SAR SIG subgroup: Artistic Essaying Research and Pedagogy Group by Haris pellapaisiotis

Artistic Essaying Research and Pedagogy Group Jez Coram Emily Huurdeman Expanded, hybrid and experimental forms of essaying in practice-led research and pedagogy Central Questions for the group: 1. To what extent should we expand the essay through hybrid and experimental forms? 2. How should we produce essays in our current personal-aesthetic-political-technological conditions of crises? 3. To what extent can hybrid and experimental forms of essaying act as practice-led artistic research? 4. How can essaying as practice-led artistic research inform pedagogical approaches? The intention for this group is to bring together practitioners and theorists working and researching in the arts, or related fields, to consider and develop creative critical approaches to hybrid and experimental forms of essaying based on the above questions (as a starting point). The aim is to develop an international collective of individuals concerned with the potentiality of creative critical essaying, and how these hybrid and experimental forms of essaying may exist as practice-led artistic research and praxis. Then, how these praxes may inform pedagogical approaches. At its core the group is intended to be inclusive, accessible, interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, and even off-disciplinary to encourage tangential and lateral associations and pathways through individual and collaborative praxis. When / where: Five online meetings a year (Zoom or Teams), and one potential face to face meeting as part of the conference Provisional structure for meetings: 1 or 2 talks, presentations, or shows of work in progress (Individual or collaboration), based on group refinement of the research questions / areas of inquiry, followed by discussion. How: I would take up the role of organising the meetings and admin for the group. I would be looking for someone to share responsibility for the group and support facilitation. Potential contributions: As a group agree plans for collective exhibitions, conference talks and papers, articles, and special issues.

Bio:

Artistic Essaying Research and Pedagogy Group is part of the Society of Artistic Research, Special Interest Groups (SAR SIG).

The aim of this research group is to develop an international collective of artistic researchers concerned with the potentiality of creative critical essaying, and how these hybrid and experimental forms of essaying may exist as practice-led artistic research and praxis. Then, how these praxes may inform pedagogical approaches.

At its core the group is intended to be inclusive, accessible, interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, and even off-disciplinary to encourage tangential and lateral associations and pathways through individual and collaborative praxis.

Names:

Emily Huurdeman (PD candidate, Fontys, NL) she/her

www.egahuurdeman.nl

Peter Thomas (PhD candidate, Middlesex University, London, UK)

Ana Cristina Pansera de Araujo (PhD Candidate, University of Basque Country)

Jo O'Brien (PhD Candidate, University of Applied Arts, Vienna // Lecturer, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver) they/them

Form: Lecture Performance

Blended live lecture performance

Equipment:

WiFi connection

Headset for two people

ARIA METHOD/ART (BE)

skill_DEskill_REskill

https://www.methodartseminar.com/

Essaying as a way of de-skilling

Proposal:

- Name of the presenter and affiliated institute

- An abstract of 300 words (maximum) to describe the subject of the presentation

- A short curriculum vitae of the presenter in 150 words

- One image of the presenter/project (.jpeg)

- Necessary equipment and musical instruments for the presentation and/or performance

Abstract:

Our contribution to METHOD/ART 2025 is a lecture performance that essays on an essayistics of de-/re-skilling.

Technology often redistributes how, where, and what type of skill is needed for a particular form of labour. Rather than erasing the need for skill, changing technologies instead hide, outsource, or shuffle labour from the moment and location of production to other times and places. This redistribution of skill invisibilises the uncertainty and complexity that are essential to many forms of labour and production – including artistic production. Simultaneously, the capacity to engage uncertainty and complexity is also a vital research skill, so the problems created through technologically invisibilising skill are felt doubly in artistic research. As artistic researchers, we need methodologies that engage uncertainty and complexity, and we offer essaying as one such methodology.

Historically speaking the essay has evolved as a genre of writing, but the essay has also been adopted by many different artistic disciplines, giving rise to video, audio, somatic, and performative essays. This adaptation across multiple disciplines has turned the essay from a discreet production into a practice (and methodology) of essaying.

The essay has a long legacy of contradiction. On the one hand it is a highly conventionalised educational form, (apparently) unambiguous and objective, and built on formalised skills which can be assessed. On the other hand, the essay is a means of experimentation used to explore subjectivities, doubt, intellectual conviction, and personal expression – it is born of practices and knowledges gathered from our surroundings, a deskilled, patched together methodology attuned to uncertainty and complexity

To essay is to accept flaws, ambiguity, and happenstance. Essaying looks for cracks, paradoxes, and frictions – essaying does not strive for a uniform or aesthetic outcome, it is fragmented and open ended. Essaying breaks with teachings, skills, and acquired conventions, but also draws on them, in subversion. At its core essaying de-skills, un-skills, and re-skills the way we engage with the world.

In this lecture performance the participants of the research group will engage essayistically though a live and blended desktop screening.

"The way in which the essay appropriates concepts is most easily comparable to the behavior of a man who is obliged, in a foreign country, to speak that country's language instead of patching it together from its elements, as he did in school. He will read without a dictionary."

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