phd /1: letting art think

over/exposed, june 2023, leith arches edinburgh

Making art within an academic inquiry is a thrilling endeavour. Firstly, because the field of arts-based research itself is relatively new, hence plenty of space for new directions and pathways still to be explored. Secondly, I can use art to produce findings and new knowledge that might not have existed before.

What interested me when I embarked on this journey was how traumatic experiences manifest in visual art, specifically film and photography, and how are they are experienced - by the body in the image and the body of the viewer. And then, how do these various (image) bodies intersect with bodies of theory?

What I knew before making art within an academic inquiry: creative work, in my case film and photography, can bring people together and produce an invaluable, vitalising energy. Making something together requires that we open oneself up, to each other's ideas, thoughts and to how our bodies orbit around the camera. Especially Simon and my work with NoMilk NoSugar has taught me that opening myself up to sharing control rather than holding on to it does not only produce fascinating work, but also a satisfying collective experience that stays in our memory and bodies for a long time.

What I discovered once I started the PhD: the field of practical aesthetics. Rather than remaining bound by opposing binaries of art/research, theory/practice, making/thinking, practical aesthetics imagines art as a unique way for producing thought, as doing philosophy. For example, what can the stretched, distorted aesthetics of a long-exposed image tell us about traumatic memory? How do intersections of sound and image help us understand particular distortions of a traumatised mind? This means that as a maker (or viewer), I don't look at an artwork from a distance, but from within. I think with its unique operations, and especially its affective qualities,

Bernd Herzogenrath is a brilliant thinker in this regard and I recommend his edited collection Practical Aesthetics.

If we put the two together - relational collectivity and following the "newness" that art brings forth - we come to a place where things start to become alive: where we understand ourselves as part of art and in constant resonance with art.

So where does this take us?

Read on.