The slippery trail: The mollusc as a metaphor for creative practice
(2015)
author(s): Karen Savage
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition documents several years of process-driven practice-as-research. The work explores themes of womanhood, embodiment, and autobiography.
Throughout the exposition I argue that the embodiment of process is key to understanding practice-as-research. I propose that practice-as-research projects don't always begin with a ‘final output’ in mind. Instead, the practice of practice-as-research should be reconsidered throughout its development; it should use its potential for liminality. It is the demonstration of a ‘living process’ – living in process. However, what becomes key within the practice is a clear articulation of process, and how the research is recorded as part of that process. In this work, 'writing about practice' and performative practices are integrated, enabling a dialogue between various creative responses as well as offering access points to the research in a variety of forms.
This exposition explores ways in which we live in process through a presentation of text, visual essays, and short film and video pieces.
The work develops from creative artefacts and critical text into a piece of responsive writing, 'A Play of Characters'. This playtext reconsiders some of the influences in the work and explores the imagery of the whole project in a performative context.
The notion of embodiment and a 'living body of work' is developed further through the use of metaphor, in particular the metaphor of the mollusc. I use this to consider how practice evolves alongside process, 'housing' both the work and the process in both material form (the shell) and trace (the snail trail).
Different combinations of this work have been presented as performance installations, both at the University of Portsmouth, as part of my PhD examination in 2010, and at the University of Lincoln, as part of the Gnarlfest in 2014. However, by the very nature of 'living in process' this is a work that continues to evolve and 'live' in different forms. The purpose of this exposition is to explore the work in an accessible online form – one that offers alternative platforms and sequences, creating different possibilities and readings of the practice.
An Articulating and Perceiving Body (in Urban Space)
(last edited: 2020)
author(s): Ajauksia
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Ajauksia group invites people to join an excursion of sensory bodily actions in an urban environment. In the workshop we visit places that we are not likely to enter otherwise. We will explore urban nature, sense our surroundings and examine different ways to experience the city. The core ideas of our practice are shared responsibility and respect with space for diversity and dissidence.
We ask: What is bodily energy and how is it generated? What does the encountering between two or more subjects or between subject and object produce? What is the importance of corporeality and embodiment? What will happen when the spoken language is excluded, and what language does the body use in these situations?