Issue [3] Embodied Methodologies
Issue Editorial
Editorial by Issue III Editor: Mareli Stolp
Artistic Research accepts as fundamental the idea that the traditional separation in Western thought between theoretical and practical knowledge (episteme and phronesis) can and should be challenged. In Artistic Research approaches, theory and practice are seen as integrated and mutually informative. A central question in Artistic Research relates to the representation of research results: knowledge generated through material processes that are innate to art-making, and within which Artistic Research methodologies are often embedded, usually remain part of the personal realm of the art-maker and are not revealed beyond the artworks that result from these processes. Artistic Research seeks to expose the research processes that accompany art-making; it strives to reveal the tacit, embodied knowledges that are generated through creative processes, and to make these insights accessible in a shareable medium beyond the personal experience of the art maker.
It seems clear that such a medium should not be limited to traditional, textual representations of research results or outcomes. Much of artistic meaning is lost when the medium through which research results are communicated does not allow for the inclusion of entities beyond the limits of textual reportage: when, in other words, the textual presentation of theoretical concepts is privileged above that of artistic traces. One proposition to address this issue has been to create platforms that allow for textual as well as non-textual elements to constitute artistic research output. By now several examples of such platforms exist, including for example the Journal for Artistic Research, Ruukku, IMPAR and the Journal of Sonic Studies. Since 2016, Ellipses […] has offered an additional opportunity to explore the dissemination of artistic research through a digital platform that allows for such inclusive submissions.
The making of a submission for a platform such as […] requires authors to engage the myriad possibilities that digital media can offer to create a new ‘object’: an entity that integrates demonstrations or manifestations of art and art-making processes, and textually articulated research results, ultimately making a claim to new knowledge which exceeds the limits of propositional language. The articles presented in this third edition of […] respond to this imperative in different ways, while simultaneously portraying a strong focus on the theme of this volume, Embodied Methodologies. The situatedness of the artistic practitioner within a creation process and the discursive rendering of personal experience and tacit knowledge embedded in such a process are central to the methodology of much of artistic research output. This third volume of […] offers six presentations in which embodied and tacit knowledges are positioned as primary areas of investigation – projects where, in different ways, bodily and/or experiential knowledge is seen as central to the research methodology. Each submission approaches the rendering of the artistic research undertaken into a new object – the online submission – in creative ways meant to underscore, enhance and support the results of the individual research projects.
In Improvising Khoin’npsalms, Francois Blom, Garth Erasmus and Marietjie Pauw reflect on a series of performances completed in 2018 in Stellenbosch. For these performances, the three musicians – Blom on organ; Erasmus on recreations of indigenous instruments he constructed as well as saxophone; and Pauw on Western transverse flute – improvised over sections of 16th century Genevan psalm melodies played on the organ by Blom. Presented in five locations (different churches in the Stellenbosch area) over the course of five days, the project highlights issues related to South African decolonial history, using Walter Mignolo’s theories of ‘Decolonial Aesthesis’ as part of the methodological framework. Bev Butkow uses her art practice of weaving as a vehicle to explore embodiment of experiences of gendered life; shared labour; relationships to materials; the bodily act of weaving; and the entanglement of multiple roles of woman, artist, mother, researcher that encompass her artistic practice and artistic research engagement with that practice. Her submission Embodied entanglements/Entangled embodiments uses representations of the act of weaving and close-up images of the textiles to underscore these theoretical positions. You wouldn’t know god if he spat in your eye is an artistic research project by Sven Christian that engages the eponymous scroll by Dumile Feni from a curator position. By curating different authors’ perspectives of and responses to the Feni scroll, Christian provides access to the scroll in a way that circumvents the impossibility of exhibiting the scroll itself; an innovative approach to curation and the archive is thus offered and explored. Dance scholars and performers Kristina Johnstone and Thalia Laric use Michel Foucault’s proposition of ‘monsters and fossils’ to create a frame for a dance work that pushes at the boundaries of essentialised notions of identity, and explores representations of the body in dance as fossils: distant, approximate form of identity; and monsters: denoting ‘the emergence of difference’. Through photography, video and interactive text, Monsters and Fossils creates a sense of movement by means of interactive digital media, which accentuates the framework in which the dance work was made. Building My Internet Universe by Natalie Paneng invites the reader into an ‘internet universe’ created by Paneng, where she utilises the digital online space to create personae that communicate different messages relating to gender, ethnicity, culture, language and society. Connecting to other artists working in this domain, including Tabitha Rezaire and Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Paneng resists the limitations of contemporary digital art by working in the internet micro genre ‘vaporwave’, which relies on the use of digital aesthetics from times past to convey contemporary messages. Also working in the internet and digital domain, Carly Whitaker’s project Networked Embodiment traverses the margins of art-making and curatorial practice. Reporting on the project Floating Reverie, an online residency programme, her submission uses an interactive ‘map’ of participants in the residency, their work and interactions to create a rhizomic presentation of the residency and its organic growth. Whitaker engages the notion of embodiment by exploring the idea of an art world connected through many links and attachments often difficult to observe or discover.
These projects each explore the concept of embodiment as part of a methodology for artistic research, searching for ways to make tangible or accessible the ideas, feelings or expressive qualities that are intrinsic to each author’s art-making. The authors were encouraged to think of these submissions as forms of ‘art objects’ in their own right: the ways in which research processes and results are presented on this platform use all the possibilities offered by a digital space to support, enhance and enrich the content of each project. The authors were greatly assisted in this part of the endeavour by Digital Editor Tegan Bristow and her assistants Andrea Hayes, Benjamin Crooks and Glen Mudau.
Articles by
Atiyyah Khan
Articles by
Bev Butkow
Articles by
Carly Whitaker
Articles by
Francois Blom
Articles by
Garth Erasmus
Articles by
Kaushik Sunder Rajan
Articles by
Kristina Johnstone
Articles by
Marietjie Pauw
Articles by
Natalie Paneng
Articles by
Phumlani Pikoli
Articles by
Thalia Laric
Articles by
Wairimu Muriithi
Issue Editors
About
Mareli Stolp
About
Andrea Hayes
About
Benjamin Crooks
About
Glen Mudau
Embodied-entanglements | Entangled-embodiments
Research that originates in studio practice
"... a concept, process and thinking tool that brings together weaving, materials and embodied rhythms of work"
Authors
Bev Butkow
Digital Editor
Benjamin Crooks
Peer Reviews
Peer Review
General Note:
[...] Ellipses Journal for Creative Research endeavours to make bare the process of research and development in creative and artistic research. This is for readers / viewers an opportunity and mechanism to see the types of academic critique engaged with creative research and to make visible the responses and development. The following peer review was produced blind and in process, the artist / author has subsequently been given the opportunity to respond and develop both the theoretical and interactive parts of the article before publication. What you see published has been edited post this review.
Which aspects of the submission are of interest / relevance and why?
The research methodology and stated aims are clear, the artist has presented an interesting project that merges ideas of self and body through performative crafting within a collaborative setting. There is a lineage of artists that work within this field that would be interesting to converse with the artist about. For example, Antoni’s evocation of self through weaving and to Fouche’s presentation of the act of making as central to his practice. Both deal with embodiment in a slightly different manner, but their echoes situate artist’s practice to give nuance to way the body is evoked through the artists labour.
How are the artistic and research outcomes represented?
The presentation of the project within an online contact point that straddles a range of media is very effective. I personally found the way the text and images act in sequence as the warp and the weft of the project as conceptually appropriate. The concept of weaving together a project fits well, but there are minor slippages between form and content that could be refined.
How well does the design support the submission?
Visually the project is striking, the dense woven surfaces and the stark black and white pages of text each draw attention to the surface of the screen and a meaningful skin through we read each other as much as we read ourselves. The range of media is appropriate for the artist’s proposed project and it ties well to the experimental nature of the Ellipses journal.
The split-screen feed of information the viewer can navigate on the left accompanied by the infinite loop of weaving on the right is appropriate for the submission. It is a pity that the loop in the clip isn’t seamless, as that would have added a distortion of our experience of time. With that being said, I am not sure if as many viewers will spend the same amount of time just staring at the movement of the crafter’s hands before clicking through that section.
Are there any ethical or legal concerns?
The only ethical issue would be the navigation of how the artist represents themselves as well as their collaborators. Notation is made of the circumstances of production, but this is not as extensive as would have been ideal. This structure is not clear in the current submission aside from the casual notes of gratitude at the start of the project, but I am not sure if that is a side-effect of the anonymity required for the review process.
Conclusions and and pre publication revision:
The position of the weaving in relation to the sense of self is clear – although only explicitly presented within the “body as a site of coded knowledge’ section. I query the insertion of the body presented as an entirety claiming space on the screen as well as delineating the trace of the body on the cloth secured behind the figure.
It has made me ponder how the fragmentation of the body, and the metaphor of the cloth as embodied, but the artists body as absent functions in relation to the work. This might need to be addressed visually or textually at some point. If the trace of the body is a prominent feature in many of the works before the weaving process, it might be pertinent to present that in some way.
The ‘working images’ section include reference to photographic/printmaking methods, which might be misinterpreted as a minor contradiction to the aforementioned stated knotting, enmeshing and embodiment. This is largely due to the print’s capacity to hold a multitude of layers with an obscure singularity and visual clarity – as opposed to the more sculptural works which seem to grow as a multi-layered mass as more time and energy is invested in it. It reads as an issue related to containment and representation, where the inclusion of that structured and ordered way of rendering the images is contradicting the conglomeration of items, materials and traces of the artist's hand. Both weaving and printing occurs within a frame, but the process that generates that framed content could be articulated clearer. I do note that there are pigments deposited on some of the substrates, but it is not clear if these are generated by the printing processes or an additional experiment (perhaps painting as alluded to in the statement) – any clarity on that issue and the link between the two processes would benefit the reading of the work.
Given the interest in process and repetition I was not sure if the artist would be keen to pursue more complexity in relation to how each is addressed. For example, the pacing of the image sequence and the text if one clicks on the weaving loop in the right hand panel, it seems there is an opportunity to allow the text to grow incrementally with each click through, or have various fragments of text appear and disappear rather than reveal the text in its entirety.
Overall, I am impressed by the quality of this submission, which has made me long for my hand-crafted loom. The subtlety and care of the images of various individuals’ hand working the surface of the weave was quite a poetic element in the project – especially given the contrast to the stark text – and how that dual reading presented the weave as laboured over time by many participants. Given the historical root of weaving as a technique to render materials for other processes of production, the inversion of weaving as an act unto itself with the express purpose of representing or interrogating the weaver is quite fascinating. The suggestions made above might be a projection of my own interest in materiality, process and repetition, and may thus not be essential revisions. Since these thoughts are not addressed in the text I felt it important to highlight them, but with that being said I do acknowledge that the text is not intended as a traditional text but rather a space to open up spaces for dialogue around the meanings of the multitude of forms we encounter and create in the world.
Abstract
Embodied-entanglements/entangled-embodiments is an experimental creative process that brings together weaving, materials and my embodied rhythms of work. The process manifests in tactile material objects that I call embodied-entanglements. These are amorphous woven, mixed-media, stitched, printed, painted, embellished, beaded, dimensional, assembled constellations.
My creative research explores moments of intersection represented by embodied-entanglements. Embodied-entanglements is simultaneously a concept, process and thinking tool Weaving is co-opted as a way to think through how materials are able to function as sites of meaning, as well as the way my embodied and gendered life becomes material, embedded in the frame by the repetition of my hand movements, conscious and spontaneous decision making. Weaving facilitates embodied and cerebral modes of thinking, which are used to perform and inform my experience of becoming a gendered body and becomes an extension of the tensions of this process, such as I feel in the conflicting roles I take between my artistic career and mothering. In this submission, I question how my practice helps me to make meaning of entangling and embodying. What is an entangled self? How does weaving embody the gendered body? What is the relationship between the gendered body and embodied materials?
Since weaving takes shape through a sequence of rhythms and performances of my body and hands, acts of weaving embody my personal experience and my creative labour. Conceptually, embodied-entanglements explore the tension between the feminine body as biological material reality and the performative roles of gender imposed on bodies. Much theoretical debate has revolved around making sense of the materiality of feminine bodies through the sex/gender debate. I address four foundational theorists, Luce Irigaray (1985), Judith Butler (1988), Elizabeth Grosz (1994) and Donna Haraway (1988), who differ in how they see innate/biological or social/cultural/material forces affecting gendered materiality.
The tension between sex/gender is a central facet of my research and is made metaphorical by and becomes embodied through my repetitive hand gestures, the containment of the weave’s warp and weft and accumulated material traces. Weaving’s technical mechanics are suited to the requirements of the research – its fundamental operation deals with tension between weft and warp, it demands intimate dialogue with the weaver’s body and an integration of making and thinking processes.
Sarat Maharaj’s (2009) structure of Thinking Through the Visual proposes to create new knowledges by running the somatic, non-discursive and performative register of making alongside discursive thinking to enable “the appearance of something different or unforeseen”. Rather than imposing the limitations of methodology, the process is a loose gathering together, left “unstructured enough to not foreclose engagement” and give space to access the “unforeseen”.
At its core, the research originates in my studio practice: by allowing the intuition/the body to lead, the process is organic, fluid, non-linear, reflexive, spontaneous, progressive and unstructured. It entwines weaving practices with multiple modes of processing. These include giving texture to concepts and disrupting textual linearity through embodied sensorial written, as well as accessing my embodied life experiences through uncomfortably reflexive autobiographic writing. Activating different thought-processing modes within this hybrid/multi-modal process is a way of encountering issues and tracking shifts in meaning that occur through the process – making meaning happens in the cross pollination.
Benjamin Crooks
Peer Reviews
Peer Review
General Note:
[...] Ellipses Journal for Creative Research endeavours to make bare the process of research and development in creative and artistic research. This is for readers / viewers an opportunity and mechanism to see the types of academic critique engaged with creative research and to make visible the responses and development. The following peer review was produced blind and in process, the artist / author has subsequently been given the opportunity to respond and develop both the theoretical and interactive parts of the article before publication. What you see published has been edited post this review.
Which aspects of the submission are of interest / relevance and why?
The research methodology and stated aims are clear, the artist has presented an interesting project that merges ideas of self and body through performative crafting within a collaborative setting. There is a lineage of artists that work within this field that would be interesting to converse with the artist about. For example, Antoni’s evocation of self through weaving and to Fouche’s presentation of the act of making as central to his practice. Both deal with embodiment in a slightly different manner, but their echoes situate artist’s practice to give nuance to way the body is evoked through the artists labour.
How are the artistic and research outcomes represented?
The presentation of the project within an online contact point that straddles a range of media is very effective. I personally found the way the text and images act in sequence as the warp and the weft of the project as conceptually appropriate. The concept of weaving together a project fits well, but there are minor slippages between form and content that could be refined.
How well does the design support the submission?
Visually the project is striking, the dense woven surfaces and the stark black and white pages of text each draw attention to the surface of the screen and a meaningful skin through we read each other as much as we read ourselves. The range of media is appropriate for the artist’s proposed project and it ties well to the experimental nature of the Ellipses journal.
The split-screen feed of information the viewer can navigate on the left accompanied by the infinite loop of weaving on the right is appropriate for the submission. It is a pity that the loop in the clip isn’t seamless, as that would have added a distortion of our experience of time. With that being said, I am not sure if as many viewers will spend the same amount of time just staring at the movement of the crafter’s hands before clicking through that section.
Are there any ethical or legal concerns?
The only ethical issue would be the navigation of how the artist represents themselves as well as their collaborators. Notation is made of the circumstances of production, but this is not as extensive as would have been ideal. This structure is not clear in the current submission aside from the casual notes of gratitude at the start of the project, but I am not sure if that is a side-effect of the anonymity required for the review process.
Conclusions and and pre publication revision:
The position of the weaving in relation to the sense of self is clear – although only explicitly presented within the “body as a site of coded knowledge’ section. I query the insertion of the body presented as an entirety claiming space on the screen as well as delineating the trace of the body on the cloth secured behind the figure.
It has made me ponder how the fragmentation of the body, and the metaphor of the cloth as embodied, but the artists body as absent functions in relation to the work. This might need to be addressed visually or textually at some point. If the trace of the body is a prominent feature in many of the works before the weaving process, it might be pertinent to present that in some way.
The ‘working images’ section include reference to photographic/printmaking methods, which might be misinterpreted as a minor contradiction to the aforementioned stated knotting, enmeshing and embodiment. This is largely due to the print’s capacity to hold a multitude of layers with an obscure singularity and visual clarity – as opposed to the more sculptural works which seem to grow as a multi-layered mass as more time and energy is invested in it. It reads as an issue related to containment and representation, where the inclusion of that structured and ordered way of rendering the images is contradicting the conglomeration of items, materials and traces of the artist's hand. Both weaving and printing occurs within a frame, but the process that generates that framed content could be articulated clearer. I do note that there are pigments deposited on some of the substrates, but it is not clear if these are generated by the printing processes or an additional experiment (perhaps painting as alluded to in the statement) – any clarity on that issue and the link between the two processes would benefit the reading of the work.
Given the interest in process and repetition I was not sure if the artist would be keen to pursue more complexity in relation to how each is addressed. For example, the pacing of the image sequence and the text if one clicks on the weaving loop in the right hand panel, it seems there is an opportunity to allow the text to grow incrementally with each click through, or have various fragments of text appear and disappear rather than reveal the text in its entirety.
Overall, I am impressed by the quality of this submission, which has made me long for my hand-crafted loom. The subtlety and care of the images of various individuals’ hand working the surface of the weave was quite a poetic element in the project – especially given the contrast to the stark text – and how that dual reading presented the weave as laboured over time by many participants. Given the historical root of weaving as a technique to render materials for other processes of production, the inversion of weaving as an act unto itself with the express purpose of representing or interrogating the weaver is quite fascinating. The suggestions made above might be a projection of my own interest in materiality, process and repetition, and may thus not be essential revisions. Since these thoughts are not addressed in the text I felt it important to highlight them, but with that being said I do acknowledge that the text is not intended as a traditional text but rather a space to open up spaces for dialogue around the meanings of the multitude of forms we encounter and create in the world.
Article
Credits
With gratitude: Mareli Stolp, Tegan Bristow - editors Ben Crooks – web designer Jess Webster, Nina Barnett – inspirational supervisors Julie Taylor – my sounding board and gallerist Anthea Pokroy, Dudu Bloom – images Olivia Botha - video My family