[artistic performative research]
artistic performative research
…The research methods here differ from the empirical research methods of science. They are artistic, more precisely performative. Performative Research is embedded in Artistic Research. The object of artistic research is art. However, this is not a research about art, completed by an art historian with empirical scientific methods and which the aspect of an instrumentalization of art resonates disadvantageously on its self-will and autonomy. Also, this is not a research about art, in which a researcher would put his focus on the materials and techniques used in artistic practice. Artistic research is much more research through art and in art (2). The later was described by Donald Schon as Reflection in Action (3), which opens a „performative perspective“ in which there is no separation from subject (the researcher) and object (the researched), but rather a meeting as equals takes place which is characterized by action (4). This practice-led research, the performative research has the particularity that, in the very moment of research it already has a reality-constituting impact. First, according to the theater scholar, Frank Matzke, it is paramount to grasp the situation to be researched in which the performative situation serves as a seismograph for energetic communication processes (6), and at the same time already establishes a new situation. The performance, which first serves to grasp the situation, can already simultaneously present an answer to the research issue while, in turn, implying other issues. Its setting takes place in the form of experimental arrangement and artistic experiments (7). According to Henk Borgdorff, artistic research is characterized by its object, its process and its context (8). Because the artistic research here is specifically performative research, it is governed by the artistic methods of performance criterion (9). Because of this, the research object to be examined is positioned situationally and embedded (10) and the process cannot be separated from the object.
© Patricia Hoeppe ‚Performed City’, Performance Press International 2015, p.185f.