Freedom of research 2min
Lilia: Freedom is difficult to start with. Research is searching for something. Everything has a context or a focus. Research is not about freedom but about understanding constraints, impossibilities, paradoxes. It needs to be contained in order to understand something. Searching for limits of a subject, curiosity. This is the motor of research. Then we can go beyond what we know already. I'm opposed to freedom. What does freedom mean? It seems abstract, open, nirvana. Unless it means freedom in relation to institutional, marketoriented research, which comes with another paradigm.
Elke: 3 min
The freedom in methodology and the path you will follow. In academic research you have a precise trajectory and accepted methodology. Either quantitative or qualitative. The freedom of AR is that you can invent the methodology that fits your subject. The methodology is as much to be invented as the research. The freedom is its experimental quality. There is no prescribed route. The acceptible is not predefined. Which results or data are valuable: this is an internal process of comparison and self-critique. You can borrow from other disciplines, changes, building your own framework. There are limits, but these limits are not pre-ordered. The value of the research is an interindividual community. If everyone is bored, then it's probably not interesting. But there is no external community thta says what is valid and not.
Federico 2 min
On one hand there is the freedom of choosing or inventing a methodology but for me I understand it as a searching for something . I connect it with a trajectory so it is linked to the problematics of the trajectory. Even if there is a freedom in the method I open up the question about what is the freedom to choose the topic of the research or where does it comes from (your personal trajectory)? who choooses what problematics are relevant? is it the institution? I question that. For someone some topics are important but for others not. Who set the balance?
3 min Lilia Again, there is no freedom. How do we institutionalize something? Why? Because we want to create and protect an area that can be seen. Top-down and bottom-up institutionalization. AR started from the bottom, from the necessities within artistic practice. How to empower and sustain that knowledge in society. Institutionalization is a next step. Historical fact from academia is that it comes with scientific parameters. in relation to power taking. it's imortnat to reinstate the relevance of... your are pointing to who has the power to say what is the trajectory and if it is important.
Sara Freedom of the personal The fact that we are part of a system already - also academic
Reply from Julian erm, I am busy with what you said ... how to research the way you want to but the institution needs to value how you research - links bqck to naive understanding of freedom you need a framework, obstacles; restraints, demands - responsibilities are conditions framework makes things meaningful freedom is never - it is a horizon a community maintains freedom methodology of equal importance to content
Reply from Elke research and constraints are not opposite what is the end of choice? where does choice happen? you can work outside of institutional constructs. How do you suspend beilef? -" i don`t believe this is possible" Is critical theory the only thing we accept? How to suspend critical theory and engage in research in other means? The constant fight of the researcher Are we completely defined by our circumstances? No we have the freedom to choose.
Reply from Amy Are we completely defined by our circumstances No, we can choose sometimes, Rather the privilege to choose. Instead of freedom I would use the word privilige.
Kristien I think freedom is a complex term in the moment door in Whenever somebody says freedom it's connected with equality The privilege to exert a freedom to make individual choices comes with responsibility Responsibility towards sharing Artistic research speaks to letting other voices in
another 4 minutes aversion to the word freedom things exist in tension (not this or that) Nowadays freedom is used in terms of 'When are we gonna be free again of...' because we're being exposed to eachothers vulnerabilities How to balance out the individual freedom with infrastructure With awareness of voices who are not around the table. Speaking on their behalf? Towards whom are you speaking? Which infrastructures or communications do we use to reach out. That's to do with ...
Chloe has a new term - "the personal" I think now about what Elke and Sara said afraid of the personal in my research, and myself, I notice the criticality side and the personal side. I doubt these sources, what is part of my research and what is personal, that has nothing to do with it? Personal is loaded. How will it work in the institution? I wrote down something bigger than human. When terms are bigger than my research, it is an exercise to trqnslate things into a bigger vocabulary.
Reply from Julian I am a techer in the master of dance, Antwerp one thread is research - how research translates in the studio I want the students to present their research without owning it, talk about the intimacy of the process and the subject, to bring them onto the same plane what is parasite to that thing - my research - what is not relevant? accept your obessions, get students to integrate them in their presentations. Value these things that inform your research, with conviction.
Reply from Elke In preparartion for this block I worked with Vladimir on a text ... Zen story with trees, rivers and mountains, that go away and return. A teaching that you may think you need distance from the world, but then you return and find a new perspective on the world. What triggered me to want that? Reconstructing your desires. When you return to the world you have to extract yourself again from the work. You have to cut the umbilical cord on your work. Separate the personal from your work in order to accept criticism.
Reply from Lilia There is nothing but the personal. How to make the personal relevant to the communal? How is this translation possible? You need this otherwise you remain unformed.
Lilia continues I was getting into authorship. Related to authority and power, this is a struggle because we need powerful ideas that create desire, trigger something. At the same time we think of this as a restriction, or a taking power over. Authorship - genius - daring to put something out there. The personal is urgent.
Christine Again a sidenote, difficult to speak about the personal as an extract personal and the institution personal and the political personal and work Situated knowledge: effort to situate your work and discourse into what position you speak from. Beyond indetity politics, there are other things that you can name (I speak as... I speak from...) And connected to that: personal as confessional confessional is something where the personal can be overcome but the personal as something you cannot overcome (as described by elke) Something else. In relation to work (acknowledge as proper work), interested in finding methodologies of bringing in the body or state of mind. Video excercise starting improvisation holding hands and feeling the weight. Beautiful way of starting to work: where are you: how much can I touch Take eachothers pulse Last thing: Once in a lecture about pedagogy they said: reading lists en giving students reading lists They were taking the other approach: What are you already reading when you don't have to. Whether its comics or... For my own work and in mentoring it's important: it's already there, it's already happening. Than, finding a frame in which it becomes more than personal work is in framing, not in pushing it aside.
Tulio First thing that came to mind: the word intuition Trying to understand how intuition plays into that Things that are aside of the research as desire or interest. I was wondering what intuition means If intuition might be how the researcher explains If we think about what is not presented in the research, always something in parralel to navigate methodologies of research Might be connected with the idea of desire. . Personal is something that you cannot overcome, in opposition to confession. Personal as an urgency, that doesn't stay too long. In idea of passing true and linking the personal to urgency, it's something that transforms in a shorter period of time.
Strong connection with intuition and how this plays into the artistic research. I feel that intuition is an interesting lens to look at. Important to trust intuition, is the better tool to navigate through many different things during the research. Recent in his research. Allows him to have an approach that is less (something).
Vera Thinking about what Lilia said: Everything is personal In a way I agree On the other hand work is something to be able to step out of your ego, it's about publicness Here is a big tension where we are playing desires etc... Saying research in a way that it can be received by others. It's always about yourself but you have to go through this process of distancing. That is the challenge. There's no way you can escape, it becomes very problematic when it's about making 'art' in a context. Than it's about how you're relating with this context. It's always playing in different levels. This bridge. I don't see how you could take out the personal, but I that you kind of have to digest. You do not want to know all of the personal. All being played in this relation. Borders can stretch or close in this relation. I don't think it can just happen like that. In artistic research an art making it's all being played: personal, relationship to the other,
RESEARCH MOTHER SHIP
Frederico 4 min A research has a lot of branches. It develops into different things. Is there a mother ship to return to? This is interesting in relation to open endedness. You need to put care and love in your research. It can go out and you can return to it. Don't know if there are limits to the openendedness. When does it stop to develop? What happens at the moment of choice to return. cfr: the queen's gambit (?). When do you reach the moment of it being done? We keep traveling, investigating. Last block: the womb of the research. The discussion was linked with methodology. Something interesting about mothers.
Julien 1 min Research as mother, leaving the ship aside. Giving precedents to the questions that I'm researching. Through the process of research, I undo my control and authorship over the research. Research as mother or womb: it is larger than you and it births you.
Elke 4 min The mother and the mothership are almost the opposite. The enterprise: to boldly go where no one ever went. To go into space and go into regions where you don't know. Little expeditions from the mother ship. Extremely risky. Losing certainties. Not know what species you are. Having to bond with extraterrestrials, what their morals are, how they survive. Survival mode. How could your research become a place like that? How to bring yourself really risk? Not in the macho way. How to forget who you are? Body work is a good entrance, because the body has parts that don't respond in cohesive ways, so many information channels, self-image, reptilian brain, upbringing, so many layers go through the body. When you go deep into body practice, you come in danger zones. Eg: why do you cry without reason. The irrational moterh ship might be your own body. Can it be used as a vessel for research, as a pharmakon. Grounding in the body.
Lilia 4 min I'm triggered by care as responsibility. Nurturing, feeding, helping it to go. The help to go which you do in motherhood. This is a responsible act. What is the relation to work and research. How much do you nurture for it to make its own means. Growing and obsession. The obsession of the openeded. Is it going to stop one day? Will I be rid of it one day? The impossibility of stopping = obsession. The constant trigger to find something else + to be part of something, to be alive. The queen's gambit: The only truth is the one of play. What would happen to it if I stopped. Would I go and farm with the same intensity if I would move to the countryside?
Amy 3 min To add -ship to the idea means to practice it. The practice of poo-ship, which means to take care of your waist. It connects to the word mother. Can we practice mothership when we are not mothers. What happens without the intensity? Probably the cabbages would die or someone else eats them.
Other keywords
Collaboration Transformative Questions Tomorrow Fragile (Un) certain ground Publishing Dispersal Resistance Discipline Autonomy Proximity Multiplicity Suspension of disbilievf Vulnerability Documentation