Strategy and method(s)
The strategy is to start with the first 3 sub-questions at the same time (1.1; 2.1; 3.1/2), working my way down parallel. The last question, number 4, will be answered after the first three questions have been answered. The method of this last research question is till open pending the results of the first 3 research questions.
Q1: What is the contemporary relevance and urgency essaying?
Q1.1 What is the current position of the essay and potential of essaying in education and
research (artistic research in university and art schools)?
Method: Expert talks – NICA/Leiden University symposium series
- Theme 1: What is the position of the essay in art and science and artistic research?
- Theme 2: What is the difference between the essay withing and outside of education? How do we teach essaying?
- Theme 3: What is the epistemology of the essay?
Method: Desktop research - Publication NICA/Leiden University
The symposium series will be followed by a publication where these questions will be addressed including introductory research. The introduction of theme 2 will include a literature analysis of educational books and website with instructions for making an essay as compared to the use outside of education.
See NICA website: The essay and the University
See RC Page: Research activities - 2: Essaying - collaboration and dissemination
Method: mapping – SAR SIG Group
In the SAR (Society of Artistic Research) SIG (Special Interest Group) I organize an international research group around the essay in pedagogy. In this research group we discuss and map the position of the essay in pedagogy and speculate about the collective potential of essaying. We exchange practices and develop workshops.
See RC exposition: SAR SIG Artistic Essaying Research and Pedagogy Group
Next step is to research the following sub question:
Q1.2 What is the current position of the essay and the potential of essaying in society (outside of institutionalized research and education)?
2. What is essaying?
Q2.1 What are the core characteristics of the essay (form)?
Method: Literature analyses - Word cloud
This is a literature analyses of theorizations on the essay, mostly form literature studies, philosophy, and film studies. But I also use fragments from research articles in other fields where the essay is described. This analysis is noting down all the charactistics in keywords in a quantitative manner. These keywords are put in an excel sheet with references, the keywords are clustered and visualized in the Research Catalogue as a word cloud. This way there will be clusters of words that characterize the essay in a pluriform manner instead of distilling it to a limiting singular description. I am also noting down ‘non-characteristics’; what is the essay not. And noting down metaphors being used to describe essays. Perhaps these will be relevant later on in the research.
See RC page: Essaying core characteristics
Next step is to research the following sub questions:
Q2.2 What are the core characteristics of the essay across artistic disciplines?
Method: Case study analyses
I am collecting essay topics across disciplines that I can use for the case study analyses; I will compare a similar topic across disciplines, I will also analyze three of the most well-known essays of each artistic discipline and specifically look for performative essays.
Q2.3 What is essaying (separated from form)?
Method: Literature analyses, practice based and artistic research
Q3: How can we make essaying a collective practice?
Q3.1: What is essaying as a personal tool/method?
Method: Artistic research – personal positioning
The role of the personal is incredibly important in essaying (also shows up the literature analyses ‘core characteristics’). The first step is mapping the personal in relation to essay characteristic and essay topics. From here a tool/framework will be developed.
See RC page: Map: personal positioning
Q3.2: How can we use essaying as a collective tool/method?
Method: Desktop research
To make something collective there needs to be a mutual understanding for fruitful engagement and accessibility. For this I am developing a tool for essaying the first step is how to deal with knowledge in essaying, second step would be how to go from mapping to performative essaying. In the article: Essaying through knowledge perspectives and knowledge fragments I theorized how we start essaying thought mapping.
Method: practice based / artistic research (putting the research to practice)
The results from the article lead me to researching collectivity in diverse ways, to investigate the relation between the personal and the other. This is still in full process.
See RC page: Essaying as tool
Collectivity in lecture performances - See RC page: Essaying as tool
Collectivity in topics - See RC page: Essaying topics
Collectivity in workshops - see RC page: Hanze workshop and see RC exposition: SAR Forum Workshop).
Q4: How can we make essaying a collective performative practice?
Method: to be defined.
