PhD Defence Inge T.H. Römgens

Keywords: Artistic research, Interdisciplinarity, Theatre practice, Educational innovation
 

"The Troubled Suitcase Taking Seriously Collaborative Artistic Research Practices"

How can research be done in collaboration with artists? Artists and academics each have their own perspectives on the world and on their jobs. In artistic research, an art practice is the driving force behind the research. ‘Artistic research’ thus refers to intermediary forms of research between academic and art practices. 

This characterisation as an intermediary practice appeals to artists, academics, and policymakers. It allows for the emergence of new modes of knowledge production. 

What exactly are these new kinds of knowledge production, and how can they be identified, comprehended, and valued? We frequently see researchers and artists relying on existing frameworks from either artistic or academic disciplines, which limits understanding of hybrid artistic research because artistic research is, after all, distinct from traditional ideas on art and science. Römgens attempts to capture this distinctiveness in her collaborations with theatre artists. Her research reveals the essential complications ('trouble'), including (perceived) oppositions, value judgements, stereotyping, and hierarchy. Römgens and her research question, who appears as a character in the dissertation, disentangle the trouble while attempting to unpack an old suitcase. 

In her PhD thesis, Römgens studied ‘the trouble’ in collaboration with theatre artists. The trouble reflects times when both artists and academics need to do the work of interpreting, making explicit and sharing what they are doing, even though they realise they do not quit know how to do this, or how they can relate to something distinct from what they are familiar with and have tried. 

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