Contextspractices. What do you look at or listen to carefully, and what do you let pass unnoticed
- these conventional choices are important when we consider what are relevant issues
to explore, and what is an innovation or an original research contribution for the field in
question. Relevant research questions vary for different disciplines, as do the adequate
(or accustomed) ways of going about finding answers to them. does art practice involve
research activities in itself, like location research in film scenography, or text analysis in
drama theatre? What are the customary and expected ways of creating, presenting and
discussing work? Who takes part in the discussions and at what stage of the process?
in questions like these, what is ordinary in one art world is considered extraordinary
in another. sometimes traditional customs are hard to articulate, since most artists
and participants take them for granted. The explicit self- understanding of a field does
not always include consciousness of its own habits. a private studio is a basic tool for
many visual artists, like an instrument for a musician, self- evident. an ideal rehearsal
space for dancers is different from that of theatre rehearsals. The amount of discussion
needed for creating a new theatre performance is astounding for somebody normally
working as a painter. The amount of interpretative talk generated around an artwork
seems odd to a performer who prefers the immediate response of an audience or wants
to deliver a statement. and so on.
it is useful to remember that most dichotomies presented in the following, such
as the juxtaposing of visual arts and performing arts are – if not patently absurd – at
least much too broad and loose to be useful as starting points for research. however,
the traditions and conventions within various art worlds have a strong impact on
the motivation, questions, methods, discourses of and difficulties for research. and
one of the first tasks of an artist researcher is to try to become aware of the various
preconceptions and presuppositions she has inherited or chosen with her field.
a case combining visual and performing arts, a small video work called Year of the
Dog in Kalvola – Calendar (4 min.)^1 performed in 2006, exhibited in 2007, can serve as
an example of the importance of context. The work was performed and recorded once a
month in the same place, a village about 120 kilometres northwest of helsinki, Finland.
The video shows a human figure with a yellowish scarf, hanging from the branch of an
old pine tree and then leaning on the trunk, with the seasons changing around them.
performing was used in the creation of the work and the result was presented as visual
art, as part of a larger project, not as a research outcome explicitly. if i would place it in
context in various art fields (as a quick thought experiment only) i would focus on very
different issues. From a visual art perspective the form of the work – a video of the artist
performing a simple action – is fairly traditional and could be understood as a form
of performative self- imaging (Jones 2006), or could be discussed as commenting on
the tradition of Rückenfiguren in german romantic painting, especially Caspar david
Friedrich (andrews 1999).
From a performing arts perspective, the work could be looked at differently
depending on the art form. as a documentary film the peculiarity of the work could be
the use of a static camera, the repeated returning to the same place and the use of the
same framing, but some explanation would probably be needed for the lack of voice-
over or commentary. Within theatre the work could be discussed in relation to the
possibilities of digital scenography or as an example of a dramaturgical device to show
the passing of time, but would be peripheral to the problems usually discussed, centred