A Biographic Researcher in Pursuit of an Aesthetic: The use of arts-based (re)presentations in “performative” dissemination of life stories

The (re)presentation of biographic narrative research benefits greatly from embracing the art of its craft. This requires a renewed interest in an aesthetic of storytelling. Where do we find an aesthetic in which to base our new “performative” social science? The 20th Century was not kind to 18th Century notions of what truth and beauty mean. The terms need to be re-examined from a local, quotidian vantage point, with concepts such as “aesthetic judgment” located within community. Social Constructionism asks us to participate in alterior systems of belief and value. The principles of Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics offer one possible set of convictions for further exploration. Relational Art is located in human interactions and their social contexts. Central to it are inter-subjectivity, being-together, the encounter and the collective elaboration of meaning, based in models of sociability, meetings, events, collaborations, games, festivals and places of conviviality. Bourriaud believes that Art is made of the same material as social exchanges. If social exchanges are the same as Art, how can we portray them? One place to start is in our (re)presentations of narrative stories, through publications, presentations and performances. Arts-based (re)presentation in knowledge diffusion in the post-modern era is explored as one theoretical grounding for thinking across epistemologies and supporting inter-disciplinary efforts. An example from my own published narrative biography work is described, adding credence to the concept of the research report/presentation as a “dynamic vehicle”, pointing to ways in which biographic sociology can benefit from work outside sociology and, in turn, identifying areas of possible collaboration with the narrator in producing “performances” within published texts themselves.

Sonic City: an exhibition of photography, A/V installation, community action

By taking participatory action research, utilizing sound as a means of harnessing the socio-cultural, and documentary exhibiting as mimesis, this paper takes themes of contemporary underground dance music culture, sonics, political engagement, and human development in urban spaces and looks at the key processes involved in formulating my documentary project Sonic City throughout the years 2014-2016. From personal experiences in Berlin (GER), London (UK), and Toronto (CAN) to research on the ephemeral nature of what creates thriving underground dance music scenes, this paper proposes that discotheques are vital and underestimated spaces for urban development, where complex socio-cultural monads of production and consumption are exercised and actualized. Sonic City as a documentary project is meant to shed light onto the places, spaces, and people involved in this vibrant culture, while as an artistic endeavour is attempting to put relational aesthetics at the forefront of documentary exhibiting, blurring the lines between gallery expectations and dance space experience.

Sonic City: an exhibition of photography, A/V installation, community action

By taking participatory action research, utilizing sound as a means of harnessing the socio-cultural, and documentary exhibiting as mimesis, this paper takes themes of contemporary underground dance music culture, sonics, political engagement, and human development in urban spaces and looks at the key processes involved in formulating my documentary project Sonic City throughout the years 2014-2016. From personal experiences in Berlin (GER), London (UK), and Toronto (CAN) to research on the ephemeral nature of what creates thriving underground dance music scenes, this paper proposes that discotheques are vital and underestimated spaces for urban development, where complex socio-cultural monads of production and consumption are exercised and actualized. Sonic City as a documentary project is meant to shed light onto the places, spaces, and people involved in this vibrant culture, while as an artistic endeavour is attempting to put relational aesthetics at the forefront of documentary exhibiting, blurring the lines between gallery expectations and dance space experience.

A PERFORMANCE ART AS AN INTERACTIVE ACTION TOOL

When considered as an artistic process, art questions the art problematism of the audience in the place of consumer, where the boundaries between art and real life are blurred, and the connection between them through the work of art. Art forms the precursors of fictions where the distant and uncertain relationship between the work and the audience is centered on mutual communication with new artistic approaches as an intervener/participant in artistic practice. In the first quarter of the 20th century, it is realized that the audience should be included in the work in order to remove the boundaries in the formative process of the work of art by taking an opposing attitude on the strict boundaries of the artist and the art work. As a matter of fact, the process that started with avantgarde formations in the early 1900s completely changed the nature of the relationship between the art work and the audience with the artistic practices of the 1960s. In the 1990s, the increasingly widespread audience-oriented participatory art practices initiated a period in which the audience was interactively involved in the performance and evolved into relationality with new approaches with active participation. In this direction, while the changing art practices in the historical process of Performance Art have evolved into new trends, placing the audience in a participatory/active position, the formation of relational-oriented new expressions will be examined in the context of relational aesthetics, the roles of artist-art work-audience interaction and new artistic understanding and formations. The idea of “togetherness” realized by participatory art according to the changing roles and practices of the audience creates a state of collective consciousness by providing an environment of socialization. Within the scope of the research, by reviewing the literature, document analysis was used as a data collection technique. In the light of the collected data, the relationality dimension of participatory art practices and the similarities, distinctions, interactions, and connections between concepts and subjects were tried to be clarified between these art formations. As a result of the research, it is seen that performance art provides a multi-disciplinary environment where the audience participates in the artistic production process, interacts and actively participates in contrast to modern art movements. Keywords: Relational art, viewer and participator, performance art, relationality

‘You can’t just take bits of my story and put them into some play’: Ethical dramaturgy in the contemporary Australian performance climate

In Australia a vibrant tradition of participatory and often politically motivated performance work developed under the term ‘community arts and cultural development’ across the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. In this body of practice, considerations of ethics are articulated through process, practices and representation rather than content. Though effective, community arts as it developed in Australia is often time, resource and emotionally intensive for artists, community participants and audiences. In recent years, retraction of funding, as well as shifts in practice towards live art, performance art and relational aesthetics have reduced the resources available for these once prominent practices. Practitioners are confronting challenges and needing to develop new ways of working in an operating environment where long-term consultation is not necessarily possible or preferred by stakeholders. In this article, we reflect on the current state of play for practitioners seeking to develop ethical dramaturgy in performance works that collaborate with communities to tell life stories or represent participants’ lived experiences in Australia. Through examples from our own practice, as practice-led researchers, we consider how work in this sector is under strain and experiencing scarcity, precarity and an increasing lack of access to institutional resources that have historically enabled ethically rigorous dramaturgical practices. We aim, through this process, to rediscover and rearticulate an ethical dramaturgy for deployment in the Australian environment as it exists today.

Keepers of the Waters: Experiments in xianchang art practice in 1990s China

The environmental art project, Keepers of the Waters, organized by the American artist Betsy Damon, invited artists from the United States and China to create artworks in and around a polluted urban river in Chengdu in 1995 and again in Lhasa, Tibet the following summer. The site-specific event occurred outdoors – outside institutional spaces of art – and showcased experimental performance and installation, formats that had previously been excluded from state-run museums in China due to state censorship. Although recent scholarship has examined socially engaged projects of the early 2000s that drew from global trends of social activism, relational aesthetics, and site-specificity, little work has been done on this nascent moment in the 1990s when Chinese artists began to draw connections between going outdoors, working in a site-specific manner, and advancing broader social commitments through their art. This study examines Keepers as a test site for a newly developing xianchang (on-site) aesthetic based on outdoor, site-specific engagements with social spaces. By situating Keepers within the specific historic concerns of the mid-1990s, I suspend the overly robust interpretive frameworks around art activism to uncover the nuanced ways in which xianchang art operated. As I demonstrate, the tensions and contradictions surrounding xianchang art challenge imported models on art’s social efficacy and continue to inform contemporary art practices in China into the twenty-first century.

Footsteps

"Footsteps" are a personal form of Strathernian relational aesthetics. An aesthetic response to dialogue with Marilyn Strathern.