We are artist-researchers who teach artistic research methodologies to MFA and PhD students. Frustrated by the dehydrated language and over-prescriptive examples in much current literature on artistic research methodologies, we doubled down and began to sleuth elsewhere for teaching tools. Our mission: to detect methodological conundrums to help us think through the suggestion that methodology can be rethought as the continuous re-making and re-articulation of a problem in flux (Lury, 2021).

We have each sniffed different tracks, signalling to the other when apprehended by evidence of the methodological otherwise, often hiding in the plain sight of popular culture. Magic and conjuring, ventriloquism and lip-synching; cover versions and karaoke; an opera relayed two ways by different conductors’ batons; slapstick routines and comedy turns disguised as reality (or… ?); crime dramas, red herrings and current court cases have arrested us. With each arrest comes a brief signal to the other, perhaps a WhatsApp message saying, ‘Methodology’, with a reference or link: an invitation to double-up on the case. Snatched coffee breaks, intermittent phone or online chats, and occasional pub conversations have been the forums for our discussions, until now.

As a double act, we will dramatise the methodological by performing it before the audience’s eyes. We do not propose to laboriously describe our sources and their methodological resonances, like stand-up fans who learn all the words of their favourite routine, but haven’t grasped the importance of timing. Rather, we want to inhabit our exemplars and foreground their methodological necessity. In doing so we will slip up and fall flat on our faces; but we can allow the joke to be on us. Methodological thought needn’t be the ugly sister of project planning in artistic research. It shouldn’t feel like a chore or impediment. We want to use our exemplars to unlock what we believe is the magic of methodology.