Perfromative Paradigm

In 2009, I published an essay entitled “A Performative Paradigm for the Creative Arts” in Working Papers in Art and Design.6 This essay had developed in response to my experience in supervising creative arts MFAs and PhDs in artistic research in Australia, where an exhibition, recital, performance or other form of creative work constitutes the major component of the submission in conjunction with an exposition that provides a meta-discussion of the context, methodology and research findings of the research. In this model, the art is the research and the written exposition provides the discursive contextualisation for the research project.7 While art has its own eloquence that is non-reducible, through the form of the exposition the “art” becomes data for discussion. What has become apparent, however, is that artistic research or creative arts enquiry reveals new modes and methodologies that could be considered to constitute a new paradigm of research distinct from the dominant modes of qualitative and quantitative research that provide the default modes of research in the academy. This new paradigm of research could be deemed the “performative paradigm”, a mode of research characterised by a productive performativity where art is both productive in its own right as well as being data that could be analysed using qualitative and aesthetic modes. (Metapar.se, 2019)

Metapar.se. (2019). Artistic Research: A Performative Paradigm?. [online] Available at: https://metapar.se/article/artistic-research-a-performative-paradigm/ [Accessed 18 Mar. 2019].