PARIP Provocation

What do WE know?

How do we KNOW?

Subject/Object For at least a century in Western

thought, philosophers (of science, mind etc) have recognised the imbrication of subjectivity within notionally ‘objective’ projects

But a shift from positivism to reflexivity has made little impact on research, even in Performance

Arts Research

Some arts research more or less fits the traditional mould, but ‘practice as research’ and ‘practice-based research’ typically do not.

My contention is that, if we are serious about these modes, we need as a community to promote a shift in the academy concerning ‘knowledge’

New Paradigms:Action Research ‘Action Research’ offers one model

for the ‘reflective practitioner’ the traditional theory-practice

hierarchy is subverted work begins with the experience of

process and moves outwards rather than applying a ‘grand narrative’ from without

Performance Research

Recently, performers have drawn upon their own processes of making and doing as a mode of research

But, in advocating ‘practice as research’, we must avoid simply reifying experience, the body or subjective consciousness

Thinking

In ‘What is called Thinking?’, Heidegger famously suggested that thinking is ‘... something like building a cabinet’

It is a thinking of the ‘embodied mind’ a mind in the body and the body in the mind

Reflexive Praxis

‘Practice as research’ involves thinking in doing as in ‘building a cabinet’

‘Practice-based research’ involves reflection upon the making-showing-reception processes of performance

The second should not be a meta-commentary on the first, but a dialogic subject-object interaction

PARIP Provocation What do WE know? How do we KNOW?

As a community of performance researchers, we can make a distinctive contribution to knowledge about knowledge ... but

we still have work to do for it to be recognised in the academy