Artistic Research: a Performative Paradigm?

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Artistic Research: A Performative Paradigm?

ABSTRACT BARBARA BOLT

What is performativity and what would be the characteristics of a performative Barbara Bolt is a practising artist and art theorist and is Associate Dean of research paradigm? Is it enough to say that the performance/production is an Research at the Victorian College of the Arts, and the Melbourne Conservato- event/act/production that becomes the thing done and experienced by an audi- rium of Music at the University of Melbourne. She has written extensively on ence? Tis essay focuses on artistic research in order to argue that a performative artistic research and the ethical implications of art as research. Bolt is currently research paradigm needs to be understood in terms of the performative force of the lead researcher on an Ofce of Learning and Teaching project, “Developing the research, its capacity to efect “movement” in thought, word and deed in the new approaches to ethics and research integrity training through challenges individual and social sensorium. Tese movements enable a reconfguration of posed by creative practice research.” She is author of Art Beyond Representation: conventions from within rather from outside of convention. It proposes that what Te Performative Power of the Image (I.B. Tauris, 2004) and Heidegger Reframed: is at stake is the possibility that a performative paradigm ofers a new perspec- Interpreting Key Tinkers for the Arts (I.B. Tauris, 2011). She has co-edited four tive on research not just in the artistic feld, but also in the social sciences, the volumes including Material Inventions: Applying Creative Arts Research, London humanities and in the sciences, where the reduction of “raw life” to “data” cannot (I.B. Tauris, 2014), Carnal Knowledge: Towards a “New Materialism” through the encapsulate the performative efects of much primary research. Arts, London, (I.B. Tauris, 2013) and Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, (I.B. Tauris, 2007). Her website is: http://www.barbbolt.com/ 130 PARSE JOURNAL

Introduction What does this slippage of the “performative” into “experiential” in contemporary art mean for art? Over the past decade or so the term “performativ- More specifcally for this essay, what does this mean ity” has come to pervade contemporary discus- for the emerging discipline of artistic research? How sions around the visual and performing arts—the does one assess “experience” for example? Does it performative arts, performative arts practitioners, reduce art merely to a phenomenological investiga- performative arts based research, performative tion of art’s reception, or does the evaluation of such strategies, performative pedagogy, performative work in the research feld collapse artistic research sound design, ad infnitum—ushering in what has into ethnographic or auto-ethnographic research on been termed the performative turn.1 While initially the one hand or scientifc measurement of responses there tended to be a confation of the terms per- and psychometric testing on the other hand? Or is formativity, performance and performance art in there something else at stake? discourses around contemporary art and aesthetics, it could now be said that all art is ontologically In this essay I return to J.L. Austin’s elaboration performative. In her essay “Te Experiential Turn”, on the term performativity to evaluate its value for published online as part of the Walker Art Center’s the arts as a theoretical and methodological tool inaugural Living Collections Catalogue,2 Dorothea for understanding the impact of artistic research in von Hantelmann tells us, “(t)here is no performa- contrast to the way it has been popularly taken up tive artwork because there is no nonperformative across contemporary visual and performing arts. I artwork.”3 According to the terms of “the performa- address the following questions: What is performative” it could thus be argued that even the most tivity? And what would be the characteristics of a illusionistic of representational art as exemplifed performative research paradigm? Is it enough to in trompe l’oeil painting is performative—the say that the performance/production is an event/ pictorial equivalent of speech act theory. Tus von act/production that becomes the thing done and Hantelmann argues that it “makes little sense to experienced by an audience? Are all performances/ speak of a performative artwork because every productions performative? Against what criteria do artwork has a reality-producing dimension.”4 we assess the success or failure of a performance/ production? Finally, can a performative model make In “Te Experiential Turn”, Von Hantelmann picks valid “truth” claims that will be recognised by the her way through the tautological theoretical terrain broader research community? and the popular take up of the performative to argue its value in understanding the experiential Te essay argues that the performative needs to turn in contemporary art, that is, contemporary art’s be understood in terms of the performative force concern with creating a/efects on its viewers. She of art, that is, its capacity to efect “movement” in comments: thought, word and deed in the individual and social sensorium. Tese movements enable a reconfgura- A concern with an artwork’s efects on the viewer tion of conventions from within rather than outside and with the situation in which it takes place has of convention. Seen in the context of other research indeed become a dominant feature of contemporary paradigms—namely the qualitative and quantita- art since the 1960s. Although I am aware that a tive paradigms of research—I will argue that what new notion will cause new problems, I want to is at stake are the possibilities that a performative suggest the experiential turn as a term that might paradigm ofers a new perspective on research not be more appropriate and useful to describe these just in the social sciences and humanities, but also in ongoing tendencies in contemporary art.5 the sciences. BARBARA BOLT 131

A Performative Paradigm? 1. Te term “the performative arts” has been adopted as a catch phrase used in common parlance to describe much contemporary visual and performing arts practice. It has tended to be used in relation to forms that involve some In 2009, I published an essay entitled “A Performa- form of performance or draw on the tradition of performance art where art tive Paradigm for the Creative Arts” in Working is evaluated in terms what it does rather than what it means or signifes. 6 For some, such as the Mountain Standard Time Performative Art Festival Papers in Art and Design. Tis essay had developed Society, “the ‘performative’ describes practices that originate from a visual in response to my experience in supervising creative or media arts background and involve the live presence of the artist.” For others, such as the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, University Gallery arts MFAs and PhDs in artistic research in at Washington University in St. Louis, the “stress of the performative is on Australia, where an exhibition, recital, performance process, participant, event, execution, and expressive action.” Pol Dehert or other form of creative work constitutes the major and Karel Vanhaesebrouck adopt the term “performative practice” and “performative actions” to encapsulate the idea of a “living experiment” in their component of the submission in conjunction with article “From Wunderkammer to Szeemann and Back: Te Artistic Research an exposition that provides a meta-discussion of Exposition as Performative and Didactic Experience”. In Te Exposition of Artistic Research: Publishing Art in the Academia. Leiden: Leiden University the context, methodology and research fndings of Press. 2014. pp. 206-219. Qualitative researcher Kip Jones talks about the research. In this model, the art is the research the “performative” use of arts-based research in his article “A biographic and the written exposition provides the discursive researcher in pursuit of an aesthetic: Te use of arts-based (re)representations 7 in ‘performative’ dissemination of life stories”. See Kip Jones, “A biographic contextualisation for the research project. While art researcher in pursuit of an aesthetic: Te use of arts-based (re)representa- has its own eloquence that is non-reducible, through tions in ‘performative’ dissemination of life stories”. In Qualitative Sociology Review 2. no.1. April 2006. pp. 66-85. While the Museum of Contemporary the form of the exposition the “art” becomes Art, Denmark, initiated an annual festival, ACTS —Festival for Performa- data for discussion. What has become apparent, tive Art, in 2011. Tis festival “presents ephemeral art forms taking place however, is that artistic research or creative arts ‘here and now,’ and which in a humorous, critical or sensual way relates to the world, we live in”. enquiry reveals new modes and methodologies that could be considered to constitute a new paradigm 2. Te Walker Art Center’s inaugural catalogue, Living Collections Catalogue, is devoted to the notion of performativity in contemporary art and perfor- of research distinct from the dominant modes of mance. In her introduction to the catalogue, Elizabeth Carpenter noted that qualitative and quantitative research that provide the in “its attempt to come to terms with this topic… the most pressing question default modes of research in the academy. Tis new is that of how a collecting institution such as the Walker, with its vital and internationally renowned performing arts programs and commissions (in- paradigm of research could be deemed the “per- cluding dance, music, and experimental theater), might go about transform- formative paradigm”, a mode of research character- ing its acquisition strategies to include the collection of not only ‘performative objects’ but performance itself.” http://www.walkerart.org/collections/ ised by a productive performativity where art is both publications/performativity/introduction/ (Accessed 2016-04-12). productive in its own right as well as being data that could be analysed using qualitative and aesthetic 3. Von Hantelmann, D. Te Experiential Turn. Living Collections Catalogue. Walker Art Centre. 2014. http://www.walkerart.org/collections/publica- modes. tions/performativity/(Accessed 2015-10-01).

Making a claim for a “new” paradigm in research 4. Ibid. cannot go unremarked. In her introduction to 5. Ibid. Material Inventions: Applying Creative Arts Research 6. Tis paper is a reworking of the original essay that was published as “A (2014), Estelle Barrett has drawn on Tomas Kuhn’s Performative Paradigm for the Creative Arts?” (2009) in the series Working notion of paradigm change, as elaborated in Te Papers in Art and Design. See https://www.herts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_ Structure of Scientifc Revolutions (1970), to argue that fle/0015/12417/WPIAAD_vol5_bolt.pdf (Accessed 2016-04-08). with its new methodological approaches and modes 7. Michael Schwab and Henk Borgdof’s edited book Te Exposition of of knowing, the creative arts can “lay claim to its Artistic Research: Publishing Art in the Academy (2014) teases out some of 8 the nuances and diferences in the creative arts “exposition” in Europe and status as a new paradigm or ‘successor science’.” In Australia. addition to the “subjective and situated approach of 8. Barrett, E. Introduction: Extending the Field: Invention, Application artistic research… the tacit and intuitive processes, and Innovation in Creative Arts Enquiry. In Material Inventions: Applying the experiential and emergent nature of its meth- Creative Arts Research. E. Barrett and B. Bolt. (eds.). London: I.B. Tauris. odologies and the intrinsically interdisciplinary 2014. p. 3. 132 PARSE JOURNAL

dimension of this mode of research that is derived of a better word, it names. Te research process from it material and social relationality.”9 Barrett inaugurates movement and transformation. It is also identifed a number of other attributes that performative. It is not qualitative research: it is qualify creative arts research as a new paradigm. itself - a new paradigm of research with its own Tese include processes that allow: distinctive protocols, principles and validation procedures.11 new objects of thought to emerge through cycles of making and refection; a recognition of the Haseman points to the fact that while qualitative generative potential of the ambiguity and the research methodologies such as refective practice, indeterminacy of the aesthetic object and the action research, grounded theory and participant- necessity for ongoing decoding, analysis and observation have informed what was initially called translation and, fnally, the acknowledgement that practice-led research, this mode of artistic research instruments and objects of research are not passive, can not merely be subsumed under the qualitative but emerge as co-producers in collaborative and, research framework. He suggests that the distinc- in the case of audiences, participatory approaches tive research strategies, interpretative methods and that may not be pre-determined at the outset of the outcomes arising in and out of creative arts, which research.10 are drawn from the working methods and practices of artists and practitioners point us towards a new Tus, while in the scientifc quantitative paradigm research paradigm. He termed this methodology the validity of research lies in repetition of the same, “performative” research. the performative paradigm operates according to repetition with diference. Tis is the generative A performative paradigm potentially ofers the potential of artistic research. In this essay I propose creative arts a radical new vision and a way of dis- to revisit the stakes involved in this “new” discipline tinguishing its research from dominant knowledge of research in order to think through whether the models. Haseman’s work has been signifcant in widespread adoption of the term “the performative boldly asserting a performative paradigm and arts” across the contemporary arts and performance claiming it for the creative arts. However, before has undermined or consolidated such a claim. we make claims for a performative model for the creative arts, there are a number of urgent tasks that need to be addressed. Firstly, there is a need to The Research Context defne the terms of a performative model in relation to the existing theories of performativity. Secondly, Brad Haselman’s article “A Manifesto for Performa- like the qualitative researchers before them, artistic tive Research” (2006) anticipated the performative researchers need to carefully mark out the territory turn in artistic research. He proposed and argued of a performative paradigm and diferentiate it from for a performative research model for the creative the established research orthodoxies by refning arts, distinguishing it from qualitative and quantita- its protocols and procedures; defning its concepts, tive models that constitute the dominant research methodologies and interpretive methods and paradigms in traditional research. Drawing from his assessing whether a performative paradigm really own feld of theatre, Haseman agued that: can hold its own within the broader feld of research.

when research fndings are presented as performative utterances, there is a double articulation with practice that brings into being what, for want BARBARA BOLT 133

Defning the Terms: What the term performativity is used as an 9. Barret, E. and Bolt, B. Practice as Research: Context, is Performativity? adjective that “denotes the performance Method, Knowledge. London: What Does it Look Like? aspect of any object or practice under I.B. Tauris. 2007. p. 7. consideration”.13 He continues, pointing 10. Barrett, E. Introduction: out the implications of this take on per- Extending the Field: Invention, Te term “performativity” was introduced formativity: “To address culture as ‘per- Application and Innovation in to the world by J.L. Austin in a lecture formative’ would be simply to examine Creative Arts Enquiry, p. 3. series entitled “How to do things with it as some kind or performance, without 11. Haseman, B. Tightrope words”, delivered as part of the William the specifc implications that would Writing: Creative Writing Programs in the RQF Environ- James Lectures at Harvard in 1955. follow on from an invocation of the line ment. In Text 2007. http:// While his lectures were not well received of thought frst developed distinctively by www.textjournal.com.au/ 14 april07/haseman.htm (Accessed at the time, their publication as How Austin.” 2016-04-08). to do Tings with Words (1962) incited interest among intellectuals across the It is precisely this “take” that has led 12. Austin, J.L. How to Do Tings with Words, J.O. Urmson humanities and social sciences. Te to the wholesale and, I would argue, and Marina Sbisà (eds). Oxford: central, most profound and enduring uncritical adoption of the performativ- Clarendon Press. 1975. p. 6. aspect of these lectures was Austin’s ity by the visual and performing arts. If 13. Loxley points out that claim that certain speech utterances the proponents of artistic research (and for Austin, performativity is or productions don’t just describe or I would consider myself to be among an adjective and a noun. Te words are actions in themselves report the world, but actually have a their number) are to successfully argue and do something in the world force whereby they perform the action to for a performative paradigm in artistic (performatives). See J. Loxley. Performativity. London and which they refer. Austin’s example of the research, we will need to be far more New York, NY: Routledge. words “I do” uttered during the marriage rigorous than this usage would suggest. 2007. p. 140. ceremony or a judges proclamation “I 14. Ibid. sentence you to ten years in prison”, In his early work on language, Austin exemplify that the power of the speech distinguished performative utterances 15. Searle, J.R. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of act to have real efects in the world. Tus from constative utterances. Te constative Language. London: Cambridge Austin observes: “In these examples it utterance is concerned to establish a University Press. 1969. seems clear that to utter the sentence (in, correspondence between statements or 16. Derrida, J. Sending: on of course, the appropriate circumstances) utterances and the “facts” being described representation. Trans. P. Caws is not to describe my doing of what I or modelled. Te performative utterance, and M.A. Caws. Social Research 49. no 2. 1982. pp. 294-326; should be said in so uttering to be doing on the other hand, does not describe Derrida, J. Diférance. In A or to state that I am doing it: it is to do anything. It does things in the world. Critical and Cultural Teory it… the issuing of an utterance is the Performatives are never just reportage, Reader. A. Easthope and K. 12 McGowan (eds.). Sydney: Allen performance of an action.” He called but the utterance or production invokes and Unwin. 1992. pp. 108-132; these language acts performatives. a causal link between the utterance and Derrida, J. Limited Inc. Trans. S. Weber. Evanston, IL: Chi- things that happen in the world. In their cago University Press. 1998. While the creative arts, and in particular capacity to be both actions and generate Teatre Studies and Performance Teory, consequences, performative utterances 17. Deleuze, Gilles, and Guat- tari, Félix. A Tousand Plateaus: have come to claim the term per- enact real efects in the world. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. formativity as their own, its usage is not Translation and foreword by Brian Massumi. London and necessarily true to Austin’s elaboration of Trough the work of such people as New York, NY: Continuum. 15 16 performativity. In Performance Studies John Searle, Jacques Derrida, Gilles 2004 [1980]. for example, as James Loxley points out, Deleuze and Felix Guattari,17 Jürgen 134 PARSE JOURNAL

Habermas18 and, in particular, Judith Butler’s to move on from the modernist idea of the singular groundbreaking work on performativity and gesture of the heroic artist as genius, to a more gender,19 and subsequently its application across nuanced understanding of creativity that underpins the visual and performing arts by Barbara Bolt,20 artistic research. Drawing on Performance Teory Dorothea von Hantelmann,21 Erica Fischer-Lichte,22 in her theorisation of gender performativity, Butler Marsha Meskimmon23 and others, Austin’s work distinguishes between “performance” and “perform- on the performative speech act, has become part ativity”. She argues that performance presumes a of the established vocabulary of academia and the subject while performativity contests the very notion infuence has spread far beyond its linguistic foun- of the subject. Tus while performance can be dations. Te concept has come to infect the other understood as a deliberate “act”—such as in a theatre disciplines, particularly the creative and performing production, performance art or painting by a subject arts, but also other disciplines such as ethnography or subjects—performativity must be understood as and education. In the shift from a textual reading of the iterative and citational practice that brings into cultural productions to a performative understand- being that which it names. ing, performativity has invited new ways of analysis, modes that focus on process, participation, events, In her claim that performativity is an iterative and expressive actions and experience. In Searle’s hands, citational practice, Butler is very clear that per- Austin’s ideas become incorporated into a “general formativity involves repetition rather than singular- theory of the speech act”; through Derrida’s notion ity. Performativity is: “not a singular ‘act’, for it is of diférance, we come to understand the dynamics of always a reiteration of a norm or set of norms, and the iterability; in Butler’s theorising, Austin’s frame to the extent that it acquires an act-like status in the of reference is expanded to demonstrate how per- present, it conceals or dissimulates the conventions formativity can include bodily acts as well as speech of which it is a repetition.”24 While there might be acts; Deleuze espouses the forceful, transformative “too perfect performances”, “bad performances”, and creative potential of the performative; and Von “distorted performances”, “excessive performances”, Hantelmann, as we have seen, focuses attention on “playful performances” and “inverted performances”, the production of experience in contemporary art. Butler, like Austin, argues that performativity is conventional and iterative. While Deleuze’s transformative understanding of performativity remains fashionable in flm theory Te notion of conventionality and iterability may and among visual artists, Butler’s theorisation of the not sit comfortably with our preconceptions of the performative act has inspired Performance Studies originality of art or the singularity of the perfor- and Teatre Studies and has framed its theorisation mance. Nor does it conform to the commonly held of performativity. It is this understanding of per- assumptions that the “shock of the new” ushers in formativity that retains the greatest currency in the the transformative power of the art. Butler’s elabora- performing arts and to a lesser extent the visual arts, tion that the notion of performativity as an iterative while Von Hantelmann’s How To Do Tings with and citational practice at frst glance may not Art (2010) has profoundly infuenced the concept’s adequately account for the singular “performative” uptake in contemporary visual art and aesthetics. acts, that come under Von Hantelmann’s banner of experiential art. However, Von Hantelmann’s However, I would like to return us to Butler’s focus is on the “experiential” aspect of the work—its understanding of the theorisation of performativity reception rather than at the level of process and as a way of thinking about the performativity and production. In this sense, Von Hantlemann’s gaze iterability in the creative arts, which can enable us is somewhere else than Butler’s. It retains its focus BARBARA BOLT 135

on the singular unconventional act and It could be argued that there is no artist 18. Habermas, J. Te Teory of in doing so negates the foundational who precedes the repetitive practice Communicative Action. Vol. II: Lifeworld and System. Trans. T. assumptions that underpin Butler’s of art (and it is repetitive). Trough McCarthy. Boston, MA: Beacon. notion of performativity—iterability and practice, the artist comes into being.26 1987 [1981]. convention. Von Hantelmann’s account is Art practice is performative in that it 19. Butler, J. Imitation and gender compelling in understanding a particular enacts or produces “art” as an efect. insubordination. In Inside/out: mode or model of contemporary practice. “Artists” engage with, re-iterate and Lesbian Teories, Gay Teories. D. Fuss (ed.). London: Routledge. However, it does not help establish a question the “norms” of “art” existing in 1991. pp. 13-31; Butler, J. Bodies performative paradigm that may be used the socio-cultural context at a particular that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, New York, NY, and to account for research in the creative historical juncture. Similarly, art practice London: Routledge. 1993; Butler, arts. An “experiential turn” and a per- conceals the conventions of which it is a J. Gender Trouble: Feminism and formative paradigm are two diferent, if repetition. Te re-iteration that operates the Subversion of Identity, 2nd Edition, New York, NY, and related, beasts. in an artist’s practice produces a “natural- London: Routledge. 1999. ized” efect, which we come to label as an 27 20. Bolt, B. Art Beyond Represen- It is clear that if a performative paradigm artist’s style. Butler’s argument that the tation: Te Performative Power of is viable it has to be able to do the work “process of materialization stabilizes over the Image. London and New York, expected of a research paradigm, it has time to produce the efect of boundary, NY: I.B. Tauris. 2004. 28 to be able to defne its terms, refne its fxity and surface”, can be exemplifed 21. Von Hantelmann. How to do protocols and procedures and be able to in an “artist’s style”. Te disciplinary Tings with Art; and Von Hantel- mann. Te Experiential Turn. withstand scrutiny. I would suggest that operations of “art business” encourage Austin’s performativity, fltered through such repetition and re-iteration. It is to 22. Fischer-Lichte, E. Te Trans- the writings of Butler and Derrida may this sedimented or habitual style, that formative Power of Performance. Trans. Saskya Iris Jain. London enable us to defne our terms and begin “art business” attributes value. Te sedi- and New York, NY: Routledge. setting out frst principles. Here Butler’s mentation or stabilisation that produces 2008. account of performativity helps in this the efect of boundary, fxity and surface 23. Meskimmon, M. Walking task. is a consequence of the habit-provoking with Judy Watson: Painting, mode of discourse. However, is that all Politics and Intercorporeality. In Unframed: Practices and Politics of Butler’s theory of performativity relates that happens? What about original- Women’s Contemporary Painting. to the formation of the subject. In ity and original knowledge? Isn’t this R. Betterton (ed.). London and New York, NY: I.B. Tauris. 2004. Butler’s thesis, there is no subject who precisely what art and art-as-research pp. 62-78. precedes the repetition. Rather, through purports to do, regardless of the so-called performance, “I” come into being. She death of the avant-garde? 24. Butler. Bodies that Matter, p. 12. argues that “there is no performer prior to the performed, the performance is Within the repetitive and reiterative 25. Butler. Imitation and gender insubordination, p. 2. performative [and] the performance con- behaviour, Butler fgures that possi- stitutes the appearance of a ‘subject’ as bilities for disrupting the “habit” or the 26. Tere are similarities here its efect.”25 While Butler’s work specif- “norm” exist. Within the re-iteration, with Heidegger’s assertion that art creates the artist and the cally addresses the way in which sex and repetition or citation of the discursive artwork. gender are materialised in the everyday, law, “too perfect performances”, “bad 27. Bolt, Art Beyond Representa- I would suggest that there are some performances”, “distorted performances”, tion, pp. 152-153. curious similarities between this mate- “excessive performances”, “playful per- rialisation and the way in which “art” formances” and “inverted performances” 28. Butler. Bodies that Matter, p. 9. becomes materialised. create what she calls (de)constituting 29. Ibid. p. 10. possibilities.29 136 PARSE JOURNAL

30. Bolt, B. Te exegesis and Excessive and ironic performances and He continues: Diférance is the “process the shock of the new. Text Special Issue Website Series. parodic re-iterations shift the ground of of scission and division which would Number 3 April. Illuminat- what is considered the “norm”. In political produce or constitute diferent things or ing the Exegesis. 2004. and artistic practices, these subversive diferences”.32 http://www.grifth.edu.au/ school/art/text/speciss/is- performances have been employed sue3/content.htm (Accessed strategically. Te avant-garde, and more When Butler talks about gender 2016-04-17). recently feminist, queer and postcolonial “trouble” she alludes precisely to the 31. Derrida. Sending on practices, have actively engaged in prying productive nature of iteration. Performa- representation; Derrida. open the gaps and fssures produced tive utterances are subject to trouble Limited Inc. through re-iteration, in an efort to precisely because the repetition of a 32. Derrida. Diferénce, pp. disrupt and to get outside or beyond the conventional behaviour does lead to bad 112-113. “norm”. Avant-garde artistic practices, performances, infelicitous performances 33. Bolt, Art Beyond Repre- in particular, have made strategic use of and excessive performances. Repetition is sentation. the “too perfect”, “distorted”, “playful” never repetition of the same. It is always and the “inverted” performances in an repetition of diference. In everyday life attempt to create the “new”. we don’t always welcome the misfres and bad performances. In the creative arts Elsewhere I have argued that self-con- and artistic research, on the other had, it scious attempts at transgression do not in is these “misfres” that become the source themselves create originary knowledge.30 of innovation and movement. Tis is the I argued that the “shock of the new” is “stuf” of research. not the action of plunging audiences in crisis, but rather it is a particular form of If, as I have argued the research process understanding that is realised through inaugurates movement and transforma- practice—our dealings with ideas, tools tion through iterability, what are the and materials of production (including forms of this transformation and how are our bodies) in practice. I suggested that they to be interpreted and evaluated in a that originary knowledge or the new realm of research? Tus far, my account is revealed through handling, rather of performativity provides an alterna- through conscious acts of transgression. tive account of how “the new” emerges Here my understanding of “handling” through iterative practice, rather than or handleability can be understood as through the singular act. We see this iterative and citational practice that “pattern” in our own practices and those artists engage in their everyday artistic of our colleagues and students. It allows practice. us to begin to recognise the conventions (context of theory, context of practice) Derrida tells us that the iteratibility— and map the ruptures that shift practice. whether it is in performing language, Further, it allows us to understand both performing gender or performing art—is art as an efect and also what art does the mechanism through which there in the world. Tis is all very well, but is movement and transformation.31 He how does this model of research ft with uses the term diférance, to demonstrate the standards of proof demanded in the that each iteration is a “constitutive, qualitative and quantitative domains of productive and originary causality”. research? BARBARA BOLT 137

The Burden of Truth: Truth Claims Austin’s early distinction between the constative and the performative is useful for thinking about how we It is around the questions of “truth” and “standards might begin to distinguish a performative paradigm of proof” that the creative arts need to set out the from the qualitative and quantitative paradigms and stakes involved in research and diferentiate science- make an alternative “truth claim”. While constative as-research from the domain of knowledge that utterances and statements establish a correspondence has assumed the name “artistic research”. Here the between the description or modelling of the world discipline has much work to do to stake out its claim. and something in the world, performative utterances Like the social sciences and humanities before it, the productions do something in the world. Constative development of artistic research has proceeded in the statements and descriptions are the propositional or shadow of the research “model” par excellence, that discursive statements of qualitative and quantita- is, science-as-research. tive research. Quantitative and qualitative research methodologies rely on constative statements or Trough its systematic procedures, methodological utterance to establish truth claims. Here truth is consistency and ongoing peer review, science lays seen as correspondence. In other words: they are claim to “objective truth”. Te equation of objective- representationalist. ness or objectivity with truth (through measurement and calculation) has become the hallmark of Performativity ofers an alternative model, one that is the tradition of science-as-research. Trough its no longer grounded in the truth as correspondence, propositional form and its ability to establishing a but sets up a diferent paradigm altogether. Here I correspondence between statements or modelling of propose to return to the foundational understand- the world and the world, science establishes true or ing of performativity. Firstly, we have established false statements. Similarly, the social sciences and that the performative model of language is not based humanities produce descriptions that correspond to on the correspondence between a statement and the facts in the world. facts of the situation, but the utterance/production is actually already part of the facts. Te performa- Te creative arts, in contrast, are often criticised for tive act doesn’t describe something, but rather it does the subjective and emergent quality of their research. something in the world. Tis “something” has the Artistic often seems nebulous, unquantifable and power to transform the world. untestable: its procedures and methods emerge in and through the work rather than being prescribed in Secondly we have identifed that the underlying advance by the discipline. In the academic world at principle of performativity is iterability, and a priori least, artistic research continues to be seen as lacking iterability is subject to the dynamics of diférance. credibility because the methods cannot be replicated Tus good performances, bad performances, playful exactly, a principle central to scientifc research. performances and the excessive performances are Te lack of correspondence in fndings between all generative of diference. Tought in terms of studies, the lack of replicability or innovation in diférance, performative research necessarily begins artistic research is still not a goal that is valued by the to bud and grow in a disorderly fashion. While sciences. Yet, following Butler, this lack of corre- operating against the backdrop of convention, spondence is precisely what is the originating force of re-iteration and citation produce repetition with the performative principle. However, it does not meet diference, rather than repetition of the same. the “standards of objective truth” that enables science According to this principle, as I have argued to make its truth claims. How then do we establish elsewhere, even representation is mutable.33 our truth claims against the “veracity” of science? 138 PARSE JOURNAL

34. Rust, C., Mottram, J., While science methodology demands A Performative Model and Till, J. A Research Re- view for the United Kingdom that experiments are replicable and only of Research: Assessing Arts & Humanities Research verifable if replication produces the Successes and Failure Council of Practice-Led same, the performative principle demon- Research in Art Design & Architecture. 2007. https:// strates that iteration can never produce archive.org/details/Revie- the same. Tis is the “novelty” that the So far, I have set out to demonstrate wOfPractice-ledResearchI- nArtDesignArchitecture UK review of Practice-led Research in that through citation iterability, rather (Accessed 2015-10-01). Art, Design and Architecture found in than the original unique act of artistic its assessment that one of “the distinctive genius, the performative paradigm can 35. Heidegger, M. Te Age of the World Picture. qualities of practice-led research is its account for the novel nature of artistic Te Question Concerning propensity to disrupt the status quo and production. However, for artistic research Technology and Other Essays. William Lovitt (trans.) New produce research that is novel both in its to establish the credibility of a performa- York; Harper and Row. contribution to research and in its very tive paradigm, it must also establish 1977. pp. 115-54. nature.”34 criteria whereby it can interpret and

36. Haseman, B. Rupture validate its research within the broader and Recognition: Identifying However, the “discovery” of the funda- research arena. In Haseman’s account, the Performative Research Paradigm. In Practice as mental condition of iterability strikes at practice is performative in that it brings Research: Approaches to Arts the very heart of science-as-research’s into being what it names. “Te name Enquiry. E. Barrett and B. “standards of proof”. In scientifc experi- performs itself and in the course of that Bolt (eds.). London and New 36 York, NY: I.B. Tauris. 2007. mentation, binding adherence to stand- performing becomes the thing done.” p. 150. ardised procedures constitutes the rigour At its most basic level this could mean

37. It also points up the of research and establishes the validity that a performance, an interactive digital problem with the term of its “truth” claims. Trough the stand- work, an immersive environment or a exegesis. Drawing from the ardisation of procedure other researchers novel would constitute the thing done. Greek exegeisthai, exegesis means an explanation or are able to replicate the study in order to However, if we pay heed to Austin, we interpretation. validate results from research. However, must acknowledge that some utterances

38. James Loxley’s mono- Heidegger identifes the prescriptiveness and performances will be successful graph Performativity (2007), of the scientifc methodology as part of while others will fail. Te problem in provides working defnitions the problem with science-as-research.35 artistic research (and all research for that and explanations of the illocutionary and the perlo- He argues that science-as-research is matter) is that there will be production cutionary dimensions of the a testing of the unknown in terms of in some form. How then, do we assess speech act. See p. 168. the already known; a confrmation or the success or failure of the performance? 39. Haseman. Rupture and refutation in terms of a law already Tis returns us to Barad’s question: Are Recognition, p. 150. established. Trough Butler and Derrida all performances performative?

40. Loxley, p. 169. we have seen that originary knowledge emerges from the mutability that is We have established that the performa- 41. Fischer-Lichte, p. 17. inherent in iterability. Perhaps then, tive act doesn’t describe something but 42. Ibid., p. 18. there is a “faw” in the very procedures rather it does something in the world. through which science-as-research aims It may seem simplistic, but in the frst to establish its truth claims. In science, as instance we need to ascertain just in art, we might suggest that the para- what “it” (the research) has done. Tis digmatic shifts have occurred through takes the focus away from describing, this mutability rather than repetition of explaining or interpretating a work into the same. a new realm of understanding.37 What BARBARA BOLT 139

are the theoretical and pragmatic tools that we can research? While quantitative research may seek a bring to bear on this task? Here Austin’s tripartite metric to measure the efect, it would fnd it difcult categorisation of the speech act provides us with the to deal with the fact that in artistic research there basic concepts for commencing this task. In Austin’s is “no object independent of its production or its later work, he gives up the binary distinction creator”.41 Similarly qualitative research may seek between constative and performative utterances in to observe, describe and interpret these efects on favour of the more complex notion of the speech act. an audience, but again this is difcult to achieve in In elucidating the speech act he identifes a triadic artistic research, because, as Erica Fischer-Lichte relation—the locutionary, illocutionary and the per- points out, there is no distinction between the locutionary dimensions of the speech act. Whilst the production, work and reception.42 I would argue that locutionary dimension deals with semantic meaning, Austin’s notions of the illocutionary and the per- it is the illocutionary and perlocutionary dimensions locutionary provide a focus to our interpretive task that are of most interest to us here. Performativity and a way of addressing the success or failure of our is not frst and foremost about meaning. It is about performative productions. force and efect.

In Austin, explains James Loxley, “the illocution- Re-assessing the Stakes and ary force of any utterance is the function it performs Reach of a Performative or the efect it achieves.”38 Te words “I fnd you Paradigm guilty” exemplify this illocutionary speech act. It is a performative utterance that has a force. “Te name performs itself and in the course of that performing So far in this essay I have identifed the current becomes the thing done.”39 From Haseman’s per- tendency in art to an oxymoronic use of the terms spective, the production in itself can be seen to be “performative art” and have argued that the sin- performative. Tus from his optic, it could be argued gularity in the use of the term in contemporary that even the most illusionistic of representational art loses that repetitive and iterative character of art is performative. To return for a moment to the performativity as defned by Butler. In order to trompe l’oeil painting discussed earlier: can it really evaluate whether the term still retains currency be seen as the pictorial equivalent of speech act or value for artistic research, I have returned to theory? In many respects, the trompe l’oeil painting foundational work of Austin and Butler to demon- could be said to be a constative visual utterance strate how procedures within the creative arts, like rather than a perlocutionary utterance. Actions have science, are based around repetition and iterability. efects, and it is the efect of the performative act I have argued that while in the scientifc paradigm that is encompassed in the perlocutionary utterance. assessment of the validity of research lies in replica- Te perlocutionary aspect of an utterance, explains tion of the same, in a performative paradigm this Loxley, is any efect that the performative speech act requirement does not have validity. A performative “achieves on its hearers or readers that is a conse- paradigm would operate according to repetition with quence of what is said.”40 Te efects of the perform- diference. Trough reference to Austin’s conceptu- ative can be discursive, material consequences and/ alisation of the illocutionary and the perlocutionary, or afective. Te efect that is brought about by the I have argued that the interpretive methods of a per- words “guilty” is that the person found guilty may formative paradigm stakes its “truth claims” in force go to prison. and efect as it relates to the particular performative event. Tis contrasts with science-as-research, How then do we assess the efect in artistic which still holds dear the notion of an “objective 140 PARSE JOURNAL

43. Bolt. Art Beyond Repre- sentation; Bolt. 2004. SCIENCE-AS-RESEARCH ART-AS-RESEARCH Constative: describes/models the world Performative: does things in the world 44. Latour, B. Visualization Methodology: repetition of the same Methodology: repetition with diference and Cognition: Tinking Interpretation: truth as correspondence Interpretation: “truth” as force and effect with Eyes and Hands. In Knowledge and Society: Stud- ies in the Sociology of Culture Fig1. Science-as-Research and Art as Research Past and Present 6. 1986. pp. 3-4. truth” and truth as correspondence. could… be integrated as fgures in the 45. Ibid., p. 4. Tus at a simplistic level it could be said text or the articles people were writing.”45

46. Barrett, E. Introduction: that science-as-research is a model that Tis transformation of fesh into data Extending the Field, p. 3. works according to Austin’s constative is one of the hallmarks defning our

47. Te question of “what utterance. It describes or models the contemporary lives. Yet, at the heart of gets left” out in the reporting world, its methodology is replicative science-as-research, as art-as-research is of scientifc research is in- and the interpretation of “data” operates “raw life”. structive. In artistic research the methodology is often the on the logic of truth as correspondence “innovation” or new knowl- (Figure 1). Here I wish to return to Barrett’s obser- edge. Here the exposition often describes process, not as vations concerning the “performative” something to be replicated, Elsewhere I have drawn on Latour’s potential in artistic research, that is, the as in science, but as novel notion of “immutable mobiles” to dem- “recognition of the generative potential of and unique. However, as in artistic research, the scientist onstrate how the science as a research the ambiguity and indeterminacy of the or the social scientist or methodology has the propensity to aesthetic object” and the acknowledge- the humanities scholar will 43 assume diferent orientations reduce the world to data. Immutable ment that the instruments and subjects of during their research—from mobiles can best be described as inscrip- the research are co-producers in this col- “being in it”—fush with the tions or “mappings” distilled from laborative venture we call research.46 Can other co-producers in the research process, to a more “raw” data or “reality”. By inscriptions, this “model” be applied across so-called distanced orientation where Latour refers to the marks, signs, prints qualitative and quantitative modes too? the researcher steps back to look for and try to fnd and and diagrams made by humans. Tese Is this an aspect of the research that understand the patterns in inscriptions form into chains or cascades. tends to be leached out because of the the data. In the “happening” Te key character of these chains or need to reduce “bare life” to data through phases of research we are in the realm of the illocution- cascades is an unchanging form that the inscription process of the exposition ary and perlocutionary. Only can be moved across vast distances and in these felds? While this question is when the researcher steps back does the constative pro- presented in other places in the absence outside the scope of this essay, it does cess of description begins. of the things they refer to. Absent things raise questions about the performative are transmitted with optical consist- aspects of other research methodolo- ency. To illustrate operation of the logic gies.47 of immutable mobiles, Latour cites his experience as a scientist working in a If, as I have argued, the aim of a per- laboratory. He gives the example of the formative paradigm is not to fnd cor- transformation of rats and chemicals respondences but rather to recognise onto paper. In a laboratory situation, and “map” the ruptures and movements he argues, “anything and everything that are created by artistic research, then was transformed into inscriptions”.44 isn’t that the same as for science? Here Tese inscriptions, he observes, are the work of art is not just the artwork/ “combinable, superimposable and performance or event and science is not BARBARA BOLT 141

just the reduction of the world to data as immutable view. However, as the frst audience or viewer of the mobile. It is the efect of the work in the material, work, the artist-as-researcher has some responsibil- afective and discursive domains. Te scientist has ity for the “knowledge claims” that can be made for the problem that while they have a method, this the work. How do we know what the work has done method dislocates them from the rawness and and how may we articulate this? nearness to “the thing” in itself. Te problem for the artistic researcher is often recognising and mapping Te efects of the performative in art are multi- the transformations that have occurred, since artistic dimensional—they may be discursive, material research is emergent and experiential, involving a consequences and/or afective. How then do subjective and situated approach that draws on tacit we assess these efects? Our task is to fnd ways and intuitive processes that makes pattern-making to map the movement in concepts, understand- difcult. Sometimes the transformations may seem ings, methodologies, material practice, afect and to be so inchoate that it is impossible to recognise sensorial experience that arises in and through the them, let alone map their efects. At other times the research experience. Tis leads to a series of possible impact of the work of art may take time to “show questions that a researcher may ask of the research: itself”, or the researcher may be too much in the process and fnds it impossible to assess just what R5 )15#5." 5, - ,"5-"# .5'. ,#&5*,.# 5#(5 has been done. the feld? R5 ".5' ."))&)!#&5-"# .-5)/,, 5.",)/!"5 Austin and Butler provide us with some concepts this process? that help us focus our interpretative eforts. Trough R5 ".51-5, 0 & 5.",)/!"5." 51),%>5".5#5 tracing the complex and multi-dimensional relation it do? between the illocutionary and the perlocutionary we R5 ".5( 15)( *.-5 ' ,! 5.",)/!"5." 5 may begin to map the forces and efects of particular research? “events” in relation to the events in themselves. R5 )5." - 5( 15)( *.-5-"# .5/( ,-.(#(!-5(5 Trough this we may gain some apprehension of the practices in the feld and/or in other discursive efects produced by our performative productions. felds? Tis may start to sound suspiciously like the term R5 ) -5." 51),%5I Ŀ .5#.-5/# ( 5 -." .#&&365 “impact” that is regularly touted as one of the key kinaesthetically or afectively? markers in assessing research outcomes. How might R5 ) -5." 51),%5-"# .5." 51351 5* , #0 5." 5 that play out? world?

Tese shifts or movements are not confned to, or Performativity and Artistic unique to, artistic research, however, it is imperative Research that artistic research is able to argue its claim to new knowledge, or rather new ways of knowing. What does “impact” look like and does an attempt to map it diminish the power of art in itself? In the In setting out the diferent ways in which the work research context, questions of “impact” are often may be performative, I would like to return to Von difcult to assess. How has the work shifted or Hantelmann’s concern with experience and her extended practice? What new knowledge under- argument for the experiential turn in art. Certainly standings are made possible by it? Te impact of the experience of the audience is a central aspect the work of art is revealed over time and there is no of the performative power of art and this has been immediate or clear way of assessing it in a snapshot picked up and argued through the work of others, 142 PARSE JOURNAL

48. See Mechtild Widrich’s for example Widrich in her discussion Hence, it is the “too perfect perfor- monograph, Performative Monuments: Te Re-ma- of the mobilisation of spectators as mances”, “bad performances”, “distorted terialisation of Public Art, performers in relation to performative performances”, “excessive performances”, Manchester and New York, monuments.48 However, Widrich also “playful performances” and “inverted NY: Manchester University Press. 2014. p. 8. points to the fact that the performative is performances” that reconfgure the not merely an adjective of performance. conventions in art and hence efect the 49. Ibid., p. 9. Further she argues that art, whether it is movement in word, thought and deed 50. Von Hantelmann dif- performance art or a monument, is not that we have come to identify as the ferentiates the concept of the performative from that of the always performative. Tis contradicts performative. avant-gardes arguing that the Von Hantelmann’s claim, cited earlier, avant-garde position sees it- that there is no nonperformative artwork. In her work on performativity, Von self as working from outside of society rather than being Hantelmann’s concern has been about embedded with “conven- Widrich’s argument for the performative art in itself. Te concern of this paper tion”. Von Hantelmann. How relates to the performative force of art, has been about what happens when art to Do Tings with Art, p. 179. its capacity to “efect changes in social becomes research. Here, one of the tasks reality” through conventional gestures.49 of the artistic researcher is to articulate Tis change or “movement” in thought, a meta-discussion around the efects of word and deed in the individual and their artistic research. social sensorium that is enabled through theories of performativity is central It is a truism to say that words are to understanding the transformative inadequate to the task of encapsulat- power of art. Te transformative power ing the material fact and the experience or reconfguration that occurs through of the work of art and one could art is something that Von Hantelmann argue that any the kind of mapping recognised in How to Do Tings with Art process is a distancing device that (2010). Here she argued (using the work creates objective “data” and denies the of James Coleman, Daniel Buren and embodied experience that is central to Tino Sehgal) that it is not just: our encounters with art. Tis may be true, but it is not the task of an essay, a question of the phenomenological research statement, artist’s statement, conditions of the exhibition space but catalogue essay or dissertation to stand in also of art’s discursive framing. And it for or describe the artwork. Te artwork is not just about rendering visible, or must stand eloquently in its own way and exhibiting these discursive framings if it doesn’t it fails. However, through and conventions as in Institutional mapping what the research does, artistic Critique, but about operating with researchers are able to demonstrate them, i.e. recognizing the potential not only how art can be understood as for construction and change that lies research, but also how its inventions in their usage… Te efcacy of these can be articulated. Tis will not deny works stems from the constitutive the artwork its eloquence but enable us power of conventions, which are taken demonstrate and argue the impact of up and then modifed in their usage.50 artistic research in the broader realm, and particularly in the academy where we now have seat at the table of research.