This weekend I’m going to a seminar concerning practice-based research in the performing arts to present a 20 minutes paper based on my dissertation from Goldsmiths University of London and what will be my dissertation at University of Copenhagen. It’s the first time I’m participating in this study circle. It seems to be interesting, all the presentations look good. Mine is titled: The unrehearsed pas de deux – a gesture of challenging art criticism and here’s an abstract of the content:
In this paper I will seek answers to the following two questions:
How can Practice-Based Research in the Performing Arts inform more established academic methods? Are we advocating an integration of PBR methodologies into academia and hence have them recognised as valid research methods within that?
Working within contemporary art theory the answers to these two questions are, in this context, related to an understanding of theorists as artists and artists as theorists. Following such an understanding academic work is challenged in both approach and writing.
This is a presentation of my research (was a dissertation at Goldsmiths, 2007, and will be my thesis at University of Copenhagen, 2008 ) and an example of how practice-based research can inspire theoretical work and vice versa. In this particular case I am concerned with a contemporary artist who resurrect a figure from the past through the image of the ghost and by conducting the spectator to perform the ghost. My approach to this artwork in writing about it is performative as well as I researched into figures from the historical past to investigate ways in which one can approach the past through these figures. I will seek to discuss the advantages and the difficulties of a performative and practice-based research approach in writing about contemporary art.
Filed under: notes on cph
17 months. “You have to write about it. You have to write about your situation” he said. “It’s something so many of your age go through. It’ll have relevance for them too.” I nodded. Looked out of the window. Bikers passed by really quickly wanting to go home or go elsewhere. It was a Friday afternoon and another week had passed by.
Relevance for others, I thought. Yes…
It was not that I hadn’t done anything since I came back. Mostly I had been at home. Or that is, my friend’s home as I can’t move into my own apartment until the 1st of February. When I moved into her house I didn’t have a bike. I borrowed one from my brother in law. A bike is necessary in this town, Copenhagen. Everybody is biking. And now I was included. I could move. I was free. Next day I had an accident. Boom! A clash with my nation, my motherland, my history. My knee and thigh were blue and in pain. I stayed at home. Couldn’t move. Looked a bit on the empty walls. Turned on television. Had some tea. And some chocolate. When the black and white TV had shown its most interesting programmes I turned it off. Had some tea. And some chocolate. And stairred into the ceiling, now lying down, legs up.
In the days of blue and painful legs I watched Scener ur ett Äktenskap by Bergman. During the past 17 months I had made and left traces with another person, traces which neither him nor me could forget. Our relation is based on absence and distance, still we have managed to make our love for each other grow. Now i’m back, now it’s different. Or. It seems different. My condition is different. There’s a seriousness to the life I’m living here. I meet people connected to a past career from before I left and a possible future career. How should I manage to keep the continuation between the past and a future? Should I? Had I not experienced so many things during these 17 months, which made me strive for other paths? But then, what is my present career? (Not daring to ask; what is my present life? What is my life when it’s based on two quite important, but unknow parameter values; love and career?)
But listen, why is career related to Scenar ur ett Äktenskap?
Yes, I had to write about this; “the coming back”. I also had to write something for my blog, it’s been more than a month since I posted something. The lost desire for writing scares me. Why not write about Scenar ur ett Äktenskap? Good idea. But what, what to write? No clever thoughts appeared.
I could write that I thought I look a little bit like Liv Ullmann. But then, that’s not of great relevance for others. Still, her style, her looks and her optimism in that series remind me of myself. “Is she a bit of a self-obsessed woman writing this?” “I mean, how can she compare herself to Liv Ullmann?” Yes, she’s beautifull and a great, great actress. I’m not. But she’s also naive, blind, Scandinavian and hopelessly stupid in this series. Nevertheless, she’s on top in the long run. After a horrible divorce she finds peace in her life between her new husband (the ‘orgasm athlete’) and her former husband with whom she now has an affair. He has no relation whatsoever with their kids, has failed in his career and is not happy with the young and wild Paula, for whom he left Liv Ullmann. Relations are fucked up. People are fucked. Kids grow up in fucked up families. So, then……..
Slowly I got back to a sort of normal life. I went to a new and fancy art place and bar…: Career bar. Spent the next day with the most evil hangovers.
Today I’m wearing my boots, the boots I bought in Beirut. I’m also wearing a red dress of a dear friend, whom I spent time with in Beirut and in London. We’re a bit alike. And this red dress gives me a feeling of connection, of connection with whom I was and what I did during the past 17 months. All this is related to intellectual work and maybe most importantly to the people I met and developed intellectually and mentally with. Now they’re not here. I only hear the echo of group 5. The yeah! is resonating in each of us; one has found his way, while the rest of us are confused and still acting from within the turmoil.
Someone is knocking on the door, it’s the postman. There’s a box for me, a box with lotions I used to buy in London. ‘DOCUMENTS INCLUDED’, it says. Mmh, the smell connects me, it’s a tactile trace, which by texture is a document of my daily life in London. The morning ritual of creaming my body and face now, thanks to the postman, relates to these now gone 17 months. So many things happened. So many thoughts were thought. And so much was loosened up, shaken and not just stirred. I have a cocktail in my body, a red dress and high heels on the outside. If not my knee was hurting, I would be ready for a big party.
Now I’m just waiting. Waiting for the face on mars. That’s the name of the wireless internet connection of my neighbour. Then I could steel his internet and upload this thing I finally wrote. Not sure the face on mars will show up now. Thinking of how this face looks like. Red (or is it Pluto, which is red?)? A mans face? Afterall, men are from Mars, no?
Well, in the old days young people went on an educational trip. Home, out there, home. That’s how people at home like it. ”The most important thing is; now you’re back home again!” It doesn’t matter what one did out there. It matters that one will come back one day. And that one is home now. Honey, I’m hooome!
Now I would like to introduce something. The possibility of going back. Of going back out there. Of going back out there because what was out there has prooved to be of a very high importance to me. I know it’s not easy. With one leg at home and one out there, there’s a great change for a chronicle pain in the knee. Clashing, clashing, clashing. It’s not very comfortable. Fights are being fought. But that’s what they ought to be, these fights. Fought. They should be fought because we need it. Denmark need people to fight and to loosen up our country. Shake it, and make it understand, that it can relax. Don’t be paranoid, everything’s gonna be alright. We have good forces here, we don’t need to fear the enigmatic ‘out there’.
So, then, I’ll try not to fear the very present and enclosing ‘in here’. I will remember that a coming back also implies the possibility of a going back. ‘In here’ is now coloured by the ‘out there’ and for that I should be grateful. We should be grateful.
