Introduction
This research journey is intended to be read in conjunction with the Ecologies in Action section of the exposition, helping to illuminate the focus of our evolving enquiry within and through the Ecologies during each critical development phase.1 Or reciprocally, the Ecologies in Action ‘evidence’ (allow to be seen or bring to light) the experiential, durational, material, relational unfolding that this research journey describes, making tangible both our emergent method and discoveries in and through practice. The narration of the research journey unfolds chronologically: Preliminary Phase (Summer 2020 – December 2020); Research Trajectory I (December 2020 – April 2021); Research Trajectory II (April 2021 – July 2021); Research Trajectory III (October 2021 – October 2022); Research Trajectory IV (November 2022 – January 2024). However, the corresponding Ecologies in Action section of the exposition is presented as a reverse chronology with the most recent Ecology in Action encountered first (as you arrive on the corresponding section). The scores for specific Practices mentioned in this research journey can also be encountered in more depth in the section of the exposition called Single Practices.
1. This Research Journey builds on the ‘practice notes’ that accompany each Ecology in Action [See Ecologies in Action section of the exposition]. The ‘practice notes’ operate more like a ‘score’, or an aide memoir for helping us to record the specific practices, foci, and the duration of the Ecologies at different points in the enquiry.
Preliminary Phase (Summer – December 2020)
Initiating the Enquiry
This research project has evolved in and through practice, in and through collaboration — its various research questions and practices have gradually emerged over time through the process of the research itself. Whilst at times we might use the term ‘project’ for describing our shared research, we did not begin with a preconceived design in advance — not then, the notion of project from projectare ‘to thrust forward’, or proiectum ‘something thrown forth’. The enquiry was initiated by Alex Arteaga in Summer 2020 with the horizon of a specific research context: the Congress of the German Society for Aesthetics Conference on Aesthetik und Erkenntnis (Aesthetics and Knowledge) hosted by Zurich University of the Arts (13 – 15 July 2021).2 As a response to Dieter Mersch’s commission of creating a framework to address the conference’s thematic focus not through philosophical but artistic research practices, Arteaga proposed the title, thinking aesthetic thinking through aesthetic research practices and a speculative hypothesis for the enquiry. The first step involved establishing a team of core researchers — artistic researchers whose existing practice or approach to enquiry already resonated with the proposed focus on aesthetic thinking and aesthetic research practices. These core researchers were not identified at the outset, rather our collaboration came into being through a sequential chain of invitation.3 Once gathered, we began to develop a collaborative research enquiry with the intention of presenting our research within the frame of the Aesthetik und Erkenntnis conference in July 2021. During the first phase of this emergent enquiry (Autumn - Winter 2020), we met several times online for conversation to explore how we might work together; to discuss the core frames of reference (e.g. aesthetic thinking, aesthetic research practices), and to begin developing an emergent framework for the shared research. At this stage, we envisaged that our enquiry would involve physically coming together in the same geographical location during the coming months, and indeed, that the sharing of our research within the forthcoming conference would also be live and in person. Accordingly, our initial conversations focused on how we might physically come together, tentatively imagining possibilities for intensive micro-residencies or even research ‘laboratories’ for sharing practices. In parallel, we continued to evolve the working hypothesis with the horizon of the conference, alongside gathering a sense of possible practices that we might each contribute. After exploring different initial ideas for reading and writing together, in December 2020 we began conceiving other ways of sharing through the development and activation of individual single practices framed through written scores.
2. See https://www.zhdk.ch/en/event/44350
3. Alex Arteaga invited Emma Cocker in June 2020; Nicole Wendel joined the project in August 2020; Sabine Zahn joined the project in September 2020.
Research Trajectory I: December 2020 – April 2021
Scoring and Testing Practices
The first research trajectory of our enquiry involved testing single practices as potential aesthetic research practices through which to think aesthetic thinking. We wondered: How do specific aesthetic research practices enable or enhance aesthetic thinking? What kinds of practices can be developed, tested and shared? The first ‘score’ was introduced by Sabine Zahn — originally called the ‘score of proximity’, later reframed as the Practice of the Nahbereich (Proximate Sphere). Sabine sent us each a handwritten score by post in December 2020, inviting us to activate the corresponding practice independently over the coming month. This initiating score involved a specific physical-bodily practice that activated our sensory-motor and emotional skills. Practising outside within an urban situation, we were invited to bring our perceptual awareness towards the micro-movements within our experience of stillness, then shift to condensing and expanding our attention in relation to the ‘nahbereich’ — a term adopted by Zahn for referring to the area that our bodies occupied including everything within the bodyreach. We each tested and explored the Practice of the Nahbereich individually prior to our first online ‘practice’ meeting in January 2021. Rather than simply coming together online to discuss or reflect on or about our experiences of activating the Practice of the Nahbereich, this first practice session (22.01.2021) provided opportunity for us to explore how we could inhabit this meeting space for activating practices together, that is, for practising and for bringing different practices into relation. Together we devised a sequential ‘ecology’ of practices. We began by coming together online for a Practice of Attunement. Following this, we each reactivated the Practice of the Nahbereich once more offline in our respective locations, going outside for a specified timeframe to practise. Coming back together on Zoom, we engaged in an online language-based practice — the Practice of Conversation-as-Material proposed by Emma Cocker — enabling our shared experiences to unfold in a linguistic form. This three-fold relation of different practices was evolved through our next meeting in February 2021. Prior to the meeting, we received a ‘score’ in the post from Nicole Wendel, along with a stone and a drawing. The invitation was to engage with the score independently over the coming weeks prior to meeting. The score again involved a physical bodily practice, engaging our sensory-motor, emotional and perceptual skills through a material encounter with both the stone (this score was later developed as the Practice of Material Encounter) and the drawing (a drawn artefact). Coming together online (26.02.2021), we again devised a sequential ecology of practices, beginning with a Practice of Attunement; then reengaging individually with the material objects, before activating a Practice of Conversation-as-Material together. So, in these initial meetings, we were gathering and testing possible practices, alongside tentatively bringing them into relation (sequentially, in time), exploring both online and offline forms of practising.
Ways for Being-in-Touch
In March 2021, we were able to deepen our shared enquiry by coming together online for three intensive full days (between 24.03.21 and 26.03.2021) to continue to test the extant practices (and their sequential proximity), as well as refine their working ‘scores’. During this intensive online laboratory, two further language-based practices were introduced: Arteaga introduced the Practice of Exploratory Essay Writing, and Cocker offered various Practices of Reading, through which the transcripts of our previous conversations were reactivated through a shared improvisatory voicing. Our focus for these sessions was on how we might bring different practices into relation, specifically for testing different ways for sequencing linguistic and non-linguistic practices. At this stage, we had each introduced specific practices for testing and engaging collectively. At times, the collective testing involved the synchronous being-with of a shared online exploration (same practice, same time, same digital online space). At other times, we each tested the same practice synchronously but separately (i.e. practising at the same time but not together in a shared space), as well as asynchronously (i.e. practising at different times and in different spaces). Within this first intensive coming-together online, each practice was engaged in a sequential yet discontinuous relation — that is, we practised one practice together, then paused briefly, before initiating the next. During a second intensive ‘block’ of practice in April (between 19.04.21 and 21.04.2021) we continued to explore the sequential in-touch-ness of different practices, whilst also introducing the possibility of parallel practices. Rather than us engaging only in collective practices, we began to test how individual practices might also be activated synchronously. At this point in our research journey, parallel individual practices were undertaken synchronously but separately, that is, practising different practices, at the same time, but offline and not together in the shared online digital space. Some of us continued with the Practice of the Nahbereich or Practice of Exploratory Essay Writing, whilst other practices were also introduced (e.g. Wendel engaged in an offline drawing practice which later became reframed as the Practice of Explorative Drawing). Central to undertaking these individual parallel practices was the sense of the others also practising concurrently within a shared timeframe, with shared commitment. Our emergent Ecology of practices was creating mutually constitutive conditions — a frame of shared attention and co-responsibility (even correspondency) with a common focus: thinking aesthetic thinking through aesthetic research practices.
Emergent Method
During this first trajectory of the research, we were not yet conceiving the emergent Ecology in Action as something that would be sharable (with others) via either its online activation or subsequent recording. Accordingly, no recorded documents are presented in our Ecologies in Action archive for the first trajectory of research.4 Still, these initial explorations were significant in establishing a tentative ‘way of working’ (methodos) which we would continue to test and evolve. During this first phase of research, our enquiry evolved from the identification of possible practices, to exploring how we might shift between different practices. This included testing shifts between collective and individual activation, as well as using different media; shifting between different ways of bringing those practices into relation (e.g. working together [in the same space] and apart [in separated spaces]; sequential and parallel practices; synchronous and asynchronous activation); as well as testing different durational frames for these constellations of practices, or even emergent Ecologies in Action. Specifically, this intensive working together allowed the emergent method (Ecology in Action) to evolve responsively over time, in and through our practising. During this first research trajectory, the Practices of Attunement (often led by Wendel) were considered prerequisite for establishing a common ground, that is, for synchronising ourselves as breathing bodies enabling a sense of greater intimacy and of being-in-touch within our virtual environment, and for creating conditions of heightened collective or joint attention. It had also become clear that our enquiry was unfolding in relation to two different but related horizons: (1) an open-ended exploration with a not-yet specified endpoint; (2) the above-mentioned conference as a particular context for sharing that enquiry. Yet how to hold these two horizons in relation — how to evolve an enquiry between the necessary openness and open-endedness of thinking aesthetic thinking through aesthetic research practices, and the imminent ‘target’ or ‘pressure’ of presenting the research as research within a conference? Gradually, we began to have greater clarity on how we might share our research with others: we were not interested in talking about the research, but rather in creating conditions that might allow for the possible emergence of evidence, that is, for the emergence of evidence of aesthetic thinking.
Opening moves / Initiating Gestures
Our focus for the next stage in the research journey was to begin exploring ways for making our research public, that is, to consider how we might share the research whilst remaining in an aesthetic mode. We wondered: What are the conditions for remaining in an aesthetic mode, and how might these conditions be nurtured? What conditions enable and what conditions hinder aesthetic conduct? Still thinking that we would be making a live contribution during the forthcoming conference in Zurich (July 2021), we began developing ideas for how we might share our enquiry through its practising. We wondered: How might we make our research practising visible? Which practices can be shared with others and in what capacity? What different modes of engagement with wider publics could be offered during the conference? How might we explore and test different registers of attention — the distribution of focality and visibility — by shifting between moments of polyfocal attention and single focus, between individual and collective practices, and between parallel and sequential modes of in-touch-ness? How might we navigate between the structuring or organising of an ecology of practices, and the need for flexibility and spontaneity? We proposed to approach the conference as a live laboratory for further evolving the emergent Ecology in Action that we had been developing. We planned to engage in a sustained intensive exploration together over two days, during which there would be timebound ‘sessions’ for opening and sharing our practising with other conference attendees. The first day was conceived and named as Opening moves — initiating an ecology of aesthetic research practices, where we planned to begin with an empty room which would be activated gradually through our practising together, through becoming in touch with each other and our respective practices, with the different agencies of materials, technologies and the space itself. The second day was framed as Iterating gestures — inhabiting an ecology of aesthetic research practices, during which we would focus on exploring the coexistence, coinciding and mutual conditioning of different practices, attending to the conditions for aesthetic thinking, and how these conditions might be nurtured. We began conceiving a nascent structure or organisation for these two days — exploring possibilities for moving between individual and collective practices, between singular and multiple points of focus, between private and public practising. However thus far in the narration of this research journey, there is still one factor or even ‘agency’ that has not yet been named — this research project was unfolding within the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic, and at this point, we were each working within the conditions of ‘lockdown’ in our respective countries. Whilst we were still hopeful that the conference would be in-person, it was clear that we also needed to explore possibilities for an online or hybrid contribution.
4. Still, some artefacts from this first phase do exist and can be encountered in the Artefacts section of the exposition.
Research Trajectory II: May 2021 – July 2021
Parallel Practising / Shared Space
In May 2021, we came together online for three full days of intensive exploration (18.05.2021 – 20.05.2021). We continued to explore the activation of parallel practices (at the same time), but also began to focus on how we might do so within a shared geographical space. Realising that we would be unable to meet in the same geographic space anytime soon, we began exploring how to activate and test parallel practices within an online environment. Initially, we were approaching the online environment just as a space of testing, as preparation for some future moment when we would be able to activate the practices in bodily proximity within a shared geographical context. However, the shift to a fully online environment for the Ecology in Action still necessitated some translation or modification of certain practices — specifically, the question of how to enable a practice to become visible within Zoom required engaging with the mediating technology or even agency of the camera. Practices which were previously activated individually, that is, privately, and offline (such as the Practice of Explorative Drawing and the Practice of the Nahbereich) were tentatively re-scored to enable online activation. For example, our first Ecology in Action during this block (18.05.2021) was Wendel’s first attempt at activating the Practice of Explorative Drawing as a visible online practice. This drawing practice was activated synchronously (in both time and online space) to a series of voice-based language practices which folded transcripts from our previously recorded Practice of Conversation back into the Ecology. Suddenly, with this activation, we could recognise the potentiality of Zoom as a site of exploration in and of itself, not just as a preparatory space in the absence of being able to physically meet. This was a revelatory moment for our shared project, enabling us to conceive how our online Ecologies in Action might become a format of sharing with others, as a way for enabling the research practice/practising itself to be made public. What had felt initially as a limitation or as a compromise suddenly seemed replete with possibility. Accordingly, it is from this point in our research journey that we start recording our Ecologies in Action, as a way of attesting to the evolution of the Ecologies as method (methodos — a course or way of travelling), as a dispositive (a way of specifically organising or structuring relations), as a way of sharing.5
Shifts of Attention
During this May intensive, our initial focus was on how to activate the practices through different media, or else mediated through the technic of an online environment. Practices that had hitherto been activated offline and outside of an Ecology were now included — for example, Cocker explored how to render the act of transcribing previous conversations as a visible (rather than only audible) language-based practice called the Practice of Live Transcription (one of the 'ecology' of practices comprising the Practice of Conversation). One thing we noticed at this point was how language-based practices could easily adopt a preponderant position within an Ecology (e.g. 20.05.2021 [I]) — and in so doing, perhaps potentially inhibit the emergence of aesthetic thinking. Our enquiry into the in-touch-ness of practices was evolving from testing how to bring practices into relation (sequentially, synchronously etc.), to consider the compatibilities and incompatibilities of certain practices through different combinations or conjunctions; moreover, how to mitigate against the unwanted risk of hierarchy or dominance of one practice over another within an emergent Ecology. As our list of possible practices expanded, we wondered — how many practices is possible and adequate to practise within each Ecology? How might the number of practices condition the emergence of thinking aesthetic thinking; at what point does it become too many? Working within an online environment such as Zoom enabled us to test different ways of making visible and focusing attention – specifically by exploiting the format of the platform itself with its grid of participant ‘frames’ or ‘windows’ and different possibilities of ‘Viewing Mode’ (e.g. full ‘Gallery View’ enabling the full grid of participant windows to be seen, ‘Spotlighting’ allowing only specific frames/windows to be visible in ‘Speaker View’). In parallel, we explored opening and closing our cameras as a further device for framing and focusing attention. We were also exploring how to shift between practices, no longer involving just the forwards-trajectory of sequencing, but also the potential for oscillating back and forth between practices. Within the subsequent Ecologies in Action (from 20.05.2021), we tested moving between a single-focal view (spotlighting just one window, one practice) to a poly-focal view where all active ‘windows’ were concurrently visible, to explore both the relation between practices but also how to activate shifts of attention, within the Ecology itself, and potentially for others who might witness the Ecology as observers. The emergent structuring principle of the Ecology in Action involved the movement of attention.
Emergent Naming - Ecologies in Action
During the next intensive block of practice together (June 2021) further practices were introduced where technology was not just the mediating agency for an existing practice, but rather that a specific engagement with media and technologies was constitutive to the practice. For example, (16.06.2021) Arteaga introduced the Practice of Close Video Observation (later reframed as the Practice of Very Slow Video Observation) which mobilised the specific mediality of video. This phase of practice was marked by further significant shifts. Previously we had only tested specific constellations of practices within short structured, timebound explorations on Zoom. Our Ecology in Action on 16.06.2021 was the first occasion where we tested a longer sequence of different constellations without breaking off between, enabling us to attend to the shifts and transitions as we moved from one constellation of practices to another, from the single focus of one visible frame/window to the polyfocal potential of several practices happening concurrently in different frames/windows. Whilst we use the term Ecologies in Action to refer to broadly refer to our practice explorations, it was at this point that this specific term emerged to give greater clarity to our enquiry. In parallel, we began to conceive the actual practising of a live Ecology in Action as the very means by which we would share our research within the forthcoming conference, which was now going to take place on Zoom due to continuing pandemic restrictions. In this sense, the platform used for our ongoing research practice and its public sharing at the conference would be the same. However, we still had some reservations about how and whether we could ensure the necessary conditions of attention and focus for sharing our research only through its practising as a live event.
Public Sharing through Ecologies in Action
At this point in the research journey, we began exploring longer timeframes for our Ecologies in Action (increasing the timeframe from 30 minutes to one hour), searching for an optimal duration as the basis for our forthcoming conference sharing. We wondered — how might longer durations of exploration support the conditions for thinking aesthetic thinking (especially for those witnessing an unfolding Ecology in Action); at what point does it become too long to sustain the necessary quality of attention? Between 12-13 July 2021, we engaged in a 2-day intensive online ‘lab’ together, concerned within clarifying and refining our Ecology in Action immediately prior to the conference. We began to conceive various diagrammatic scores through which to structure our Ecology of practices, where the process of diagramming indicated a possible network of connections and relations rather than a prescribed dramaturgy. We wanted to avoid collapsing from an attitude of ‘practising’ (a live process of aesthetic research, undertaken as an aesthetic mode of conduct) to one of rehearsal (intent on polishing a practice in advance of its public sharing). The Ecology in Action that we activated live during the Aesthetik und Erkenntnis (Aesthetics and Knowledge) conference on 14.07.2021 was nonetheless choreographed to some degree. It comprised a 70-minute sequential unfolding of three different constellations including eight different practices in total. We had agreed which practices we would activate in advance, and the order of their practising. The transitions between the three parts were cued based on both precise timing and delicate shifts of attention, as we moved between a single visual focal point to multiple and simultaneous unfolding practices. To some extent, we had managed to share our research through its practising, yet had we succeeded in creating the conditions that allowed for the emergence of evidence of aesthetic thinking? Whilst the conference was the original destination or horizon of our shared enquiry, we had only just begun exploring the potential of Ecologies in Action.
5. At this point, our Practices of Attunement were still undertaken as a designated preparatory practice, but we considered them a part of our ‘private’ preliminaries and not part of the sharable Ecology in Action - hence no recordings of this specific practice.
Research Trajectory III: March 2022 – October 2022
New Horizon
Having originally conceived our collaboration through the time-bound frame of the Zurich conference, how did we want to continue the enquiry and on what basis? Indeed, was there scope for continuing to engage with this enquiry given our other existing research commitments elsewhere? Whilst our enquiry itself and its focus on aesthetic thinking necessitated a certain openness and open-endedness, we recognised that having a specific horizon, a specific sense of containment for the enquiry, was also enabling. After a short interlude, in October 2021 we made a proposal to the forthcoming biannual conference Alliances and Commonalities (Stockholm University of the Arts, 20-22 October 2022). Notice of acceptance in February 2022 initiated a new horizon for our enquiry, now involving only the three researchers Arteaga, Cocker and Wendel. Our first practice session within this new trajectory of research took place online in March 2022 (18.03.2022), where our focus shifted more explicitly towards exploring the sense of in-touch-ness within the Ecology in Action. Initially this involved testing ways for exploring the relation between being-in-touch (being-with) other practices and being-apart (practising autonomously). We wondered: How does the coexistence, coinciding and mutual conditioning of different practices enable/enhance aesthetic thinking? We also began to nuance the focus of the Practice of Conversation, specifying the experience of practising aesthetic research practices within the Ecology as the direct or major referent for our dialogue, and the notion aesthetic thinking as the indirect referent, to be engaged in a minor key. The Practice of Conversation itself (as well as its resulting artefacts of transcript material) became folded into the Ecology, where we began exploring ways of taping our cameras as a way of disrupting the habits of faciality and discursivity to which online conversation might ordinarily give rise. Engaging in conversation in an aesthetic mode, might first involve some attempt to dampen our visible presence, in turn, heightening our capacity for deeper listening.
From Pre-structuring to Emergent Organisation
In May 2022, we engaged in a two-day intensive lab together online (17.05.2022 – 18.05.2022), during which we began to test unstructured Ecologies in Action for the first time. Rather than us specifying practices and timings in advance, the invitation was to move spontaneously from and between practices as ‘called’ by the practice and unfolding Ecology in Action. The second principle that we introduced towards an unstructured approach was to let go of the choreographed or even prescriptively organised movement of attention, which had involved shifting between single-frame and multi-frame view on Zoom. The cameras of our computer, linked to Zoom, remain activated and the modulation of visibility was regulated only through covering or uncovering the camera’s lenses. We were interested in creating a less hierarchical, less pre-organised Ecologies in Action — exploring how each Ecology itself as a dispositive might enable different relations and attentions to emerge. Further practices were also introduced, which also involved additional devices with cameras, and hence more windows/frames in Zoom: Arteaga found a way of integrating the Practice of Exploratory Essay Writing into the Ecology mediated through the lens; Wendel introduced the Practice of Video Observation from Physical Source which involved navigating space via a dialogue between camera and the body. We began testing variations on the practices (e.g. Practice of Exploratory Essay Writing as a voiced option), alongside conceiving of different ways of oscillating or transitioning between practices. Given the increasing number and complexity of practices and ways for bringing them into relation, we recognised that we needed to also retain spaciousness within the Ecology, and the option of stopping and adopting an observational role was also proposed. We continued to test the durational frame of an Ecology, increasing the timeframe to 90 minutes (18.05.2022). However, at the end of the May ‘lab’, we recognised that we had perhaps attempted to modify too many variables — shifting from structured to unstructured; to a greater number of practices; to a longer duration, to focus on in-touch-ness. Within our resulting Ecologies in Action, we were losing our capacity to stay in-touch, to create conditions for the emergence of aesthetic thinking. Accordingly, in our next intensive ‘lab’ in July 2021 (07.07.2022 – 08.07.2022), we elected to return to a semi-structured format for the Ecology, enabling us to test specific variables with more focus and precision.
Semi-structuring for Testing Variables
We began our 2-day intensive lab in July (07.07.2022 – 08.07.2022) focusing specifically on the compatibility and incompatibility of certain practices, and whether/how this compatibility or incompatibility enables or inhibits aesthetic thinking. Specifically, we wanted to explore how we might activate language-based practices without creating conditions for the emergence of propositional (rather than aesthetic) thinking. What conditions within the Ecology were required for working in the medium of language in an aesthetic mode, indeed, is a language-based aesthetic research practice necessarily non-propositional? We wanted to explore if this was a matter of content or of context — relating not only to the ‘what’ of a language practice, but also how and when it is activated, in relation to other practices. We required a semi-structured approach to enable us to test the sequencing and in-touch-ness of different practices, and indeed, to realise that beginning an Ecology with too many linguistic practices (07.07.2022) was not necessarily conducive to aesthetic thinking. Accordingly, we began our next Ecology (08.07.2022) with two variations of the Practice of Material Encounter instead. We also considered the relation of how aesthetic thinking is practised within an individual practice and how it is practised within the overall Ecology in Action, wondering if/how this relation is somehow causal. We also came to realise that stopping practising to observe or leave space was not about ‘leaving’ the Ecology for some illusory ‘outside’ or external position, since the individual act of stopping and observing continued to have an influence on the unfolding exploration. Accordingly, we reframed the act of stopping as the Practice of Stepping Back, which in turn began to help us to consider how others might engage with our research process as aesthetic observers (rather than ‘consuming’ spectators), the presence of whose attention might affect as well as be affected by the unfolding Ecology.
Nuancing the Modes of In-touch-ness
The focus of our Ecologies in Action was further nuanced during our ‘lab’ in September 2022 (12.09.2022 – 13.09.2022). Continuing to explore the sense of in-touch-ness, the structuring principle for this block involved deeper enquiry into the modality, attitude or intention of relation or connection practised within the Ecologies: (1) How/if the mode of connection/relation creates conditions for aesthetic thinking?; how the mode of connection is constitutive for aesthetic thinking? (2) If/how the mode of connection is an emergent property of an Ecology in Action or how/whether it can be conceived as a structuring principle to be actively explored? Our focus shifted from it being about naming the practices that would be included in an Ecology in advance, other than us working with practices that we had already named, to attending to how they were in touch. We differentiated three different and distinct modes of in-touch-ness: (A) Separation (autonomy) — that is, to practise in (intended) isolation from others’ practice, by not being affected or in touch with the other practices, but rather highly immersed or absorbed by one’s own singular practice(s); (B) Parallel (Open, in Touch) — that is, to practise with awareness and openness to others’ practices but not directly interacting with them; (C) Interwoven (interaction) — that is, to be influenced by and interact with others’ practices, open to affecting and being affected by the others’ practices and practising. Initially we agreed on a structuring sequence for testing these modes of in-touch-ness (e.g. A-B-C on 12.09.2022, C-A-B on 13.09.2022 [I]), with the proviso that we would stick to the pre-agreed sequence and undertake it only once during the Ecology. In a sense, these sessions could be conceived as a mode of training for nuancing our individual and joint attention to the subtle differentiations of in-touch-ness. By the final Ecology of this ‘lab’ (13.09.2022 [II]) we could return to an unstructured format practised with heightened awareness or sensitivity to the mode of relation.
Fluency yet not Rehearsal
Our final intensive block of Ecologies in Action was in October 2022, preparing the Alliances and Commonalities conference. In one sense, the previous phase of practice (March – September 2022) is approached as training, where we were actively testing different variables through structured scores. We did not want to return to the sense of pre-scribed choreography or dramaturgy that we had adopted within the previous conference yet realised that there was significant risk in attempting to activate a completely unstructured Ecology. Our Ecologies had by now become complex — involving up to ten different practices, activated using different media devices, and through different modes of in-touch-ness. Certainly, the conditions of conference presentation would bring a different sense of pressure to our practising — in the context of a public sharing, would we be able to sustain the levels of nuance and of aesthetic conduct that had become present within our private Ecologies in Action? There was a risk within an unstructured Ecology for losing contact with each other’s practising, for drifting out of touch. To help mitigate against undesirable confusion within now multi-layered Ecology, we introduced different ways of covering our cameras, for differentiating between voiced practices (including the Practices of Reading, Voiced Observation, Conversation) which were indicated through the camera being masked/taped; and the Practice of Stepping Out where the screen/frame was not activated by a practice and thus remained solid black. It was also important that we practised this unstructured form of Ecology in Action. We have recognised that a certain level of fluency in the practising is a necessary condition for the emergence of an aesthetic attitude. Here, we differentiate fluency from rehearsal. Whilst rehearsal might involve practising to perfect a given Ecology as a performance or production (even if that mode of production is improvisatory), the level of fluency we sought to cultivate was conceived more as a constitutive condition for the emergence of aesthetic thinking.
Our final Ecology in Action was practised live as a 50-minute unstructured exploration in the context of the Alliances and Commonalities conference, hosted online by Stockholm University of the Arts (20.10.2022). We advised conference attendees that we would be sharing an Ecology in Action, conceived as a set of dynamically interconnected aesthetic research practices that we would activate live in the hope of creating conditions for us to think aesthetic thinking. Moreover, we invited attendees to engage with our Ecology of aesthetic research practices in the hope that this might create conditions for them to also think aesthetic thinking aesthetically, that is, through aesthetic observation. Whilst it did appear that we were able to accomplish this ambition — at least in part — specific questions emerged from our conference sharing: How might we avoid the Ecology in Action being understood and engaged with as performance-as-production, and not as live practising, live enquiry? How might we avoid the sense of the aesthetic that we were seeking to activate in our thinking aesthetic thinking through aesthetic research practices from becoming misinterpreted only as how the Ecology appears to function as a performance-artwork and how it works or succeeds only in these terms? Our enquiry is admittedly subtle and nuanced — it has unfolded gradually over a period of years where we have together been able to focus and refine that enquiry and its related dispositives of Ecologies in Action. At the same time, that same enquiry and the evolving Ecologies in Action have served as a mode of training, for developing and nuancing our individual and collective sensitivities and sensibilities for aesthetic thinking, through practising. Practising an Ecology in Action live within a conference context foregrounds the liveness and liveliness of the practice, perhaps might even create conditions for the emergence of aesthetic thinking. However, sharing a single Ecology in Action within the time-bound conditions of a conference cannot fully attest to our research journey as the methodos (our programme or course of action, our way of travelling) or indeed perhaps as askesis (as exercise, a programme for training an aesthetic conduct). Nor can it fully disclose with precision the conceptual framework that has also evolved in and through this enquiry. To attempt this, we have required the multi-modal format of a research exposition.