To navigate one time, an exercise of investigation in arts

Transcription

1 To navigate one time, an exercise of investigation in arts Martha Patricia Espíritu Zavalza PTC Universidad de Guadalajara, México Abstract: One of possible approaches to investigation in arts is the one that generates itself from the reflection about the own creative practice, from the practice itself (Borgdorff, 2012). An inquiry that departs from the artist while working in the creation of a work. This perspective brings into coincidence the notions of subject and object of the investigation in such a way that the artist fulfills simultaneously the roles of creator and investigator. The opportunity to investigate with this proposal has its impact in the creation of new directions and meanings departing from artistic experimentation as a space of individuality and self knowledge. The exploration in each of the phases of the creative process opens possibilities to generate knowledge that redounds in the work itself, which is a reflection from both, the process as well as the result. This exercise To navigate one time was proposed to enquire a way in which the work of art shows itself the knowledge generated with its creation as well as the knowledge brought into play during the artistic process. The method of creative investigation allows exploring the nature of the creative process, the qualities and the movements that generate poetic expression. Living an experience of this kind clarifies the nature of this type of investigation and allows visualizing strategies of transference of knowledge in educational environments. One of the objectives of this exercise of investigation was to collate the work and the report in only one object, in such a way that the registry of the process was the raw material for the creation of the creative stories focused on the proposal of deictic literary stories known as ego narratives or I writing (Jirku, Pozo, & Schneider, 2012). At this point it is important to stand out that this autobiographic literary gender does not pretend to maintain attachment with objective reality, but on the contrary, to generate a fiction with a subjective perspective. Key words: art research, I writing, narrative To navigate one time, an exercise of investigation in arts To navigate one time is an artist s book that arises from a process of investigation in arts, carried out at the University of Jaen as a final project of the Master of Investigation in Arts,

2 Music and Esthetic Education. The investigation in arts is mainly characterized by its consolidation of the process of creative practice with that of scientific investigation, so that both methods develop unisonous in one same process. In the artistic realm, Henk Borgdorff (2012) identifies four perspectives from which processes of investigation are frequently considered: instrumental, interpretative, performative and immanent. Investigation in arts belongs to the immanent perspective which incorporates practice and theory in one unit. For this author the artist s actions are never lacking a background theory that permeates all creative activity. What the investigator does in this sense is to reveal the theoretical context that lays the foundation of the process of creation. The investigation in arts has been the source of strong debates due to its peculiar nature that moves away from conventional and academic investigation regarding the methodological standards of verifiability, replicability and the way results are reported (Borgdorff, 2012) This divergence is sustained because knowledge built through art is not of the conventional type, neither in its procedure neither in its conformation. The nature of this knowledge demands approaches with novel methodologies that allow access to its particularities. One of the central qualities of this perspective is the identification between subject and object of study, so that only one person exerts both, the role of artist as well as the role of investigator during all the process. The issue is to investigate the creative process from within oneself, where it is generated, so that the artist is the expert in this case. That is why the artist is the most suitable person to accomplish the investigation. This approach Navigate one time focuses its attention in the production of an artistic work, an object book, so that the purpose of this project of investigation is to know how the practice of a creative process is. A plan of work was proposed: it considered three points of observation that guided the exploration of the investigator artist: time, quotidianity and movement This process of observation was registered with narratives, considering the important role they play regarding the strategy to organize and structure the experience to such a degree that authors like Bruner (1991) point that the data which are not incorporated in some phase of a certain narrative sequence fall into oblivion. The observation was focused in situations which for their singularity demanded an attention far from the habitual, breaking with the realm of the quotidian in such a way that the experience of time and movement was different from the habitual pattern. From this feature was possible to register a narrative and generate senses and meanings from a partial posture before an unusual event, one of the constitutive elements of narration according to Bruner (1991).

3 This decision also allowed that annotations were meticulous as to generate a density of data and details that gave relevance to the selected narrations to conform the work at the end of the process. The intensity of the experience and the subtlety of attention facilitate a narrative more nourished with data and descriptions that give structure to a much richer and profound vital experience. This strategy facilitates also that the individual structures his experience and confers personal meanings to the actual experiences through the connections he/she is able to establish and to the affective bond that implies the connotative level of the construction of senses. The narrations are interpretative texts, thus, the posture of the narrative voice is never neutral, but implies a point of view and a valuation. Any interpretative act is also, in some way, a construction that cannot be claimed objective as it has been narrated by some subject who possesses a perspective (Maturana, 1997). Objectivity is then also a narrative. In this exercise of investigation, the neutrality of the subject is not a mean but more its partiality. The point is to recognize partiality and observe the way it is manifested in the recollection of data departing from the restrictions of observation, in the registry of actions, emotions and discourses. Registry is done selecting the events of major significance as it is considered a more intense experience departing from this partiality. It s all about not neutralizing the qualities of the election but to make them clear and recognize partiality as a guide to the narrative, the perspective which is going to be developed in the narrative. Registers, wrote down in a systematic manner, recorded sensations, emotions, memories and reflections, affective bonds and actions so as to later relate the event in contexts of interaction, creating sequences going back and forth in continuous spirals of sensations, emotions, memories and reflections, affective bonds and actions. On transferring the information of the process contained in the narratives to the final work, one of the central purposes of the plan of work, I used imagery from the Mexican lottery, a game of cards which consists in pages with representative images and a collection of proverbs to sing the luck, besides other images that would be building a personal game of lottery. These images were the excuse to generate other I writings. Figure 1. The Mexican lottery.

4 Figure 2. Narratives examples To present the report of investigation I used the proposition of the I writings, or I literatures, for three reasons: 1) much of the narratives consisted in fragments and notations about the moments that I had observed while others were well developed; 2) most dealt with themes of intimate content related to emotions more than with actions, they exposed more subjective qualities than objective descriptions of reality; 3) and also for considering the possibility of touching the literary realm in the writing of the final product. Jirku, Pozo, & Schneider (2012) point that literary manifestations around the construction of identities and subjects reach one of their maximum levels of expression in the textual processes grouped under the denomination of I writings. The I writings, show deictic structures and allow the writer to present a specific vision of the world that characterizes him/her as an individual, and so these texts are valuable for anthropology by their expressive potential to show the qualities of identity of a person and the qualities of the context in which it is developed. For literature, the I writings, consist in a series of texts published in spite of its intimate quality and its structural anomalies which many times puts them in the limit of literary style because they do not correspond to canonic structures. From this perspective, it is not transcendental neither essential for them to present coherence criteria to structure the narrative sequences that structure human experience, because from this point of view what predominates is more an artistic intention. As historical documents they lack authenticity. Though they usually are autobiographic, same as autobiography under poststructuralist critic, they constitute hybrid texts, between truth and fiction. The constants in these types of documents is that the narrative voice in the first person of the singular I which marks a limit with fiction, is maintained within the realm of the private.

5 Due above all to the characteristics of the material that I documented during the exploration period of the project, I used the I literatures because I could take advantage of the following opportunities: Produce a coherent autobiographical discourse departing from fragmentary and unconnected narratives Select only the fragments that gave sense to the tour I had followed in my exploration and which had been of significance during the observation of time, the quotidian and movement To privilege intimate narrations over objective ones, or better said, the intimate data over the objective data, considering they gave more sense to the configuration of my vital experience than the others. To privilege the personal over the collective, locating my place in the space of the traveler in journey. Keeping in the narration data as they were registered in the initial narratives, in spite of the later mixes and manipulations to write the stories, with the aim of not breaking with the expectation of autobiographical veracity for different reasons I do not deal with now. The manipulation of notations and brief narratives to write the stories with greater flexibility, without losing trail of initial fragments in the final stories. The flexibility of the stories to change the temporal sequences to a syntactic and narrative level Integrating the voices of other persons with whom I initiated dialogs during my trip, with direct and indirect narrative strategies Fugure 3. I writing example Hacia la cotidianeidad Decidí quedarme en Jaén porque me sentía anhelante de estar en casa, aquietarme y entrar en mi hogar. Después de los días en París y la frustración del avión, quería detenerme, regresar a mi territorio. A la mañana siguiente fui a la tienda y compré comida, lo de diario. Fui a la Universidad y llegué al despacho y me fui a la biblioteca para devolver los libros y leer un rato. Hacer ejercicio, saludar, escuchar unas historias extrañas acerca de una tesis infinita, buenas ideas, un beso por allá, en fin. Mañana igual. Y todos los días, diario. Todavía no terminaba el lunes cuando lo pensé y me asusté. Pero estaba segura que me convenía quedarme y organizar mi vida: para escribir necesitaba estar instalada y con una vida en orden. Empecé a preguntarme si esto era la cotidianeidad y me respondía con un recuerdo: la canción de Chico Buarque, Cotidiano ( Y luego colgaba la vela en mi cuarto con la esperanza de tener alguna aventura nueva, una de esas que la cotidianeidad ofrece. Katya Mandoki señala que: Lo cotidiano, etimológicamente ligado a lo diurno, al término día (del latín, quotidie), no es un hecho simple dado sin mediaciones, pues se constituye continuamente sobre la base de acuerdos negociados y reglas compartidas donde están en juego las identidades personales y colectivas presentadas a la sensibilidad de los participantes.

6 The I writings make up a resource for all those who have a formation in arts and want to make investigation. They allow unifying the creative process and investigation in only one product, avoiding thus the separation between the artist and the investigator. The dynamic, nevertheless, is rigorous and requires a constant discipline of attention, besides a compromise with the community to take this information and facilitate its transference to schools of different level of education. Findings: The evidence of the process of investigation is found In the artistic work The investigator artist can integrate the report of the investigation as a building element of the work. A point that stands out is the importance of the process in this type of projects, a perspective of work in process Dewey says in Art as experience: Time as organization of change is growth, and growth means that a varied series of changes goes into intervals of pauses and rests, of conclusions that become the initial points of new development processes (Dewey, 1980:27). Navigate one time implied, first sensing my rhythm, then give it sense and dimension, and then observing one time which for moments moves away from chronological linearity. Sensing time implies observing owns passage through the world.!!! Bibliography

7 Borgdorff, H. (2012). The conflict of the faculties. Perspectives on artistic research and academia. Amsterdam: Leiden University Press. ISBN (PDF) Bruner, J. (1991). Actos de significado. Más allá de la revolución cognitiva. España: Alianza Dewey, J. (1980). El arte como experiencia. España: Paidós Hernández, F. (2008). La investigación basada en las artes. Propuestas para repensar la investigación en educación. From: Jauss, H. R. (2002). Pequeña apología de la experiencia estética. España: Paidós Jirku, B. & Pozo, B. (2011). Escrituras del yo: entre la autobiografía y la ficción. Quaderns de Filologia. Estudis literaris. Vol. XVI (2011) From: Jirku, B. Pozo, B. & Schneider, U. (2012). Escrituras del yo. España: Universidad de Valencia Maturana, H. (1997). La objetividad. Un argumento para obligar. Chile: Dolmen Sullivan, G. (2010). Art practice as research. Inquiry in visual arts. USA: Sage, 2 nd edition.