Contexts‘new’ thinking about how to present absence in relation to theory and practice and to
refuse value distinctions.
hitherto, there has been a paucity of current literature on research in the arts which
sufficiently reveals the nature of art research and addresses its contemporary contexts,
whatever these might be. one of the main reasons for this is the peculiar complexity
of understanding how this works. however, the issue of Geist on method sets out how
a broadly based approach through semiotics and hermeneutics lends considerable
insight into the qualitatively distinctive methods of art research. one of the findings
is a declaration of an ‘aesthetics’ of methodologies in the arts (Bärtås 2008). This is a
formulation of research which is judged appropriate to its intentions ‘inside’ the research
process and practice, and relates strongly to our last phd example. authors in Geist on
method, point out clearly that art as research is also art as art, that there is a particular
rhetoric which does not mean that art is subject to the rules of linguistic formulation,
but that it is a kind of ‘rhetoric in action’ (Weckman 2008). This clearly mirrors all
the key examples we have briefly explored and points up a field where translation,
interconnection and the rhetorics of dissemination are important (Chapter 9). it is also
worth mentioning that it highlights connections through individual doctoral studies
and research projects. in this context, in ascott (2008) we can see how the idea of
the research subject being ‘unmade’ through the process of research relates directly
both to our first example, who was supervised by ascott, and to others. The relation
of the individual researcher to permeable fields of influence has yet to be traced. it is
surely a question, as it is with any research field of both conventional interconnections
and consolidating of research areas and new discoveries. in this chapter we do not
propose any new theorizing, but rather introduce the idea that individual doctoral
research practices might prove to be key sources for the development of our various
research fields. as a passing observation, in the editorial of Geist on method, insistence
on the orientation and re- orientation involved in artistic research, the ‘dynamic
relationship where practice recurrently restructures its own conditions’ adds to current
conversations on arts research. The idea of a recurrent restructuring of the research
project’s conditions is central to a clear understanding of what it is to research as a
consciously embodied subject.
We can pursue the theme of the embodied subject/researcher through numerous
examples in the uK, some of which successfully negotiate the pitfalls of the
autobiographic. We will pick out one doctorate from a feminist context, where much
of this work stems, to highlight. This is a study which looks at and produces ‘creative
passages into the self’ (zia 2001). its thesis is formulated through excerpts from the
artist’s journal, her diary, exegeses specifically on current feminist theory, play scripts,
albums and paintings. Together they provide what the author calls a genealogy of
the feminine. it is highly literary, poetic and almost constructs its own set of enacted
literary and artistic myths. it deploys both writing and art works as generative sources
to realize the self as ‘a complex becoming between the numinous and the ordinary’ (zia
2001: 3). The artist proposes a poetic zone where the numinous is said to enter into the
ordinary as a particular space, place and moment of becoming more truly ‘a self’. again,
it would be relatively easy within the uK to find a range of examples of phds which
posit an autobiographical narrative as central to research findings. however, within
the processes of research, we have found that there are many examples of research