... plant-inspired metaphors helped situate my doctoral project in complexity rather than utter chaos.
Defining how or why certain research is ‘artistic’ or ‘arts-based’ is rarely straightforward. Indeed, a huge number of terms are currently in use that describe the dynamic relationships existing between ‘art’ and ‘research’ (the Handbook of Arts-Based Research identifies twenty-nine varieties (Leavy 2018: 5)). It is not my intention here to join the lengthy and ongoing discussion of defining what ‘artistic research’ is. However, it is important to clarify my understanding that, whether we use the umbrella term ‘artistic research’ or one of the more specific (though, oftentimes, still ambiguous) terms like ‘Practice — (as/based/led/and) — Research’ (Bryon 2018: 34) or ‘research-creation’ (Manning 2016), scholars generally agree that artistic practice is of central importance to the research project (Coessens, Crispin, and Douglas 2009; Borgdorff 2012; Nelson 2013, 2022).
Considering the focus on methodology in this exposition, it is also worth noting that some terms emphasize either what will be investigated or how an investigation will unfold. For example, ‘practice as research’ makes a broad claim about the nature of research and practice themselves, highlighting important topics in artistic research of ontology and ideology. Alternatively, ‘practice-led research’ clearly implies a way of doing research, a methodology. Frameworks like these often help to describe relatively contained projects while also clarifying the underlying processes or goals of a researcher’s endeavour. At the same time, the arts and artists are notoriously difficult to confine, and the specificity of artistic research projects — not to mention the breadth of larger projects, like a PhD — often require elaborate re-thinking of pre-existing research frames and/or the development of new ones (hence the long and growing list of artistic research varieties alluded to above). Luckily, artist-researchers are increasingly empowered within the academy to challenge traditional ideas of how one ‘does’ research. However, as we widen ‘the notion of “method” to include not only what is present in the form of texts and their production, but also their hinterlands and hidden supports’ (Law 2004: 144), the importance of methodology itself can be brought into question.
Several scholars have proposed models and methodologies applicable to artistic research projects in general and my doctoral project in particular. They often share a focus on process that inevitably leads to deeper questions about the nature, creation, and sharing of knowledge — and makes their ideas ripe for comparisons with the various life cycles in our garden. Before presenting some pre-existing models, I want to clarify my intentions with a few caveats. The first caveat is that my work hopes to promote academic engagement with artistic and creative processes/practices, rather than products/artworks. For me, the primary purpose of engaging in artistic research (as opposed to artistic practice typically involving its own research methods) is to build metaphorical bridges between the academy and arts industry. Thus, I am more interested in performing arts practices and training rather than what these practices and training create.
The second caveat (though related to the first) is that — while I do want to promote non-traditional approaches to academic thinking and writing — I am not concerned with convincing the academy to recognize non-written forms of knowledge. As much as I would love to be more radical, I am generally content to allow the artistic-embodied knowledge produced in my performing arts practice to reside in parallel to my writing as an artist-researcher. In other words, I have little motivation to analyze or translate my artistic creations or those of others. This is also why I include several videos and images in this exposition without extensive commentary. If a picture can speak a thousand metaphorical words, I feel I must be prudent in voicing literal ones.
The third caveat (already alluded to) is that the methods presented here were rarely ‘applicable’ as a means of organizing or conducting my PhD project. Although they usually emerged out of scholarly work and university contexts, the models and metaphors presented here were mostly conceived in relation to pre-existing artistic and/or research practices; in this way, they are largely descriptive or indicative of modes of knowing and working that were already present, albeit often tacitly. Although a ‘mutual informing’ between artistic and research practices can occur, this feels most common — at least in the context of my artistic research — in the transfer from artistic and embodied processes to my writing. Of course, this impression is clearly shaped by my belief that artistic and embodied knowledge can never be translated into words. This belief also accounts for my preference for allowing the influences of academic work on artistic and embodied practices to remain in their own non-verbal ‘modes’. While explicitly identifying these modes of knowing and working (or attempting to do so) can influence artistic practices through focused reflection, I generally experience this as a subtle shift in emphasis on my artistic and research work’s pre-existing dynamics. In other words, the models can help to describe the existing relationality of my artistic and research practices rather than defining what they are or dictating how I might make them get along. Ultimately, I want to emphasize that ‘reflective identification’ was how I articulated the methodology of my written thesis in this exposition.
The final caveat (though related to all the others) is that the ideas I present here are intended to conceptualize the types of knowledge and ways of knowing I aspire to generate in my work, rather than make them concrete. They help me — and I hope also you — foster an embodying-thinking dynamic, one that continually invites interpretation, evolution, and emergence.
To begin outlining my horticulturally inspired methodology …
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