The slippery trail: The mollusc as a metaphor for creative practice
(2015)
author(s): Karen Savage
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition documents several years of process-driven practice-as-research. The work explores themes of womanhood, embodiment, and autobiography.
Throughout the exposition I argue that the embodiment of process is key to understanding practice-as-research. I propose that practice-as-research projects don't always begin with a ‘final output’ in mind. Instead, the practice of practice-as-research should be reconsidered throughout its development; it should use its potential for liminality. It is the demonstration of a ‘living process’ – living in process. However, what becomes key within the practice is a clear articulation of process, and how the research is recorded as part of that process. In this work, 'writing about practice' and performative practices are integrated, enabling a dialogue between various creative responses as well as offering access points to the research in a variety of forms.
This exposition explores ways in which we live in process through a presentation of text, visual essays, and short film and video pieces.
The work develops from creative artefacts and critical text into a piece of responsive writing, 'A Play of Characters'. This playtext reconsiders some of the influences in the work and explores the imagery of the whole project in a performative context.
The notion of embodiment and a 'living body of work' is developed further through the use of metaphor, in particular the metaphor of the mollusc. I use this to consider how practice evolves alongside process, 'housing' both the work and the process in both material form (the shell) and trace (the snail trail).
Different combinations of this work have been presented as performance installations, both at the University of Portsmouth, as part of my PhD examination in 2010, and at the University of Lincoln, as part of the Gnarlfest in 2014. However, by the very nature of 'living in process' this is a work that continues to evolve and 'live' in different forms. The purpose of this exposition is to explore the work in an accessible online form – one that offers alternative platforms and sequences, creating different possibilities and readings of the practice.
Eternal Stranger
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Marta Frejute
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This presentation is an attempt to look at my creative field, and to define my artistic research practices and methods from a memory studies perspective.
MATERIAL STRATEGIES
(last edited: 2019)
author(s): Sage Canellis, Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk, Electa Behrens
connected to: Norwegian Artistic Research Programme
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Material strategies explores ways of practicing materiality in relation to artistic processes of creation. It responds and aims to contribute to questions related to sustainability and the antropocene, identity and subject formations, and appropriation and cultural exchange.
With reference to object oriented philosophy and new materialism as an ethical ground, the proposed research project will investigate voice and body as material in relation to spaces, architecture and objects. How can we as artists to a greater extent listen to the agency of the material and let it shape our artistic work? How do human ideas, emotions, visions and memories come into play when the artistic strategy calls for less power and control over the material? How are performative and material practices articulating the embodied nature of memory?
The project will further develop pedagogical areas that are fundamental to the teaching practices at NTA. Professor in Dramaturgy and Performance Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk will lead the project reflecting her recent PhD project Theatre-ting, toward a materialist practice of staging documents, which deals with object oriented philosophy as a framework for investigating dramaturgical practice and the ethics connected to staging documents. Other involved staff members are: Assistant professor Øystein Elle, Professor in scenography Jakob Oredsson, Assistant professor Electa Behrens, and research fellow Ingvild Holm.
We arranged a two days international seminar at VEGA scene in Oslo on 28. February and 1. March 2019.A two weeks practical workshop, culminating in a public presentation and discussion happens between 29. April and 10. May 2019.