Essaying and collectivity,

thoughts on author(ship) and research

Collectivity in the essaying process plays an important role in my research, namely in creating, facilitating and participating in research groups and learning environments, but also concerning authorship and reader(ship) in essaying.

It is the individual made by collectivity.

Colletivity in ways of knowing

There are influences so deeply rooted that even though trying, I often can’t comprehend,

because I am blinded by the sense (or illusion) of self.

Essaying for me, attempts to lift the illusion of a singular self and fixed identity.It is questioning the sense of self by investigating and testing experiential, sensorial and ratinalways of knowing. In rational ways f knowing, questioning your theory(s), thought(s) and teaching(s), in experiential ways of knowing questioning experience(s), emotion(s), belief(s) and intuition(s). In sensorial ways of knowing, questioning you body

These last ways of knowing have been overthrown, by the dominance of language and ratio in educational environments, especially research universities. Essaying provides the space to let them interact on an equal playing field again. Explain why Acknowledging (and researching) the intertwinement of the subjective, is more objective than ignoring its influence(s) and calling it objectivity. But essaying is not a pedestal of the personal opinion, of the self, is not a legitimacy to reject or ignore the objective (research) or other perspectives, it does not dismiss what is already there. Quite the opposite, it recognizes what is already there, and then questions it. In essence (self)critical and speculates on potential versions of the self. It is the acknowledgement and investigation of interpretation, namely of the interpreter itself, including it’s surroundings, history, body, relationalities.

The doubt is suspending a singular conclusion; it’s a constant dialectics without final synthesis, it is nonbinary, it is plural, it is about problematizing wholeness.

Collectivity in experiential ways of knowing

Experience(s), emotion(s), belief(s) and intuition(s) as ways of knowing are usually taking for granted, we assume it’s presence, it’s truth, as part of our sense of self. They are internalised compasses, the familiar path that has been carved out over time, like navigating on auto pilot. It is not unknown, but perhaps too well known, so embodied, that it is hard to question its origins, its foundation. So instead of mystifying, idealizing, or spiritualizing them, essaying takes them serious as a way of knowing that can be researched and questioned, they can be observed, tested and changed.

However, this is not limited to the interpreter (essayist) itself, but should include the surroundings, the location, the objects and tools we use, these all shape our perspective of the world (also referring to Rheinberger’s Experimental Systems). The tools you have been given, the tools that shaped you, the tools that you choose, and the tools you resist, abandon, and reject. They all guide your perspective.

It is a collective of knowledges that influenced me, where the “I” is not singular.  The only singularity. It is the combination of influences and experiences this body holds together, a mix of genes, upbringing, education. Deeply influenced by relationships with human, non-human animals, non-animals and all materials that I have encountered and engaged with. Examples Because the these are not limited to the academic context, but from all different kinds of sources in daily life. Fragments of texts, of conversations, including images, objects and tools, animals and plants, but also fragments from movies, songs, social media, the news. It is a ‘royal we’ or, rather I prefer; the ‘majestic plura’. Yet I do not say ‘we’ to undermine or discredit myself, neither to avoid ownership or accountability, but to include all the ‘we’s’ inside of me, inside of us.

 "There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due"

Synecdoche New York (2008)

Because “us” is not sufficient either, because what you experience, or even how we interpret each others words, intonation(s), body language, our gaze, our sent, is not and never can be fully identical to who you are, or who you feel that you are. There is a margin of interpretation. I cannot assume to understand you, I can only attempt to “see you, hear you, feel you” (my partner) with the constant influence my own conscious and unconscious assumptions, experiences, privileges and biases.

Collectivity in rational ways f knowing

In this article, I will mainly write from my own understanding of essaying, but this understanding is shaped and (in)formed by many theorists, essayists, supervisors, teachers and peers, students and alumni, by partner(s) and friends (see acknowledgements). All their words, thoughts, questions, insights and critiques have synthesised and grown into my mind, “as an ever ongoing collaborative and collective process” (M. Teran). All due credits to origins of references buried deep in my mind, that they are often lost to my consciousness (and footnotes), they are grown into my thoughts and writing, into my body. I am with them almost every day, or rather, my chosen versions of them. I converse with them in my mind, and they live their own thoughts and lives far way from me (or not even living), probably not being aware of their presence in my life.

This topic, my topic, the essay, has captivated me for more than ten years. I encountered the essay, the essay in contrast to how I’ve understood it till then, in the last year of my Bachelor Fine Art when I stumbled upon the text The essay as form by Adorno. “I still have the same A4 printed paper, marked with different colour pens, till almost all sentences were saturated with color” (lecture). I kept reading and re-reading. Those sentences got stuck in my head, like mantras, like the lyrics of a song I make my own music to. But those words are a not actually by Adorno, I have embodied the English version of Bob-Hullot Kentor, the Dutch version of Thijs Lijster, and the German analyses Chistina Della Giustina. Who owns the authorship? Who do I refer to? Isn’t this already a collective understanding.

“er denkt in Brücken so wie die realität Bbrüchig ist”

EGA Huurdeman (2015)

https://egahuurdeman.nl/2015/er-denkt-in-brucken-so-wie-die-realitat-bruchig-ist

Inspired by Goehtes text the essaying (Versuch as in test or experiment) is the mediator of subject(s) and object(s), it is all perspectives and experiences combined: “an experience consisting of a multitude of others is an experience of a higher order.” (Goethe as translated by Craig Holdrege). And the bundle Essayists on the Essay (...) I wondered if we could also create collective definitions. The essay holds the illusive and ambiguous character that provides the liberty and power to never truly be captured, defined, categorized, or uniformly understood.

Many people have attempted to describe and characterize the essay, sat the same time it is said to be undefinable, a non-genre. In my first article I argue that this is the straight of the essay, the definition is shaped my essayists defining an re-defining its fluctuating flexible and ungrabbable form. That doesn’t mean that anything goed, there are some characteristics, or combination of characteristics that make up an essay. Rather than attempting to make a new definition, I decided to make a map, an inventory, based on a literature analysis. With this map you can choose the character of your own essaying style when creating the constellation.

I am also collecting on-characteristics, for instance: not art, not science, no conclusions, perhaps these will be included in the end version too.

The map is constantly in process, if there are new articles and books, I will add to them. Ideally this map would be open for everyone to add to, even in different languages, to make an overview of all the characteristics.

Together with the SAR SIG Essay and education, we started on a collective characteristics map, adding the words we associate the essay with, putting the references in the footnotes. This could also be a more collective and personal way to create the character of the collective essaying.

I have designed a literature analysis for essay characteristics. 

With the research group SAR SIG Essaying and pedagogy we hav started our own definitions map

Collectivity in research

Artistic Research has brought together the artistic, the personal and the theoretic. I come from autonomous art education, where the dogma of the soloist artist in the studio was still dominant. I was mainly working with performance videos and screen recordings. But the art works in exhibitions felt like a communication vessel that was single dictionary, detached form public and peers, it felt lonely, I desired connectivity and interaction. In search of public and peers, I started creating lecture performances for conferences and art events as a space for speculating and iterating, sharing my artistic research process. But I sill missed the interaction in doing research together, and I still missed peers from outside of the institutes.

The first time I entered the university, the idea of a scientific community had a great appeal to me, I imagined a research community that would think together, share research, collectively evaluate research. Like the collectivity of individuals in Goethe’s vision of a scientific community.

I have initiated, facilitated, and participated in many research groups (see acknowledgements) and artistic research events. Without that and without them I could not have done my research. All the groups, including educational, were most fruitful if they had a mix of research fields and artistic discipline(s), but also personal background. Core elements are the difference in disciplines, educational levels, ways of knowing (experiential, rational, sensorial/artistic), the room for doubt and speculation, doing the research together and sharing the research process.

Collective research environments

Unfinishedness in the essaying process is central, as described before, the space for uncertainty, for questioning, for difference and even paradoxes or friction. In essaying, after each iteration, the process continues.

Collective research groups

These are elements I have tried to incorporate and practice in research groups. Collectivity in the research context is a way to collect, to bring together, something practices in proximity.

Collective research definitions

Another element is the “collecting” element, or cumulative aspect; the essaying process collects “knowledge kragments” from different ways of knowing”

The first attempt at creating a research community that includes the questioning and the doubt was Café Chercher; an art cafe for unfinished research (see acknowledgements). At the moment I attempting to relaunch this event for FAA Knowledge centre Creative Economy (collection of 5 professorships) for sharing unfinished research projects of Professors,  PhD and PD candidates, teacher-researchers and MA students. Together with Gerrie Fiers form the Professorship Artisitc Connective Practices we have initiated Moo Muze Open Office, for sharing research under construction. Moo is an open office in the public square in the centre of FAA Fontys. WRaP Workspace Research as Practice, focussing on interdisciplinary connections in artistic research and embodied ways of knowing.

 The programming was based on difference, difference discipline(s) and institutes, and difference in educational level (BA, MA, PhD and professors). When you all share something unfinished, it creates an open space for speculation, for blurry edges.

But this is a fragile position, it takes guts, vulnerability, a safe space, a brave space, an accountable space, and care.

Collective research groups

That last thing, the doing and sharing together, we have experimented with in the SAR SIG Essay and Pedagogy workgroup. The initial aim was sharing our own research around essaying from all our different fields and perspectives. But, we noticed that we needed an aim, a purpose, a goal. So, we decided to apply for conferences with workshops and lecture performances. The proposal was something we wanted to do, a speculative proposal. If we got picked, we started to work on the proposal. But we work on it together, during the meetings. For instance, we recorded our meetings while collectively working in the Research Catalogue. All this material is then edited into a lecture performance. The essential part is that there is room for difference, for frictions, contradictions and discussion. 

Please join us!

By sending an email to: e.huurdeman@fontys.nl 

SAR SIG Essay and Pedagogy is a cluster from SAR SIG Artist Pedagogy:

https://societyforartisticresearch.org/sig-artist-pedagogy-research

Conclusion

What I am trying to say in a very excessive way is that I am not proclaiming anything new, or something that is mine to put a stamp on. The idea of the “new” in art and in science is problematic, the idea of ownership is problematic. For me, the main focus and process of essaying is, and always will be, a process of accumulation, regurgitation, a process of constantly changing perspectives, of doubt. It is about attempting to be holistically contemporary. Agamben beautifully describes it (or how I recall it) as: “Trying to perceive the (obscure) darkness, while being blinded by the light of the contemporary.

“Gazing at the stars”

EGA Huurdeman (2015)

https://egahuurdeman.nl/2015/gazing-at-the-stars

He refers to the function of the eye; seeing darkness is not retina inactivity, but the activation of off-cells in the retina, activating them. Perhaps like a pirate with one eye patch on, tying to see the light with one eye and the dark with the other, never both at the same time.

I am, struggling with my own thoughts, with the objects I hold so dear, with my body, with life.

Hazel: I like it. I do! I'm - I'm just really concerned about dying in the fire.

Burning House Realtor: It's a big decision - how one prefers to die.

Synecdoche New York (2008)

[1] The Professional Doctorate (PD) is pilot for practice-based (doctoral) research at Universities of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands and is nationally funded by SIA. This PD research is part of the first cohort of cluster Arts+Creative, the research is based at Fontys University of the Arts, Tilburg at the Professorship Artistic Connective Practices with supervisors Falk Hübner (NL) and Michelle Teran (DE), and external experts Jasper Delbecke (BE) and Robin Deacon (UK).

[2] “(…) in ‘The essay as form’, Adorno names the essay’s procedure ‘methodically unmethodically’ (Adorno1984). Contrary to Klaus and Stuckey-French’s claim in Essayists on the Essay, itis not just ‘antimethodological’ (Klaus and Stuckey-French 2012: xx) but rather a methodical avoidance of methods: an intentional way of consciously and constantly breaking from possible constraints of systematic scientific methods,as a method. The unmethodological method is not a scientific method, but it is not as free as ‘anything goes’: ‘(the essay) does not proceed blindly, automatically’ (Adorno 1984: 170). The phrase ‘methodically unmethodically’ encapsulates an inherent paradox or – as Lane Kauffmann describes in his essay on the essay ‘The skewed path’ – a ‘dialectical play of opposites’ (LaneKauffmann 1988: 231). It entails the paradoxical balance of the artistic and scientific components within the essay form. Hartle and Lijster even claim that Der Essay als Form is probably as close as Adorno ever came to giving a description of his philosophy (Hartle and Lijster 2015) and, one could argue,not a description but a demonstration of an unmethodological method as a philosophy.”

(Huurdeman, 2020, p.33)

[3] Pourciau

[4] Yes no first name, why do we protect, hide, the ones in the wrong? Is it courtesy? My ow fear of beig leamed for someone’s reputation? I am still doubting how to deal with this.