Possible research components…
In this blog I’m setting out my thinking about the research for my MA Performance Practices. I’ve included all the elements recommended in our Designing the Body of Research module. It’s very much a first stab and it will change, but it’s built on my artistic practice over the last few years and on the first few modules of the course, recent performances, together with conversations with tutors and fellow students. (More info is available on how I’ve got to this point and my learning / thinking over the last month.)
My practice has taken a leap forward as a result of the MA, and year 2 of the course is an exciting opportunity to go into some depth. At the end of the blog I’ve included a link to a document that explains more of the background of how I’ve got to this point and my recent learning. I welcome feedback at the start of this next part of the journey.
Aim
This is the aim of my initial research proposal:
To explore how the engagements within and transitions between a community of alter-egos, affect embodied experience and performance of the artist
It has two key elements - the engagements within and the transitions between my community of alter-egos. I have considered narrowing down to one element but am sticking with both at this stage because both aspects are still providing so much learning and are still new. In addition, my recent residency has prompted new reflection around the role of my primary self (I’m not sure this is the right phrase yet) with and in the alter-ego community. I had thought of my role as the documenter of the community, but this needs re-examining.
Keeping both elements in the research was supported by conversations with tutors. This might change as the work continues.
Urgency
• Personal – challenge societal norms as older feminist woman, embody the other – explore different ways of being that focus on what society needs to thrive / survive
• Society - importance of recognising entanglement, fluidity and flexibility, for navigating chaos of now caused by neo-liberalism. We need ways of embodying the other that can shift the debates about fixed notions of identity.
• Field – I suspect there’s a gap in the performance studies field about communities of alter-egos, how they operate, shape and influence each other?
Question
Here I’m trying to keep the question broader than the aim, so my question is…
• How can embodying multiple alter-egos as a community create new performance possibilities ?
And – if there was a sub-question, I think it would be: How does this practice affect the embodied experience and performance of the artist? I feel this research is about the how, the methods and ways of approaching the concept, rather than the content of what is made. I want to work out what is going on when I’m doing this practice, how I am doing it and might do it in future, therefore:
Contribution
• Provide a case study of one artist’s use of a community or cohort of alter-egos, offering new insights into the relationship between identity, body, and performance
• And ways of understanding and approaching alter-ego communities and their role / potential in performance? (Not sure?)
Objectives – currently not smart but could be when we know timetable etc.
• Carry out a literature review
• Develop and clarify the theoretical framework for assessment of the embodied and psychological responses to a series of experiments that explore the question
• Practice as research - conduct a series of practice-based experiments (during the allocated time period) designed to test different approaches to alter-ego interactions and transitions, capturing challenges and insights that illuminate the question
• Document the physical, emotional, psychological and perceptual changes that occur during the embodiment process (based on the experiments above)
• Analyse how the alter-ego transitions and engagements reshape bodily awareness and contribute to notions of performative identity and collective selfhood.
Field - Theory
• Judith Butler – theories of gender performativity remain important for my practice.
• Karen Barad – quantum theory of identities and entanglement offers perspectives, useful dialogue with the research, building on the bodies in dissent module.
• Philip Bromberg – coming from the field of identity theory, Bromberg’s psycho-analytical multiplicity theory argues that the healthy self isn’t a singular cohesive entity and that the capacity of different self-states to recognise and maintain identities is important. I think my research needs a supporting psychological theory to ground the ideas, but something that is distinct from art therapy / art as therapy.
• Jessica Benjamin – builds on Bromberg’s work focusing on intersubjective recognition, multiple self-states and the spaces between them – theory considers complementarity, thirdness and gender development – this might be more useful but I need to read more.
• Victor Turner – liminality. Turner seems important for the element of the research dealing with transitions and liminal states – I need to read more / I have questions about the anthropological approach and how it fits with the psy is this is too old school?
Field - Artists
• Joan Jonas… because of the way multiple alter-egos, places and histories engage in a distinctive poetic language / over decades / use of live drawing that entangles elements
• Lynne Hershman Leeson – particularly her documentation of transitions / maps / methods and use of other artists to inhabit alter-egos
• Nicole Daniels – provides a contrasting approach, she has a wide range of alter-egos (more than 20) and uses different methods (some alter-egos focus on societal roles, other times she uses dolls as alter-egos)
• Victoria Sin – gender performativity and multiplicity – they inhabit multiple characters, many from Cantonese opera / western drag.
Research methods
• Reflective journalling and performance documentation – this is new and worked well for me in the residency.
• As above in the objectives - I haven’t got the theoretical framework yet so am not exactly sure about how to capture / systematize information about the alter-ego transition and engagement.
• This also depends on how the practice develops – as mentioned above the engagement between the alter-egos independent of me, is new; so the way they engage (and what engagement means) is still fluid and will firm up during the experiments.
• For example – in terms of the embodiment I am starting to explore e.g. somatics - Rosalind Crisp – removing habits? Merleau Ponty – body subject – destabilising / creating new modes of perception? And /or Diana Taylor – storing and transmitting embodied knowledge / experience?
• And as the expression of the transition or engagement might take different forms – e.g. it might take a creative form, drawing or using light? Shadows? Or the engagement has been non-verbal? And I have started to explore working with other artists to embody the alter-ego, what might this mean for the methods of capture?
Ethics
• Self-care – psychological well-being?
• Other artists I might invite to inhabit the alter-egos
(more to consider here.)