This accessible page is a derivative of https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2951879/2955026 which it is meant to support and not replace.
This exposition proposes a methodology, but it also presents a conceptualization of how our garden resembles how I live, how we live. My initial experiences as a gardener coincided more or less with my time as a PhD student. I purchased the first plants for our garden (mostly tomatoes, but also several herbs, dinosaur kale, and one chilli pepper) in the midst of investigating where I could pursue my research in May 2019. After doubling the size of our garden in 2020, acquiring use of an additional plot of land in 2022, completing my thesis in 2023, and continuing to think longer term about our garden’s potential offerings and where my artistic research might take me, the fruits of a horticulturally inspired methodology now feel mature enough to share.
Like our garden, our lives are complex and require sustenance. This includes not only the bare necessities of oxygen, water, and sunlight but also an interdependent community of support: bees, friends, worms, family, and sufficient biological, organic, and interpersonal diversity to nourish the earth in and on which we live. Living with each other — and my relationship to our garden in particular — also encourages processes of discovery and acceptance of the unknown. This is what cultural theorist and political philosopher Erin Manning refers to as ‘speculative pragmatism’ in the quotation above. A case in point: we receive a lot of pragmatic wisdom from those born in our village of Capestrano about what to plant and where (Sun or shade? Open air or sheltered? Clay or sandy soil?) but there is also much speculation — even suspicion — involved with when to plant (Which phase of the moon is it?), not to mention the collective uncertainty of what the weather will bring throughout any growing season. Like life, a garden is full of surprises.
While our garden can metaphorically mirror my life and work, such imagination exists alongside very tangible ties between the human and botanical spheres. Had my husband not brought Amandine inside, xe [1] would not have, quite literally, taken root. We physically supported xyr growth (with the basil-stake) and increased xyr chance of survival by protecting xem from the outside elements. With our garden, we intervene regularly by adding compost, pulling up weeds, shielding seedlings from birds and snails, pruning, and watering in the inevitable periods during the summer when there is insufficient rain. But in return, the garden nourishes us. Of course, it provides us with delicious food to fill our plates in the summer and our deep freezer for the winter. But it also provides us with endless pleasure. We have the joy that accompanies offering care, not to mention the awe-inspiring beauty of observing the appearance of seedlings, stems producing leaves and blossoms, and blossoms turning into fruits and vegetables.
Contemplating the various life cycles at work in our garden’s ecosystem, this exposition puts abstract ideas and concrete images side by side to help you conceptualize the intersections of my training, performing arts practices, and artistic research. While these activities comprised the overlapping and relative facets of my PhD project, they are also components of my ongoing daily routine as I increasingly try to blur the lines between my ‘life’ and ‘work’. As a premise for research, such an intention strikes many as odd, if not the complete antithesis of ‘normal’ in our fast-paced world. It certainly does not lend itself well to the general assumptions of research methods ‘understood as a set of fairly specific, determinate, and more or less identifiable processes’ (Law 2004: 5). However, drawing on inspiration from John Law’s After Method: Mess in Social Science Research and Erin Manning’s ‘Against Method’, this exposition considers alternative approaches to research. To do this, I first compare annual and perennial plants with cyclical and spiral models drawn from the fields of artistic research and experiential learning. I then reveal how various plant-inspired metaphors helped situate my doctoral project in complexity rather than utter chaos. To come full circle, I connect the underlying practices involved in my research to the overarching actions and metaphors in my doctoral thesis of breathing, dancing, and singing.
Defining how or why certain research is ‘artistic’ or ‘arts-based’ is rarely straightforward … [next page: Digression]
[1] xe/xem/xyr are gender-neutral pronouns (related to she/her/hers and he/him/his) ↩︎