Outcomes: The making of the Project

The practice led methodology emanated from two operational platforms: a series of experimental workshops and a number trans-disciplinary art projects. The latter arise from the former, which incorporate performance, sculptural and visual representations. These two platforms established a range of situations to examine the project’s core theme of participation and interactive exchange.

The engagement of participants throughout the Currents workshops often included moments of group discussion followed by creative production then followed by a period of editing where each individual reflect on their own engagement. Then the edited material would be presented back to the group to elicit further discussion. Critical reflection was the core work of the group who co-edited their findings in the format of developmental journals; there was a feedback loop which involved discussing the issues, doing research through observations and practical workshops to find out more about these issues and then distilling these reflections in the journals followed by more discussions and research. This is a heuristic methodological process, evincing through generative experimentation and recognition of participatory engagement as a critical practice.

The practice-led approach taken throughout the Currents workshops was informed by a set of action research principles as defined by Winter (1989). These principles were particularly useful for this study in that they encourage collaborative exchange and reflective critique. The values of collaborative exchange within action research assume that each person’s ideas are equally significant as potential resources for creating copious categories of responses, negotiated among the participants. Reflective critique permits deliberation on issues of relational causality, dialectical and inter-subjective exchange.

It makes explicit the interpretations, biases and assumptions upon which beliefs are formed. In this way, practical accounts gave rise to theoretical considerations.

Participatory action research draws on notions of enablement through critical reflection. This process involves participants in co-production from start to finish and aims to effect change in the situations being researched (Kemmis and McTaggart in Denzin & Lincoln 2000). Within the Currents workshops the ‘participant’ is considered an actor / agent within the generative process and their expertise, specialities and critical knowledge are considered to be no less relevant than the artist/ researcher who may have initiated the research or project. Participatory action research processes are relevant to performative methodology as they introduce an inter-subjective process, involving see things from multiple points of view.¹⁸

Following the studio and workshop experimentations, the focus shifted to a range of presentation ideas such as installation spaces and constructed viewing situations. There was analysis of how a viewing audience might respond to and interact with the presentations. These considerations extended to experimentation with a relational gestalt through strategies involving situational events with the placement of disparate objects, such as photographs, sculptural materials, wall writing, film, and audio pieces within composite installation settings. When making compositional choices information relating to the affiliation between subject, actions and art objects became relevant.. A number of experiments were undertaken to trial these theoretical ideas in practice. An important part of the research process has been a period of encapsulating and editing the material generated through the practice. In some instances a camera acts as a fly on the wall, objectively documenting without interferance, allowing analysis of the uninterrupted footage.

Out of these presentations and exhibitions, value has been found in analytical descriptions of the relational praxis employed throughout the Currents workshops and the implications for the final outcomes of this study.

4.11 Conclusion

The methodological frameworks presented in this section have explored the potential of performativity as conceptual tools for examining participation in art. They have emphasized the importance of recognizing the different ways in which performativity may be theorised, and the very different effects that performativity is capable of generating. What remained constant is that performativity is thought of

18For further elaboration see Kemmis and McTaggart in Denzin & Lincoln 2000

as a citational practice, enabling subjects and their performances. Of particular significance to this research are the ontological concepts of generative performance and subjective formation. Judith Butler and her work on performativity in relation to subjective formation has informed these aspects.

The research shows that performativity is intrinsically connected to iterative practices, which both authorise and negate subjects and their performances. Engaging performativity as material ontology connected to a temporal and spatial unfolding also needs to be thought of as performative. These concepts have driven the discussion entwined throughout this section.

This chapter advances the idea that creative processes in participatory art practice can be articulated in relationship to performativity in which the forms of practice mark a shift toward a de-centered maker-author-subject relationship. This method of participatory and performative exchange serves to

question or rebut single authorship and ‘self’ as a unified and preordained category. Butler has contested the idea of an already existing subjective agency that freely chooses to act; rather the subject is formed through the performative process (Butler 1997).

Equally important are the ideas of Martin Heidegger’s enterprise of positing art as a temporal event of disclosure in which the subject comes to be realised, through a series of temporal episodes. For Heidegger the subject is a mode by which a body enters into subjective formation in relation to events in time.

It is the contention of this project that practice-led research, within participatory modes of practice, need to enable the multi-variant voice emanating from participatory exchange. This enablement may then open to a more comprehensive articulation of a performative research culture. Echoing Barbra Bolt the aim of a performative paradigm may not be to find correlations, but rather to acknowledge and chart the fissures and transfers that are initiated by creative productions. The work of art therefore is not just the process, performance or event, but is also the effect of the artwork in the material, affective and discursive realms of interpretation.