between
self-destruction and regeneration.
Abstract: Chewing the Cud: Conversation-as-Material.
Ruminant: from the Latin ruminare – one given to meditation or contemplation, and also a mammal that
chews the ‘cud’ regurgitated from its rumen (the first chamber of its alimentary canal). To ruminate,
thus: to ponder, to turn over in the mind, and ‘to chew over again’. Drawing on
the etymological relation between reflexivity and regurgitation – and between
the oral exertions of speaking and chewing – I propose to reflect on a research method entitled ‘conversation-as-material’
that I have developed through various collaborations as a mode of self-reflexive enquiry and
artistic production. Within this method, conversation is conceived not only as
a verbal-linguistic means for reflecting introspectively on practice but also as a
(re)generative practice in-and-of-itself; site and material for the
construction of immanent, inter-subjective
modes of linguistic ‘sense-making’ emerging from different voices enmeshed in live
exchange.
