Propositions for Unfinished Thinking: The Research Score as a Medium of Artistic Research

Joa Hug

This research exposition presents the process and results of the author’s doctoral research at the Performing Arts Research Centre of the Theatre Academy at the University of the Arts Helsinki, and is the final written part—the commentary—to fulfil the degree requirements. The research tackled the division between embodied and conceptual modes of reflection – a problem that is considered a key challenge for research into performer training. Crafted around Body Weather performance training, the research explored the epistemic potential of a touch-based body practice called the Manipulations, and engendered the transformation of this practice into a medium of artistic research—the research score—which is both the main method and the outcome of the research. In the commentary, the research score is considered to be a way of facilitating unfinished thinking that dissolves the division between physical practice and conceptual reflection, and which enables a shift from a representational towards a post-humanist performative model of knowing. Unfinished thinking is not the property of an individual, intentional, agential subject, but emerges from within an expanded network of inter-corporeal relations; it expresses thought without uncoupling language from its affective tonality, and it defies definite statements. The commentary covers a broad range of theoretical considerations on embodiment, materiality, (bodily) knowledge, technique, and reflection, and thus contributes to the debate on the epistemology and methodology of artistic research. Combining analytical and descriptive forms of scholarly writing with performative modes of experimental writing, the commentary expands the format of academic dissertation writing and offers new knowledge to the fields of dance (research), performance (research), performer training, and artistic research. Tiivistelmä Tässä kirjallisessa työssä esitellään kirjoittajan väitöskirjatutkimuksen tulokset ja tutkimusprosessin kulku, ja se toimii samalla tohtorintutkinnon tutkintovaatimusten viimeisenä, kirjallisena osana – kommentaarina. Tutkimus on tehty Taideyliopiston Teatterikorkeakoulun Esittävien taiteiden tutkimuskeskuksessa, ja se pureutuu kehollisen ja käsitteellisen reflektion välillä yleisesti tehtyyn jaotteluun – käytäntöön, joka muodostuu merkittäväksi haasteeksi esiintyjäkoulutusta käsittelevässä tutkimuksessa. Väitöskirjatutkimus perustuu pitkälti Body Weather esityskoulutukseen, ja siinä tarkastellaan manipulaatioiksi kutsuttujen, kosketukseen perustuvien kehollisten käytäntöjen episteemistä potentiaalia. Näistä käytännöistä kootaan taiteellisen tutkimuksen väline—tutkimus-score—josta muodostuu sekä tärkein tutkimuksessa käytetty menetelmä että sen merkittävin tutkimustulos. Tutkimus-score esitellään kommentaarissa tapana, joka edistää keskeneräisiä ajatusprosesseja ja tekee turhaksi jaottelun fyysisen toiminnan ja käsitteellisen reflektion välillä. Score mahdollistaa myös representaationaalisten tietomallien korvaamisen posthumanistisilla, performatiivisilla malleilla. Keskeneräistä ajattelua ei pidetä työssä yksittäisen, intentionaalisen ja agentiivisen subjektin ominaisuutena, vaan se nousee esiin kehonvälisten suhteiden laajennetusta verkostosta: siinä ilmaistaan ajatuksia tavalla, jossa kieltä ei eroteta sen affektiivisista sävyistä, ja näin ollen sitä on vaikea tarkoin määritellä. Kommentaarissa käsitellään kattavasti kehollisuutta, materiaalisuutta, (kehollista) tietoa, tekniikkaa ja reflektiota eri teoreettisista näkökulmista, ja tällä tavoin se muodostuu osaksi taiteentutkimuksen epistemologista ja metodologista keskustelua. Tieteellisen kirjoittamisen analyyttiset ja kuvailevat muodot yhdistyvät kommentaarissa kokeellisen kirjoittamisen esittäviin tapoihin. Työ monipuolistaa täten akateemisen väitöskirjan toteuttamistapoja ja tarjoaa uutta tietoa tanssin (tanssintutkimuksen), esityksen (esityksen tutkimuksen), esiintyjäkoulutuksen ja taiteentutkimuksen aloilta. Colophon: Joa Hug Propositions for Unfinished Thinking: The Research Score as a Medium of Artistic Research DOCTORAL RESEARCH Acta Scenica 59, 2020 ISBN: 978-952-353-026-3 ISSN: 2242-6485 PUBLISHER: University of the Arts Helsinki, Theatre Academy, Performing Arts Research Centre © 2020 University of the Arts Helsinki, Theatre Academy, Performing Arts Research Centre and Joa Hug

Research Score with 'war'

Video (2018, 17'42 mins - use headphones to listen)

Inexplicable

Highly codified

Rules of conduct

Protocols

Images of execution

Does it always need

Organization?

Legality

Legal structures

Legal moves

Illegal moves

I mean if people disagree

That’s one thing

You have to be able to organize groups

Mobilization

Destroying the self

A friendly handshake of a mutually assured destruction

Philosophers seem to be getting a lot of

Fuel out of war

Kind of the favourite subject

It’s an inevitable

A surrender

Highly cooperative

Benefits of confusion

Raw humanity

Beauty

Breaking apart

Easily destructable human bodies and non-human bodies

Unreasonable obedience

Traces and traces and traces and traces

Prodigal son

Obedience without reason

Outi [???]… the chairs

Inner Submission

Can I invade my body with my imaginary touch?

Is war at the beginning of the process or is it at the end of the process?

Buried in the ground

Is it a result or is it a motor?

Artificially created tensions

Highly structured and structuring

Archetypes

Drop

Your voice changed… you speak differently

Drop

The language is different

Never seen it

Body as battlefield

Washed

Death

[inaudible]

Never really felt it

Highly mediatised

[who?] Spectacle

Incomprehensible

Very comprehensible

Very logical

Very natural

Iconic images

I cannot even sense the state of

Boredom

Dust

There the alarm goes

Privilege

Safety

Going underground

Trying not to understand their fright, they live through it

A moment of relaxation

Release

Knee deep in terror

Travelling beyond exhaustion

Accepting the death of yourself

Is that the end?

Long range effects

Spatial and temporal

Hands that kill

Where exactly does this body command is coming from?

Always hands involved

Are we getting confused because we mix ethics and morals with war?

That we think we can judge it because it is ethically wrong?

It doesn’t even have to do with ethics

It’s aaaan action of a kind

Is it my brain giving the order

What’s next?

Suicide… [inaudible] the ultimate solution

Why do you think?

The human capacity for reconciliation

Different stories [???]

different [???]

self sacrifice… the monsters

Source of a lot of good clothing design

durable

practical

Children

Raw

Never-ending amounts of children

Gore-Tex

Raw meat

11.14 [???]

Swiss army knife

Stealth

[who?] Ingenuity

Cutting through

Tell that to a kit in the gravel

Covered in dust

Blood

Despair

The Russians are bad

The smallest common denominator

The limitations of

Imagination

War is like a mirror image

We can only have wars with people that are like ourselves

war-like

So what are the kind of people who are not like us to make war with except ourselves?

It takes two to tango

Cockroaches

Rats

Dogs

Tell that to the kid in the gravel

Bomb crater

Water

Smell

A line

Swarms of bodies

Borders

Tactics

Total domination of critical infrastructure

Destruction without destruction

How do I engage and disengage emotionally in this practice?

It’s not just anger

What kind of practice is it?

Collectively involve the

Individually

Performed

It’s not just disagreement

Where do you look at? From where will you look at… that?

Here

Here here here here

that’s impossible

Trembling

Trembling confidence of extinction

Of invasion

A fight to survive

I’ve got to make a peace between the imaginary and the actual

Being squeezed in-between

And many more realities… realities

16.27 [???] privilege… warm and safe body

16.50 [???]

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