Column 1 - Discursive: Column 2 - Performative:
Who? Anna Pakes
What do they say (key aspects)? She questions the commonly
believed notion that the epistemological value of art (in PaR)
resides in the artist's intention or in the creative process, whereas,
according to Gadamer (1987) and other theorists, the artwork
itself could be regarded as an embodiment of knowledge.
How is it relevant to your work and/or how does it fit with other
resources? Pakes (2004) offers a perspective into Gadamer's
(1987) approach to hermeneutics, which may bring light into the
issue of the artwork being itself a vehicle for new insight rather
than an illustration of one's ideas. In this way, the artwork might
be regarded as a transformative practice that "makes insight
available to a much wider community" (Pakes 2004).
What do you think about it? As Pakes herself has problematised,
what is not clear in this hermeneutical model is the issue of
differentiation between artworks in the academic and
professional fields. She argues: "For example, how can one
distinguish PAR from art not governed by research-imperatives if
all art has the kind of cognitive import that Gadamer suggests?
The hermeneutic view would also need much more detailed
elaboration to clarify its implications for the conduct,
presentation and assessment of PAR." (Pakes 2004). However,
the implication that the artwork itself is an embodiment of
knowledge might be useful for the understanding that, in PaR, it
is in the transit between theory and practice that new insight
becomes available (this understanding is perhaps one of the
hypotheses which I will investigate in my essay).
Who? Emilyn Claid and Valerie Birginshaw
What do they say (key aspects)? In their project
Embodying Ambiguities (2001-2004), they have
explored the interplay between written and danced
texts; and their process involved performed and
written material, as well as a film and the creation of
a website. Through their research in practice, their
initial aim was to discover a new or different kind of
knowledge.
How is it relevant to your work and/or how does it fit
with other resources? Their findings which include
Deleuzian views on 'becoming kinds of subjectivity'
and 'thinking as movement' resonate with Katz and
Greiner's considerations on the body as media and
dance as thought patterns.In my essay, I believe it
would be worth it to go deeper into Deleuze's
findings.
What do you think about it? It sounds like a very
interesting project and I will definitely look at it more
carefully for my essay. However, I must make a note
on the conditions with which its website finds itself.
When I looked at it online, I was hoping to find more
information about the project (possibly some written
articles and footage from rehearsals/performances),
but instead I was left with the impression that it has
been abandoned before the project's conclusion.
Bibliography:
Pakes, Anna (2004) Art as action or art as object? the
embodiment of knowledge in practice as research
[online], Working Papers in Art and Design, 3, available
from:
http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades
/vol3/apabs.html [accessed 1 February 2010]
Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1987) Truth and Method, 2nd revised
edition, W. Glen-Doepel's translation revised by J.
Weinsheimer & D.G. Marshall, London: Sheed & Ward.
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Who? Michael Biggs
What do they say (key aspects)? Like Pakes (2004), Biggs (2003)
also investigates the notion of whether the work of art may
embody knowledge. For this, he offers a very clear account
through which he differentiates art as therapy, as cultural
practice, and as research; suggesting then that the artwork
alone cannot embody knowledge. In his view, the sharing of an
artwork with an audience is a process of communication, where
new meanings might be constructed; and in the case of art as
research, the contextualising of such work is as important as its
outcome when it comes to producing knowledge. For this
reason, his point of view differs from the one mentioned above.
How is it relevant to your work and/or how does it fit with other
resources? Biggs' (2003) discussion about control over the
audience's reception of an artwork might offer an insight into the bodies, each of them having their own way of
issue of the artist's intentionality when developing PaR works. For organizing them. In this process of transmission the
him, "If the aim of research is to communicate knowledge or
Maybe it would be worth it to make a note on my
essay about the difficulty of accessing practical work
in PaR, which uneases the study and investigation
into the area by other researchers.
References:
Birginshaw, Valerie and Emilyn Claid (2003)
'Embodying Ambiguities: Intertextual Plays
Between Philosophies and the Performing
Body', Electronic publication of PARIP
conference proceedings [online], Bristol, UK:
University of Bristol, available from:
http://www.bris.ac.uk/parip/brig_claid.htm
[accessed 7 February 2010]
Unknown Author (Unknown Date) Embodying
Ambiguities [online], available from:
www.embambe.com [accessed 7 February
2010]
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Who? Gaby Imparato
What do they say (key aspects)? Imparato makes
use of Memetics Theory to investigate how Martha
Graham's system of movements found permanence
through time. She argues that since the creation of
this system until present days, Graham's movements
were disseminated in different ways by different
information, according to Imparato, has been
understanding then reception cannot be an uncontrolled successfully transmitted.
process. The interpretation of embodied knowledge presented
in an uncontextualised way is an uncontrolled process" (Biggs How is it relevant to your work and/or how does it fit
2003). with other resources? In her claim that dance is the
body's way of thinking through evolutive and
What do you think about it? For me, this issue of contextualisation selective memory, Imparato's work offers an insight
does make sense, as I regard the artistic practice as a dynamic into how a certain theory (in this case, the Memetics)
process in which choices are constantly taken, re-considered may inform practice and vice-versa. Her MA
and re-invented (both in PaR and in a more professional research met both a discursive and a performative
context). These choices refer to the way the artist wants to outcome, and it was an exercise into the inter-
present their work to the audience, offering them different relation of both these areas.
directions to which they might guide their interpretation. The
more these directions are specified, the more chances the artist What do you think about it? As outlined before, I
have for communicating what they initially wanted. For Biggs, have raised the issue of whether works of this kind
then, the research taken in works of PaR deals with this would not be more concerned with the illustration of
narrowing of the reception process. However, I do have a a certain theory through practice rather than the
concern regarding his point of view, which is the use of the terms production of knowledge. Does practice have its
'control' and 'uncontrol'. For me, in a way or another, the artist own mechanisms for producing knowledge? In a
cannot have any control over the interpretations that might be PaR investigation, does theory need to be always the
made on his work, and I would use, instead, terms such as departing point? Or again, there is no such
'direction', 'specification', and 'narrowing', as used above. separation as to what comes before and what goes
next whithin a research or creative process?
Bibliography:
References:
Biggs, Michael (2003) 'The role of "the work" in research', in
Electronic publication of PARIP conference proceedings Imparato, Gaby (1999) Morse de Sangue,
[online], Bristol, UK: University of Bristol, available from: unpublished MA dissertation, São Paulo:
http://www.bris.ac.uk/parip/biggs.htm [accessed 6 Pontifícia Católica de São Paulo
February 2010]
Imparato, Gaby (2004) 'Dance X Memes: Transits
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Between Nature and Culture' idanca.net
[online] Rio de Janeiro: Unknown Publisher,
Who? Helena Katz and Christine Greiner available from: http://idanca.net/lang/en-
us/2004/05/23/danca-x-memes-o-transito-
What do they say (key aspects)? In their efforts of overcoming entre-natureza-e-cultura/202/ [accessed 7
dualities such as nature and culture, mind and body, and body February 2010]
and ambient, these Brazilian authors have been developing an
area of investigation in which the human body is understood as -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
media. Their proposition suggests a processual understanding of
body, in which fixed assumptions of universal qualities and
categories do not take place. Their inter-theoric approach
(which borrows from disciplines such as Cognitive Sciences,
Evolutionary Theories, Cultural Studies, Semiotics and
Communication) presents the body as a transitory result of their
processes of interaction with the environment. Their notion of
self, therefore, is totally fluid and implies a constant process of
adaptations/reconfigurations between the body and their
surroundings. For them, communication is associated with
exchange of information; and this process can be recognised in
different instances (e.g.: an ice cube melting is a result from its
interaction with a warmer environment).

How is it relevant to your work and/or how does it fit with other
resources? The model offered by Katz and Greiner provides a
notion of knowledge which is embodied in and through the
body itself. According to them, theory and practice do not
differentiate, as both these areas are cognitive processes that
happen interactively all over the body. Their efforts, and of their
followers, are towards the construction of a field where
investigation might transit from one area to the other.

What do you think about it? As a former student from these

authors, who took classes with them while still very young and
during four years, I can say that my lines of thought and my
sense of being in the world have been immensely influenced by
their contributions and those from their collaborators. I feel,
indeed, that knowledge can be constructed, explored, and
shared in the interaction between theory and practice (and this
is where my efforts are being drawn in my personal trajectory).
However, what I believe that their model does not embrace is a
clearer definition towards identifying art in a more academic
context and in a more professional one. Do these differences
indeed exist? Or, in other words, is the nature of PaR different
from the one of professional artworks? Or would this effort
towards differentiation be just one more dualistic way of
understanding something that exists regardless of such
definitions?

Bibliography:

Katz, Helena and Christine Greiner (2001) 'A Natureza Cultural do

Corpo', in Nilson Damasceno, ed. Lições de Dança 3, Rio
de Janeiro: UniverCidade, 77-102

Katz, Helena and Christine Greiner (2004) 'O Meio é a

Mensagem: Porque o Corpo é Objeto da Comunicação'
in Nora, Sigrid, org. Húmus 1, Caxias do Sul: Prefeitura
Municipal de Caxias do Sul, 13-19

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Who? Christopher Bannerman

What do they say (key aspects)? In his investigation on the issue

of intuition in the creative processes, he seems to have as a key
aspect the difference between conscious reflection (or
knowledge) and unconscious insight (or intuition). For him,
intuition is an embodied experience; and the creative practice
in contemporary performing art cannot happen without the
interplay between these two instances.

How is it relevant to your work and/or how does it fit with other
resources? If, in PaR, a discursive outcome needs to be
associated with a practical one, then the artist/researcher needs
to know how and why they met these results. How does the issue
of intuition, as 'unconscious insight' bring light to this discussing?
Would we, in PaR, be trying to deal with the uncovering of the
unrecognisable?

What do you think about it? I believe that intuition could be

regarded as a stage where the artist (be it in PaR or not) will
invariably find themselves, sooner or later in their process. The
transit between conscious and unconscious, as Bannerman
affirms, is inherent in creative practices, and I believe that in
research context the academic also works in between the
boundaries of the known and unknown (when, for example, they
raise a known question without knowing what the outcomes
might be). As Bannerman affirms, "The spontaneous insight often
delivers a new step forward, but it is a step that is grounded in a
journey of experience, craft and knowledge, even if this journey
itself has benefited from an intuitive guiding force" (Bannerman
2006: 19).

Bibliography:

Bannerman, Christopher (2006) 'The Butterfly Unpinned', in

Bannerman, Christopher, Joshua Sofaer and Jane Watt,
eds. Navigating the Unknown: The Creative Process in
Contemporary Performing Arts, London: Middlesex
University Press, 12-23.

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