TopicDocumentation, Expositionality and Publics

Paula Kramer & Emma Meehan About AdequacyMaking Body-based Artistic Research Public

Artistic research requires the ability to continuously tune and (re-)calibrate how to share work with people outside of the process, while still maintaining an adequate relationship to the project and the context in which it is developed. The doctorate is a good example of this process, as it is a significant multi-year project that requires artistic researchers to interface with a public at various stages. The academic framework places very particular demands on the researcher, to which this text attends whilst also being relevant to and aware of articulations of artistic research practiced elsewhere. A key question is how to respond to any kind of external requirements without losing the thread or the connection to one’s artistic practice. We push against common notions of compromise here and instead encourage artistic researchers to develop and argue for formats that have high resonance and a dense relationship to their research processes. As authors working with(in) movement/dance practices and performance, we attend in particular to processes of publicly sharing body-based artistic research.