Lit up by the dark: immersing artmaking practice in unknowing.

Abstract

Practice-led research (PLR) is a paradigm which values artmaking as a non-verbal mode of research. When my artistic practice foundered on a crippling sense of not knowing, I turned to artmaking research to find a way through this block. In a previous study (Birch 2018), I discovered unknowing as a source of deep creative potential. In this doctoral study, unknowing deepens my understanding of PLR, materials, and artmaking processes. I develop in-the-dark artmaking methods, partly from artistic experience and partly from theoretical sources. These enable a recognition of the communal intelligence offered by the immediate array of artmaking materials. Crucially I realise that my body of artmaking experience is an aspect, not the sole controlling force, of this communal intelligence. The ensuing indeterminacy of the creative process means artmaking fizzes with the intra-active (Barad 2007: 97-185) pushes and pulls of materials. In-the-dark artmaking methods offer a reliable means of availing the generative potential of the unknown. They constitute an aspect of unknowing as they embody active engagement with the immanence of the unknown. I argue that unknowing is immanent in the world as a force of differencing. This study interrogates the ways in which in-the-dark methods, materiality and artmaking process shape one another. Paradoxically, the reliability of in-the dark methods lies in their mutability which proffers vulnerability to the oscillating dynamic of materiality. Like unknowing, matter is also immanent and active (Bennett 2010b: 3; Coole & Frost 2010: 8,20). Intra-action of matter is differencing (Barad 2014: 175). Differencing is therefore immanent. There is no discernible barrier between the immanence of unknowing and that of matter/difference. Thus, materiality is posited as an oscillation of unbounded difference/extreme specificity. In-the-dark methods are proffered as a means of opening my human-ish self to this dynamic of unknowing/materiality. In-the-dark methods are approximations until they are specified within artmaking engagement. For example, working across a ten-metre long drawing in a confined space means working in increments. Excluding an overview of the creative process in its entirety is the ensuing in-the-dark method which is an approximation as it cannot contain the singularity of the moment-by-moment artmaking process. In-the-dark methods thus side-line my mental thinking processes without losing the specificity of artmaking engagement. This reveals my body of artmaking experience as my artistic materiality, my mind as a practice more than a fixed entity, and PLR as a protean paradigm that allows for the mind’s interrogation by materiality. In-the-dark methods entail wondering/wandering, a non-verbal mode of simultaneous enquiry and discovery. This kind of immersion in artmaking means that I can no longer distinguish whether I am working materials or materials are working me. Materials and in-the-dark methods roughen up my anthropocentric assumptions that I am able to direct the artmaking process because I know how to achieve a precise creative outcome. These methods destabilise my perceived internal/external boundary, or normative barometer, allowing the dynamic of materiality to move through my body of artmaking experience. Seemingly, it is not my presence which is problematic, but my perception of my presence. Materiality’s unlimited potential for extreme specificity is dizzying. The unavoidable averaging out of knowledge practices is found to be necessary and useful. The irreconcilable torque between for example, approximating/specificity is valued as a field of tension. I consider the multidimensionality of PLR is rooted in such fields of tension, and that torsion proffers sturdiness in artmaking research. PLR’s intentional siting together of irresolvable non-verbal and verbal modes gives rise to my research questions and continues to propel the enquiry.