CharaCteristiCs of visuaL and Performing artsto some visual artists interested in using actors in video works that actors are not only
there to execute what they are told to do; they are – if they are any good – creative artists
to collaborate with and give tasks to solve. here again live art and performance art are
something of an exception, since most performance artists prefer to work on their own.
however, some live artists eagerly collaborate with their audiences.
performance art and live art exemplify another distinction which has relevance
for research: is the performance a separate entity (even if it is ephemeral), a defined,
planned and more or less fixed sequence of actions? or is it a loosely structured
situation, an ongoing activity, a constantly evolving improvised exchange, created by or
together with the spectators or participants, as many live artworks are? Collaboration
can involve the audience as well, with the beholder not only integral to the work but
an active participant in creating it. needless to say, this has implications for research.
The habituation to collective forms of creation, where a group of artists produces
something more than each individual artist could do alone, the use of intensely com-
municative processes and to a shared knowing, could be useful for research projects.
Research collaboration is not yet widely used in artistic research, though various forms
of joint creation and performing together are common working methods in performing
arts. most artist researchers work with other artists in the role of artists only. Col-
laboration among artist researchers is an interesting possibility (Rouhiainen 2008).
Co- operation between a scholar and an artist almost inevitably leads to the scholar
doing the research and the artists producing art. in projects aiming at technological
innovation intensive collaboration between artists, researchers and various experts is
more common (Chapter 12). shared creation can thus be both the subject of inquiry
(how to create new, less hierarchical ways of working) and a methodological approach
(shared reflexivity). artistic ways of working together could form interesting models for
research procedures as well.
many artists who engage in artistic or art- based research understand research as
a way of developing and improving their art. But some artist researchers try to avoid
discussing their own practice in their research, since they do not want to explicate their
intentions. often artists prefer not to interpret their own artwork, feeling that the work
has a life beyond its maker, and sensing that their main contribution to knowledge and
understanding is elsewhere. some are influenced by old taboos: ‘it is not the job of the
artist to explain her works’. The positions of the artist and the scholar (as the curator/
producer, critic and historian) have traditionally been separated, as is reflected in the
degrees of ma and mFa; the curator or producer creating a context for, the critic
evaluating, and the historian canonising, a work. even though the divide has been
eroded from both sides, many unspoken rules still influence the field.
The idea that the researcher is herself involved in producing the objects she studies
is especially problematic in visual and performing arts, since traditional divisions have
developed between people who make art (painters, composers, theatre directors,
performance artists, etc.) and people who study artworks or artists (such as art
historians, musicologists, theatre researchers, performance theorists, etc.). To some
extent this has served to make artists anti- intellectual. if artists are constructed to
be like ‘beautiful animals’, who do not know what they do, they need somebody else
to manage them, and to study and explain what they do. This sounds outdated and
degrading, but in some instances it has been useful. art historians understand other