In this chapter I have identified the Performance Research frameworks that have shaped my project. I have outlined an approach to research that takes account of the singularities of creative practice, and recognises the challenges this kind of research poses to the academy. I have argued that Performance Research is an ideal methodology for questioning mind/body, subject/object binary concepts because, in this field, activities often focus on bodies in/as the site of performance. I have traced a linage of Performance Research that has occurred outside the academy to help frame the artistic context within which my investigations have taken place.
In this chapter I have identified the Performance Research frameworks that have shaped my project. I have outlined an approach to research that takes account of the singularities of creative practice, and recognises the challenges this kind of research poses to the academy. I have argued that Performance Research is an ideal methodology for questioning mind/body, subject/object binary concepts because, in this field, activities often focus on bodies in/as the site of performance. I have traced a linage of Performance Research that has occurred outside the academy to help frame the artistic context within which my investigations have taken place.
I have discussed the emerging field of Performance Philosophy and highlighted how this interdisciplinary domain is forging a new kind of experiential philosophical expression. I have activated a dialogue between philosophy and performance because philosophical concepts alone did not capture the performative component of my experiences or offer the means by which I might experientially eschew mind/body, subject/object binaries. I have discussed how the lived experience of artistic creativity requires openness to what I call live knowing. I claim that live knowing is enacted through live performance events that are designed to create ambiguous, disruptive, playful and creative states. In doing so, I lay claim to a new phenomenon that I call wild life. In the next chapter, I detail the experiential methods I used to access experience differently and create the live, artistic performance event that was held in April 2016.