Post-(C)-Art
General Introduction
Research Context
Lekeu's melancholic, pathetic style, coupled with the tragedy of his untimely death, were an important starting point for this project. Instead of developing new material or merely trying to (intuitively) find common ground between existing material and juxtapose it, the artists chose to use existing material, which would be analysed, interpreted, moulded and manipulated throughout the process, until finally one and coherent whole had been created. Specifically, the starting material for all three disciplines was chosen on the basis of Lekeu's life: existing poems by Johanna M. Pas herself, written when she was the age at which Guillaume Lekeu wrote the music until the age at which he died, and, at a later stage, images by Koen Broos that he made in the past but never used before. These starting points did not necessarily constitute the final material, but were meant to try to find the same emotional line in the creators' material.
The research report shows in what way very concretely the commonality was sought, in what way (through conversations, associations, experimentation, analysis...) the artists tried to get on the same (emotional) line and what impact this had on both the process and the final result.
Project Design
The project 'Cargo' is a research project founded in artistic praxis. The project design and, by extension, the focus of this report are therefore on both the artistic praxis and the reflection on and interpretation of that praxis, both in the moment and through retrospect.
Schematically presented, the process followed the following course:
The first stage in this process was the selection of the musical material (1). A rough analysis (AN), mainly to clarify what is happening substantively and translated interpretively (IN) in the respective movements of the sonata, was made for the non-musicians to get a grip on the music. Once text choices (2a to 6a) were then made, these were included in the reflections and conversations, represented in the wordclouds (WC) and the logbook excerpts (LB), and the whole was incorporated into an intermediate recording (OP), which in turn was analysed. For the visual aspect, however, concrete material only emerged from phase 5 onwards. Nevertheless, the photographer was present at all interviews and his input in the conversations was as important as that of the other artists. The analyses (AN) were made and/or discussed by all parties (together), after which each in isolation returned to the 'drawing board' and revisited their own material, with new interim results (2a to 6a; 2b to 6b; 5c to 6c). This process repeated itself several times, until the final version (BOEK) was reached.
A number of interviews (INT) then took place, which were coded and structured (D.AN).
Importantly, the methodology intertwined the artistic and research (Borgdorf, 2006). The set of activities together led to a common result that was inextricably linked to the research conducted: without this perspective and the actions linked to it, not only would the process have been different, but the result would also have taken a different form (Bolt, 2016; Cobussen 2007).
Report
The project has been extensively documented and investigated, and captured in a comprehensive research report. This report is part of a series of similar reports, each separately compiled in response to a specific artistic project, which together form the body of data and analysis of the doctoral research 'Connecting the Dots'. The ultimate goal is to design a theory through induction from the partial conclusions of all the reports in the form of a widely applicable creative-performative model in response to the overarching research question of the overarching doctoral project 'Connecting the Dots'. This requires a reliable and not purely subjective set of data, artistic and qualitative.
In order to document and make the process sharable on the one hand and increase its reliability on the other, a combination of research methods was made ('methodological pluralism', Borgdorff, 2012; see also Hubner & Vanmaele, 2020; Jensen, 2018) highlighting the artistic-performative on the one hand, and the personal and social on the other. Thereby, the use of 'performative research methods', in which artistic activity as practice-led research is central, focuses on documenting, analysing and intersubjectively sharing the emergent events, actions and outcomes that result from the artistic-research process (Gray, 1996; Haseman, 2006; Goddard, 2007). To complement this, qualitative research methods seek to uncover the underlying personal, social, communicative and (implicit or explicit) processes, on the one hand to support the performative, and on the other hand to enable discourse and dissemination (via the preconceived model) (Skains, 2018).
The complete research report, containing all information, can be accessed and downloaded below.