Writing in Artistic Research

Dear editorial team members,

I am glad that you accepted my proposition of exposition to move forward to the second phase of the editorial process. Thank you!

I just re-submitted my exposition in the Research Catalogue (RC).

All the texts have been now checked and adjusted by a qualified proofreader, and I have remade all the textual labels of the exposition with the final corrected texts.

Now, in your attentive and kind review you made this interesting suggestion, among your other encouraging comments: “(…) we want to point out that your exposition demands a true willingness to really play along and a reasonable amount of understanding of RC architectonics – therefore, we ask you to consider whether one more round of careful consideration, or fine tuning, of the navigation parameters would even better support the (non-)argumentative architectonics of the exposition and clarify (yet still not reveal too much) of the linkages between the fragments (for example, as intriguing as it is to consider leaving the "Abstract box" plain empty and/or proceeding by way of "Extroduction" instead of Introduction – it might better clarify and support the (intended?) purpose if the concept of extroduction was introduced... perhaps in the "Abstract box"?”

Thank you for this comment and for the suggestion. I hope that the following short argumentation will respond constructively to it and open a space-time for a lively discussion with you.

For the last four years, since I started my artistic research project in the Performing Arts Research Centre (Uniarts Helsinki), I have been permanently, and increasingly, pondering the question of writing (in artistic research). Contemplating simultaneously the capacity, the validity, the economy and the temporality of artists-researchers to write exegetically (scholarly) about their artworks and artistic practices, I have been personally surprised by the reproduction in the field of a known and normative academic logic of writing, that is to say the dominant maintenance of the dichotomy between art and theory in the very context of artistic research. Hence, in order to offer a concrete contribution to the topical discussion with colleagues, I have been continuously doubling my artistic experiments in the framework of the research project with the (architectonic, as you recognize and seem to support) display of expositional crash-tests based on the redistribution of these experiments through what I call narriteratives, i.e., iterative narratives, that is to say compositional, experimental redoubling/supplementing avatars of the art itself; these variations intending to disclose the art as research through sense-opening (artistic experience in the context of research realm) more than meaning-making/knowledge-producing (i.e. theoretical texts engaging with objective criticality in the context of the academy).

In this sense I have been following the path of 'exposition' defenders, claiming that time has come in the development of artistic research to find an alternative mode of research articulation, away from both 1. the agency of the art, per se, that lie within art scenes and 2. academic art exegesis within the academic realm. From the early stuttering stages of my research, I have thus tried to apply my artistry (the “skills”) to the research presentations themselves in order to activate them, I would say, on a 'meta-level of communication', through my artistic strategies themselves (i.e. queering normative temporalities of presentations and hauntological destabilizing of the metaphysics of the scenic presence/presentation). The “writing” hence produced through these strategic dynamics has been no more “produced” merely for and through its verbal, symbolic (still dominantly required), interpretative function but rather critically, or, maybe, postcritically, “used” as materiality, as a medium among others, as a tool, and as a playful component. This mode of presenting the research is speculating on the possibility of shifting from art’s direct agency to art as a research agent. The shift leans on the careful activation of artistic know-hows in the research presentations: through implementing this shift I thus wish to participate in the movement of the emergence of experiential aesthetic thinking in artistic research within the required academic epistemic dimension. Submitting my exposition to Ruukku is motivated by the fact that I know that these aesthetic/epistemic experimental concerns are shared on the platform.

This position has been inspired not only by the aforementioned defenders for the expositional turn in the field - among whom I guess you and those at Ruukku can be counted - but also, and simultaneously, by the recent line of thought that speculates on the possibility of a paradigm shift from critical to postcritical thinking. I have no space and time to develop this here – and I had better not replace, contradictorily, a theoretical explanation by another, explaining rhetorically why I would prefer not rhetorically explain the art...).To put it briefly, my interest grew for the shift between the critical double dichotomy practice/writing and object of study/subject of interpretation, and the correlative academic demand of the seizing (of the process and of the results) through a mastered, clear (or clarified) and convincing epistemic capture, and the displacement of this (habit of) critique to a creative zone of aesthetic experience, in which intentionally-left-opened affordances are proposed as a supplement for the art. In French there would be a nice homonymic trick to activate here: a semantic sliding from raisonnant (reasoning - from outside) to résonant (resonant - from inside), as in music resonance. This would be the intensification and enriching of a musical tone by a supplementary - postcritical? - vibration rather than by a complementary rhetorical - critical? - explanation.

Therefore, my proposal of exposition for Ruuku 13th edition follows in its form and goal, this logic. Your enthusiastic report shows me that you welcome the deconstructive playful endeavor. Yet, you seem to be a little worried about the challenge posed by the diffraction and the possible lack of "bridging". For me, and after giving to it a round of careful consideration, this is actually the risk that I would like to take, in order to be coherent with my line of research presentation. All the reasons mentioned above are the reasons why I have proposed that my exposition would need to start in medias res, like a "jump" in the (almost) void, precisely without pedagogic sustainers, but just a few humbly Mallarmé-oriented (paying tribute here) sensing triggers. These are the reasons why I wish - and I hope you will not see here stubbornness but mere conviction – my exposition would not be introduced by a critical normative abstract, but rather by a gesture of what I call extroduction, i.e. a first movement of decentering from the expected critical, synthetic and pedagogic form that is the abstract. Extroducing being always elsewhere and elsewhen, not seizable, having no body, except, perhaps, its own enunciation through this very note (which is thus already a failure of avoiding the critical exterior contemplation and its correlative argumentation, which “just” displaced to another subject of study and argumentation, the exposition itself – I am doomed...). I indeed see the abstract (interestingly the antonym of concrete) as a symptom, not to say symbol, of critical thinking, that is to say, the proof and measure of the capacity to master, seize, center and disseminate the core of a research in a fast, easy, advertising, synthetic way. And I would prefer not...

I would hence be very happy if you consider that my proposal for Ruukku, following the same motivated direction (redirection), offers the same personal perspective on writing in artistic research, at the same time it entangles with the topic of the edition « peripheries ».

In this redirection, it indeed seeks to avoid the centripetal and safe introduction through conventional bridging ("abstract") and habitual orienting ("introduction") already the experience, but rather, to invite the (hyper)reader to jump into the exposition architectonics, as one jumps in the sea, rawly, almost "naked" but willing to swim (or to learn to swim from within).

Through this gesture, and in discussion with you and the other exposion-makers, I would be also happy to trigger the important question of accessibility, that I guess we share, in these terms: who is reading? who is ready to train other modes of (hyper)reading, i.e. non-centripetal, non-linear, non-facilitated modes of engaging with artistic research contributions that matter elsewhere and elsewhen than the scholarly oriented narratives? I would be glad for example to discuss further the question of the temporal ecology of the reading: how much time does a RC reader spend with (how long one spends with a theatre performance? Compared with a 15 pages intro of a theory book?).

I am very happy to have the possibility to discuss with you about all this further. An edition on peripheries is for me the ideal locus for such an experiment... offering the possibility to redistribute the art practice focusing on this topic, but also addressing the same topic through the form of the exposition itself. To extroduce the research is my proposed way to lead out of the centripetally and synthesis-oriented of the introduction, to already consider the tangent towards the peripheral experience, towards the out-of-stage as an alter-stage at the outset.

I hope that this revised version of the exposition, and my arguments to keep the risk, and the gentle provocation, will be convincing enough for you to make it through and be sent to peer-reviewing for publication.

All the best for the continuation of the editorial process,

Vincent