Image credit: Ashley Knedler
In this chapter I have identified the experiential methods that have shaped my research project. I have outlined an approach to research that takes account of the singularities of creative practice, and recognises the challenges that this kind of research poses to the academy. I have identified a lineage of body-centred research in theatre performance that, although initiated outside the academy, creates a useful artistic context for contemporary Performance Research. I have highlighted how body-centred research in performance often focuses on attuning-to visceral phenomena during the lived experience of creativity.
I have introduced the concept of attunement and described the process of activating the imagination through sensory metaphor. I have outlined the attunement practices I have used with other practitioners, to conduct first-person, body-centred investigations focused on attuning-to experience differently during creative activity. I have described the multi-mode methods used to validate my first-person research through process of reflective practice.
In the next chapter, I examine artists’ accounts of creativity and question whether their ways of accessing experience might bear any relation to Merleau-Ponty’s concept of wild Being. Using the corporeal practices detailed here, I return, as Grosz suggests, to the question of wild Being and explore how fundamental structures might operate in service of artistic creativity.