Enabling Knowledge: The Art of Nurturing Unknown Spaces
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7577/information.5053Keywords:
artistic research practice, unknown, methodology, non-method, non-representational methods, object-oriented ontology (OOO), performance, performance-lecture, new materialism, research-creation, epistemologyAbstract
This article is both an exploration and a reflection on the process of generating knowledge from an encounter with the unknown. It documents what practising the ‘ethics of the unknown’ (Eeg-Tverbakk 2016) consisted of and what insights it led to in relation to two projects: ‘Childism’ (2015), based on documents from an informant who experienced child abuse, and ‘Embodied’ (2018), a performance lecture presenting both research and lived experience of involuntary childlessness. To reflect the fluidity, multi-directionality and, at points, messiness- of the process of practising the ethics of the unknown, theory and practice are not as rigidly separated in the text as the conventions of academic publication would normally require. The text alternates analysis, the voices of the authors, as well as sound files and images designed to offer experiential glimpses into the performances and the arguments. Theoretically, the concepts outlined are inspired by quite different strands of materialist thinking (object-oriented philosophy and new materialism). The research takes liberties when relating to different philosophical concepts that have proven to be useful in the practice of staging documentary material. We are not proposing a ‘method’ but rather arguing along with Erin Manning for ‘research creation’, where methods have to be invented and developed for each project. As such, this article also places itself within the discussions on post-qualitative, non-representational and performative research.
References
Archetti, C. [Untold Stories] (2018a). Writing about invisibility: Childlessness beyond not having the baby. Paper presented at “Untold stories: When the ‘family dream’ goes unrealized”, Litteraturhuset, Oslo, 8 February. [YouTube video]. https://bit.ly/33uVIqm
Archetti, C. [Untold Stories] (2018b). Embodied. Performance lecture delivered at Fortellerfestivalen [Norwegian Storytelling Festival], Sentralen, Oslo, 14–15 April 2018. [YouTube video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XcAzx0jlhI
Archetti, C. (2020). Childlessness in the Age of Communication: Deconstructing Silence. Abingdon: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367810399
Archetti, C. (2022). When public relations can heal: An embodied theory of silence for public communication. Public Relations Inquiry, 11(11): 37-56. https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147X211014095
Archetti, C. & Eeg-Tverbakk, C. (2020). Of cross-disciplinary encounters: Introducing movement, breath and other artistic interventions in academic research. Performance lecture delivered at Artistic Research @ Kristiania (AR@K 2020) symposium, Oslo, 10 March 2020.
Arlander, A. (2018). Multiple futures of performance as research? In A. Arlander, B. Barton, M. Dreyer-Lude M, & B.Spatz (Eds), Performance as Research. Knowledge, Methods, Impact (pp. 333-349). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315157672-18
Atkinson, D. (2018). Art, Disobedience and Ethics. Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62639-0
Babbie, E. (2017). The Basics of Social Research. 7th ed. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. London: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv12101zq
Benso, S. (2000). The Face of Things, A Different Side of Ethics. Albany: State University of New York.
Caruth, C. (1996). Unclaimed Experience, Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Denzin, N. K. (2003). Performing [auto] ethnography politically. The Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, 23(3): 257–278. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412985390
Eeg-Tverbakk, C. (2016). Theatre-ting, Toward a Materialist Strategy of Staging Documents [PhD], Roehampton University.
Ettinger, B. (2007). Transcryptum: Memory Tracing in/for/with the Other. In: Massumi, B. (ed.) Matrixial Borderspace. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
Ettinger, B. (1999). Traumatic Wit(h)ness-Thing and Matrixial Co/ in-habituating. Parallax, 5(1). pp. 89–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/135346499249911
Garcia, T. (2014). Form and Object, A Treatise on Things. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748681518
Gendlin, E. (1997). The Process Model. Spring Hill, NY: The Focusing Institute.
Gendlin, E. (2004). Introduction to Thinking At the Edge. The Folio, 19(1). Available at: http://previous.focusing.org/tae-intro.html#b
Harman, G. (2002). Tool-Being, Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects. Peru Illinois: Carus Publishing Company.
Harman, G. (2010). Towards Speculative Realism. Winchester and Washington: Zero Books.
Harman, G. (2012). The Third Table, No 085, dOCUMENTA (13). Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag.
Heidegger, M. (2001). Poetry, Language, Thought. New York: Perennial Classics.
Krycka, K. C. (2006). Thinking at the Edge: Where theory and practice meet to create fresh understandings. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology 6(1): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/20797222.2006.11433935
Johnson, M. (2017). Embodied Mind, Meaning, And Reason: How Our Bodies Give Rise to Understanding. London: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226500393.001.0001
Latour, Bruno. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Manning, E. (2015). Mot metode. In Otterstad, A.M. & Reinertsen, A.B. (eds.) Metodefestival og øyeblikksrealisme – eksperimenterende kvalitative forskningspassasjer. Fagbokforlaget.
Morton, T. (2013). Realist Magic Objects, Ontology, Causality. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/ohp.13106496.0001.001
Plate, L. & Smelik, A. (2013). Performing Memory in Art and Popular Culture. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203070291
Pollock, G. (2009). Art/Trauma/Representation. Parallax, 15(1), pp. 40–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534640802604372
Smartt Gullion, J. (2018). Diffractive Ethnography. New York, NY: Routledge.
St. Pierre, E.A. (2011) Post qualitative research: the critique and the coming after. In N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Inquiry (pp. 611–635). Sage Publications.
Ziarek, K. (2004). The Force of Art. Stanford: Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503624849
Østern, T. P., Jusslin, S., Nødtvedt Knudsen, K., Maapalo, P., & Bjørkøy, I. (2021). A performative paradigm for post-qualitative inquiry. Qualitative Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941211027444
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Cristina Archetti, Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).