Written collaboratively by Maxwell Hyett, Aydan Hasanova, Kashfia Arif, and Emily Dickson
- Research-creation is a continuous relationship between a research question and its creative exploration, an interplay. An involvement of thinking through disciplines and an artistic practice that creates an open cross-reference. This play is generative and involves an open-ended experiment that can continuously be re-applied to generate new results. Research-creation is process-based and involves the actual “doing.” Example: “Look! These artists are doing research-creation.”
- The lady next to me on the plane is knitting. I think about research-creation as I watch the process.
The instruction sheet is propped up on the foodtray. She reads from it as music plays on her phone. Her hands move in time.
Loop one. Cross one. Stitch one. Purl one.
Repeat.
A pause as she leans forward to see the instructions sheet. Is she on track?
She leans back. The music continues. All good.
Loop one. Cross one. Stitch one. Purl one.
Repeat.
The rhythm is present in triplicate. In the pattern unfolding. In the pauses. In the resumption.
Loop one. Cross one. Stitch one. Purl one.
Repeat.
The music plays on as the tracks change. The needles silently weave. The beige-gold wool unwinds from the roll and sutures itself into the growing fabric. Is it a scarf? A hat? A sweater? Not quite there yet. Just an expanding pattern in beige-gold for now. But the rhythm is hypnotic. The repetition is meditative. And so I watch on.
Knitting is/is not research-creation. - “As for what motivated me, it is quite simple; I would hope that in the eyes of some people it might be sufficient in itself. It was curiosity – the only kind of curiosity, in any case, that is worth acting upon with a degree of obstinacy: not the curiosity that seeks to assimilate what it is proper for one to know, but that which enables one to get free of oneself. After all, what would be the value of the passion for knowledge if it resulted only in a certain amount of knowledgeableness and not, in one way or another and to the extent possible, in the knower’s straying afield of himself? There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently that one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all. People will say, perhaps, that these games with oneself would better be left backstage; or, at best, that they might properly form part of those preliminary exercises that are forgotten once they have served their purpose. But, then, what is philosophy today – philosophical activity, I mean – if it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself? In what does it consist, if not in the endeavour to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known?”
- Research-creation literally refers to the creation of research, otherwise described as a process. However, in effect, the process of work is in this context also the evidence of work. This evidence is presented to institutions as a way to prove that thought and progress is occurring in disciplines overshadowed by histories of genius that tend to be presented and understood in terms of eureka-moments rather than accumulative effort and time.
- While the fixed presentation of research (such as the collection of research material, annotated bibliographies, reviews, and material and technical experiments) can be an important stage in the development of creative projects, it is not the requirement of creators to do this but that of the institution. What was presumably originally intended to provide transparency to the creative process and justify its funding, research-creation has become a part of creative pedagogy. With the pressure to produce results as well as academic and critical knowledge, research-creation has been internalized by creators, which in turn limits the viable avenues for creation to what is generally understood as its antithesis: rationality.
- In studio art, research-creation is the contemporary arena of what has historically been understood as life studies and artist copies. These processes and their products are intended to reproduce rather than invent and reside at the level of labour and therefore the trades rather than the university and liberal arts. This is untenable for the university and business, which require a euphemistic new label that elides scientific ends with artistic practice. Research-creation therefore implies that art, or rather the artist, must answer rather than ask questions in order to receive institutional validation.
- A water drop is of a certain chemical composition, and so has the potential to manifest as only a certain set of shapes, but not infinite ones, upon becoming crystalized and frozen. So too, idea-matter should lead to certain idea-forms. Research-creation is the process of taking un-shaped idea-matter and giving it idea-form, or taking an un-shaped idea and giving it question-form. The composition of the idea-matter does not determine its outcome, but it should guide it, except not through biological channels, but mental ones.
- We are talking about research-creation. Not as a defensive exercise that attempts to argue that creation can replace research (understood in terms of written research outcomes), or that creation needs to be understood in the same terms as research. Let us be clear: creation does not have to be research in order to be valuable, as centuries of art history demonstrate. Instead, we want to address the ways creation enables or makes possible a type of research that cannot be done in any other way – research that is and must be produced through and in acts of creation. To create under the banner of research-creation requires that creation function as “research,” as opposed to functioning as an outcome of creating in and of itself. When one creates a work of art the final product is (arguably) “art” – and the fact that it is considered final suggests it is the end of a process, after which the work leaves the hands of the creator. But research is almost never an end in itself, great research never is. It is necessarily part of a process that either leads to a final product or, on occasion, is enjoyed for its own sake. When one engages in research the assumption is that it will be used as the basis for something else, whatever that may be – written, visual or in any other form. If we understand research not as an end but rather as a process that leads to something else, then research-creation becomes a methodology in which creating is the vital part of a research process. In this way, research-creation is when an act of creating is also an act of researching. Worded differently, research-creation is the act of conducting research through and in the moment of the creative act itself.