Paper short abstract:

This paper will problematise the theorisation and definition of art by examining 'research-creation'. Going beyond research by artists as commonly understood, it is the complex intersection of art practice, theoretical concepts, and research, a route into the question of art as 'knowledge forming'.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will problematise the theorisation and definition of art by examining 'research-creation'. Going beyond research by artists, as it is commonly understood, I will explore how it is the "complex intersection of art practice, theoretical concepts, and research" as a route into the question of art as 'knowledge forming'.

Given the increasing corporisation of universities, including art schools, experimental pedagogy and research must be defended. The developing notion of 'research-creation' is a means of insisting on, troubling, and valuing knowledge produced through mattering practice and ways of thinking-with in multiple, frictional, productive, modes. Following the feminist artist Natalie Loveless, and what she calls her own 'polydisciplinamory', I will argue that research -creation is not a method, it cannot be 'appropriated'. Research-creation does not describe, explain or represent (it is not ethnographic, as Ingold also argues for anthropology). Creating concepts and problematising them in the same move, it is a thinking-in-movement, "thinking saturated with affect" (Springgay and Truman 2016). It doesn't offer a theory or definition of art because it IS art AND is IS theory: theorypractice. The point of it is the unravelling of ideas about what knowledge is, how it is made and who makes it. This is in alignment with feminist and queer-thinking that asks us to pay attention to who participates, whose labour counts, and which modes of address are given scholarly credence.

I will also present some of my recent 'theorypractice' work, in a para-digital mode - between analogue and digital forms, in conversation, visual artwork, and performance.