[3] Third reflection, Mov.3, from Michael Weiss.
Choreolab as / and Science & Arts-Based Research
Art-based research [1] and advanced scientific
thinking share a fundamental commitment to allowing
the phenomena being studied to speak for
themselves. If we stay closely attuned to the images and processes of
creative expression, they will suggest new
frontiers of understanding. (Shaun McNiff)[2]
- - -
The vision laid out here by arts-based researcher and creative arts therapist
Shaun McNiff relates to the idea of further developing the Choreolab with its
already elaborated research qualities into (possibly) the university field.
Shaun McNiff portrays a most ideal conjunction of art and science by reaching
out towards a phenomenological base which can unite them. Speaking with
philosopher Martin Heidegger, such a project is grounded on trying to reveal a
phenomenon from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself.[3]
Being apart from prejudice and immersed into pre-reflectivity, such a
phenomenological endeavour of an ever deepening awareness is well prepared to
search within “new frontiers of understanding”. According to my experience,
this is a core fundament of the research process within the Choreolab.
As already reflected upon critically, I experience the scientific endeavour
within many of its disciplinary epistemologies―at times in danger of forming
rigid systems of unquestioned beliefs and presumptions―as an often linear,
dualistic and primarily cognitive-based project to pursue research. If we
consider the scientific project’s anchoring within its institutional frameworks
at large, then, not least of all, due to their frequent regulative, normative
and abstract principles (possibly directed towards unconsciously conditioning
behavior), their legal set of rules, representational power hierarchies with
issues of status prestige involved, furthermore due to inherent sanctions
directed towards social control, institutionalized socio-academic structures
are at great risk of restricting and/or losing the non-conformative,
spontaneous, liminal and creative potential urgently needed to practice
research innovatively.
This is not to underestimate the many possibilities existing within such
frameworks; the point I like to highlight is the threat of losing qualities
described in this essay that I could experience so intensely within a research
laboratory – the Choreolab – which I believe to be an existential ground to
nourish fruitful research: Empathy, trust, openness and the courage to support
processes in silence stand against certain traditions of more or less
subconsciously, or unacknowledged mechanistically driven capitalist-like
demands for producing (artistic/scientific) outcomes; furthermore, the
qualities of the Choreolab, as I came to know it, are based on an encounter
from person to person beyond judgement, fields of being in relation with
oneself and being related to each other as congruently as possible, thereby
transcending hierarchical structures of persons towards student-experts and
expert-students, thus being fully aware of the intrinsic potential of each
person; and finally all this to be in an environment dance can offer
particularly: existential research with/through/of body-and-mind.
- - -
The Choreolab contains a distinguished methodology of arts-based research as a
systematic experimentation through body-and-mind, thereby forming a way of
knowing. As anthropologist Soyini Madison puts it appropriately: ”Art helps us
see and realize the unrealized”.[4] I believe this to be the very nature of
the Choreolab by transdisciplinarily uniting art and science. Yet, each of the
aspects viewed upon critically before, challenges the process of a further
development of the Choreolab as to not only uphold these values possibly
leading to innovative research (questions) but to constantly unfolding
them―proposing a different zeitgeist.
Paul Spencer, social anthropologist specializing in dance studies, notes: ”In a
very important sense, society creates the dance, and it is to society that we
must turn to understand it.” [5] Viewed in light of this interdependency, there
lies immense research potential for a further development of the Choreolab as
being a conjunction of art and science by fully integrating body-and-mind. Such
a research process, to my understanding, is well suited to continue the age-old
inquiry into what it means to be a human phenomena in its complexity amongst
all other phenomena. It is a research through a thinking, feeling and sensing
body, an inquiry into dance by using the full scale of arts-based, qualitative
methods to create pathways of an ever deepening understanding. Referring to
Stephanie Springgay, Rita L. Irwin and Sylvia Wilson Kind, it would be
“research that breathes” and “research that listens”. [6]
- - -
Dance, as other forms of art, manifests the hybrid cultural and subjective
identities ―as I believe―we always live in if we were to regard larger time
spans than our lives as a mere generation. Dance reacts to these constantly
changing and shifting developments in culture, society, politics as well as in
the environment; it not only questions them, it performs them as they are, and:
it projects them as they could be. Given the further process of a Choreolab in
the aforementioned direction, I feel we are not only in urgent need to question
scientific frameworks but to pursue research in a kinaesthetic way through
entire body and entire mind.
In his back up material for the lab, Sebastian Prantl added the photography of
a fetus to be seen in the womb of his mother, commenting on the image: “The
fetus begins small, random movements, too slight to be felt. The fetal
heartbeat can be detected [... .] All major external body features have
appeared.“ [7] In conclusion of this essay, I would like to invite readers to
existentially enter these words beyond mere cognition, entering with their
corporeality and e/motions of thinking and feeling as to be aware of that,
following the long chain of evolution, each of us evolves in such manner to
discover, search for and research about being in its countless manifestations
on this planet, in this universe.
The Choreolab described here, in conjunction with science, is capable of
beginning research from a particular ground, namely such an existential one,
thereby embracing research from within and without its most genuine and
creative possibilities.
- - -
References
[1] Of equal meaning to arts-based research which expresses the application of
various artistic modes of inquiry more distinctly.
[2] 2009:47.
[3] 1953:34. In original German: „Das was sich zeigt, so wie es sich von ihm
selbst her zeigt, von ihm selbst her sehen lassen.“
[4] 2003:481.
[5] 1988:38.
[6] 2005:899.
[7] 2011:1; italics as in original.
- - -
A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s
I would like to thank the entire group of participant-experts and
expert-participants for a time-space of experience and common research which I
found to be deeply inspiring as expressed in this essay. As all the
expert-participants and the originators of the ICLA III already have been named
personally, I feel the desire to thank everyone else by naming them. Given the
number of our group, this might seem somewhat unusual; yet, remembering that
the encounters from person to person have been the base of the choreolab with
the group as connector enabling what came into being, I would like to do so by
thanking Sophie Beer, Yi-Wen Chen, Jordine Cornish, Elizabeth Dalman, Alexandra
Jastrow, Raffaela Gras, Jasmin Hoffer, Ming-Shen Ku, Elisabeth Lauber, Katrin
Neue, Edith Pedersen, Shan-Li Peng, Pere Bodi Perez, Anna Prokopová, Vera Rebl,
Pablo Sansalvador, Wong Jyh Shyong, Katarzyna Sitarz, Elisita Smailus, Emmy
Steiner, Danny Tan and Clemens Trotzmüller, furthermore the organization team
from Donau University Krems Karin Bachmayer and Nastaran Sazvar as well as from
Tanz Atelier Wien Andrea Golsong, Mei-An Prantl and Susanne Senekowitsch, and
finally Eva-Maria Klauser-Herrmann (interpreter for Ohno Yoshito), film-maker
Raffael Frick and photographer Michael Renner.
- - -
R e f e r e n c e s
DanceAbility. 2011. [Revised July 19, 2011]. ΄Alito Alessi΄.
<http://www.danceability.at/deutsch/alessi.htm> (September 19, 2011).
Diener, Michael S. 1992. Das Lexikon des Zen: Grundbegriffe und Lehrsysteme,
Meister und Schulen, Literatur und Kunst, meditative Praktiken, Geschichte,
Entwicklung und Ausdrucksformen von ihren Anfängen bis heute. [Encyclopedia of
Zen: Fundamental Notions and Systems of Apprenticeship, Masters and Schools,
Literature and Art, Meditative Practices, History, Development and Modes of
Manifestations from their Origins to Date]. München: Barth.
Heidegger, Martin. 71953 [1927]. Sein und Zeit. [Being and Time]. Tübingen:
Niemeyer.
Lincoln, Yvonna S.; Norman K. Denzin. [Eds.]. 2003. Turning Points in
Qualitative Research: Tying Knots in a Handkerchief. Walnut Creek [Calif.]:
AltaMira.
McNiff, Shaun. 2009 [1998]. Art-Based Research. London, Philadelphia: Jessica
Kingsley Publishers.
Madison, Soyini D. 2003. ΄Performance, personal narratives, and the politics of
possibility.΄ In: Lincoln Y.; N. Denzin 2003:469-486.
Oikarinen-Jabai, Helena. [2003]. ΄Toward Performative Research: Embodied
Listening to the Self/Other.΄ Qualitative Inquiry 9/4, 569-579.
Prantl, Sebastian. 2011. ΄INTERNATIONAL CHOREOLAB AUSTRIA 2011 Back up material
/sketch on (E)MOTION FREQUENCY deceleration΄. Tanz Atelier Wien. 9 p.
Unpublished.
Spencer, Paul [Ed.]. 1988, Reprint. [1985]. Society and the Dance. Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press.
Springgay, Stephanie; Rita L. Irwin; Sylvia Wilson Kind. 2005. ΄A/r/tography as
Living Inquiry Through Art and Text.΄ Qualitative Inquiry 11/6, 897-912.
Suzuki, Daisetz [Daisetsu] Teitarō. 1987 [1949]. Mushin: Die Zen-Lehre vom
Nicht-Bewußtsein. Das Wesen des Zen nach den Worten des Sechsten Patriarchen.
[Mushin: Zen Teaching on Non-Consciousness. The Nature of Zen in the Words of
the Sixth Patriarch]. Editing: Adrian Leser. Transl. from Engl. by Emma von
Pelet. Bern: Barth.
Weiss, Michael. 2011. Notes. [August 27 - September 4, 2011]. 46 pp.
Unpublished.
- - -
Michael Weiss
Vienna
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