In this PhD I am working on the edges of community dance practice, and at the same time driven by the core values or community dance, which is an odd but exciting paradox to be wandering through, literally and metaphorically.
What does it mean to be working at the heart and the edges of something all at once?
It feels like the practice is shifting about/around on the edges of a variety of related practices: community dance (as a participatory/socially engaged art practice) walking art, performance art and site-specific dance. It feels like ‘curatorial practice’ or the practice of curating is the connector of these related practices and that my role as an artist-curator is to navigate through a nomadic wandering between disciplines. The curating part is the meaning making, the sense making, the critical lens that makes sense of the edges and how/where they overlap and where they do not overlap.
It is slippery in nature, dodging definition and categorisation. I love this but also I have to grapple with the discomfort and uncertainty of this fluid position and its impact on my ability to make decisions about ‘what next’ in the practice, and currently, ‘how to share the practice publicly?’ and ‘what of the practice do I share for examination?’ and ‘how do I share it?’
In short, what does it mean to share something that is public, artistic and scholarly? Can I do all these things at the same time?
The shifting about of practices also happened in my Masters practice research thesis (Fort, 2015). My practice started sliding from community dance into curating. Calling myself an artist-curator, I concluded “The ecology of this community practice is defined by the co-existence and interaction of people, objects and space, and how these elements co-create one another. This is one way thinking about collaboration and the collective voice.”
And now, it would seem, the artist-curator role is the one that will help me make sense of what is at the heart, what is at the edges, and how do I curate the practice into something artistic, scholarly and public?
Having set myself a deadline of bringing the practice element of this project to a close – well, not a complete close, but a close for the purposes of the research project – by end of November 2022, I feel like I am unhelpfully bumbling about trying to decide what do share for a deadline which is just weeks away.
I decided to reach out to my network for help. I asked my previous teacher, Simon Ellis, now based at C-DARE, Coventry University, who writes the Practice As Research Blog…
“I’m in the messy decision making process of how to share practice to close the public aspect of my project … and what to share for examination alongside the thesis. It’s the hardest part for me, surrounded by ideas and possibilities but also thinking “what’s the minimal viable product”? What’s good enough?”
You can read his helpful response here, taking me back to the research questions, or the “spine” of the project. I am also exploring this with other artist friends and scholars, as a way of learning from others and sharing solutions.
To close, these are the questions I am hoping will provide the clarity to move forward:
- What way(s) of sharing will address the research questions of this project?
- What is the minimal viable product? What is good enough?
- What will reflect the values of community dance practice?
- What is the role of artist-curator in finding solutions for sharing?
- What is useful? (after Tania Bruguera’s concept of l’arte util)
- How do I balance care for myself, my family, my project, the situation/context of the project – Woolwich’ and my research companions, towards this artistic-scholarly-public end?
woolwich wandering 