Ill-Disciplined: Art as a process for interdisciplinary productive antagonisms, and the case for the artist-researcher as a ‘forerunner’ and leader in the interstices of disciplines

TY - CHAP

T1 - Ill-Disciplined

T2 - Art as a process for interdisciplinary productive antagonisms, and the case for the artist-researcher as a ‘forerunner’ and leader in the interstices of disciplines

AU - Tan, Kai Syng

PY - 2019/2/3

Y1 - 2019/2/3

N2 - SCOPE In relation to Arts and Humanities Research, this chapter explores • Method, process • (Artistic) practice and praxis• Creativity, experimentation, failure and risk• Performativity• Theory and practice / theory as practice / practice as theory• Writing and publishing• Disciplinary boundaries• The development of my research and myself as a researcherFORMAT I propose a book chapter, within which there are textual and imagery interventions. There are sections in which the language is more performative and autobiographical. There might also be sections which are written ‘badly’ and ‘dyslexically’. There are also images that will punctuate throughout the text as illustration and counterpoint. This approach enacts being ‘ill-disciplined’: disrupting the way things are done and making new connections in and beyond the academy.RUNDOWNMy chapter rallies for art practice in arts and humanities research as a process to disrupt the status quo, make new connections across disciplinary boundaries and make new combinations of bodies of knowledge, asking new questions, creating new problems and creating new insights. It introduces the interrelated approaches: ‘productive antagonisms’ (Latham and Tan 2017) and the artist as a ‘running-messenger’ (Tan 2014) who is ‘ill-disciplined’ (Tan and Asherson 2018). SITUATIONResearch Councils argue that ‘major societal challenges’ like mental health demand ‘novel’, cross-disciplinary efforts (RCUK 2017), and that the arts and humanities have a ‘key role to play’ (AHRC 2017). The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing inquiry report puts forward a robust argument for how the arts can ‘stimulate imagination and reflection’ and ‘change perspectives’ (2017). Yet the report rejects art that is ‘lofty activity which requires some sort of superior cultural intelligence to access’ (p21). The exclusion of ‘lofty’, intelligent arts from health is reminiscent of its exclusion in the academy (Elkins 2009). Perhaps exacerbated by the current climate of fear, fear of the other and funding cuts, academics retreat to ‘silos’, and only work with artists as short-term contractors to tick the ‘impact’ and ‘public engagement’ boxes, not as part of a meaningful interdisciplinary inquiry. Could we think about art practice and art practitioners as part of the solution? As natural creative thinkers, artists have the capability to fundamentally alter the way things are done –could we work with and even nurture artists to be leaders as we move forward together in such times of uncertainty? MY APPROACH My practice and research mobilise the body and mind in (com)motion as a mode of interrogation/intervention in a world in (com)motion. By extension, I consider my role as a connector, disrupter and ‘running-messenger’ who is ‘ill-disciplined’, scampering within/between/across artistic/disciplinary/geopolitical boundaries to gather diverse and distinct bodies (and bodies of knowledge) together to engineer spaces of ‘productive antagonisms’. In other words, instead of solving problems or resolving differences, this is about catalysing new insights and new questions. Restless, shifty, and exuberant, my approach is turbocharged by my Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), dyslexia. I will examine a key case study, #MagicCarpet and touch one two related other projects. Along the way I will draw a range of existing work, including that of Callard and Fitzgerald 2015, Hawkins (2013) and Büscher(2017).CASE STUDY: #MAGICCARPET #MagicCarpet takes place at King’s College London, where I am based. It is co-led with a psychiatrist in 2017, and investigates mind-wandering and how that relates to the creative process and the neurodevelopmental disorder of ADHD and through this, open up questions about how we understand disorder, disability, difference and diversity, including neurodiversity. We use participatory installation, drawing and performance. This work is situated in the fields of arts in health or creative health. From this body of work I want to develop the term of being ‘ill-disciplined’ which was first raised in productive antagonisms to encompass the subversion of the notions of illness. I started to think critically about ‘illness’ after my own diagnoses. Indeed, ‘productive antagonisms’ play out classic ADHD traits including making unusual links, courage and novelty-seeking. Hence, with #MagicCarpet and my new work, I détourn or overturn the disorder and deficits of ADHD into my creative methodology, to open up new platforms that allow play, experimentation and disruption to invigorate other forms of knowledge. OTHER RELATED WORK#MagicCarpet draws on RUN! RUN! RUN! Biennale #r3fest. I founded and co-led #r3fest with a geographer in 2014, which explores running as an art and humanities discourse. This body of work was founded at University College London, where I also completed my PhD in fine art on running. This work is building a new genre or field ‘Running Studies’ (Whelan 2015). We go for group runs, make drawings and films, use running as a psychogeographical approach, incorporate running as a metaphor in our work and so on. We coined the term ‘productive antagonisms’ to frame our work. Here, the ‘usual norms of disciplinary practice were temporarily suspended’. This piecing together and curation requires ‘a certain amount of artistry’. It also rests on a ‘playful suspension of critical disbelief’, ‘a willingness to explore, experiment, mess around with unexpected and indeed unlikely lines of connection and influence’, which is ‘something artists are very skilled at’, since ‘making good art involves a willingness to practice a bit of ill- discipline’, a ‘willingness to run across the boundaries that separate disciplines’ to ‘see what happens when these boundaries are over run, out run, re-routed’. This draws on a non-Cartesian, Chinese (Daoist) system to relate the body, mind and the world, the agility and spontaneity of running (Latham and Tan, 2017), running as a methodology and metaphor (Tan, 2018a) and the traditions of art intervention and détournement or subversion best exemplified by the efforts of Marcel Duchamp and the Situationists (Tan, 2017, p.67)I will also explore how ill-disciplinarity and productive antagonisms relate to the artistic traditions of collage, montage and juxtaposition, and how I have cultivated and nurtured these techniques over the years through my own work as an artist (since the 1990s), including in ISLANDHOPPING (2002-2005 Japan), which unpacked ‘island’ as a geopolitical and cultural concept, and how meanings shift as myself and the audience ‘hopped’ about. This took place in Tokyo, where I lived. I will also look forward, into the future, by touching on a new strand that I am helping to kickstart, which is on Art and Mobilities. This work is with colleagues at the Centre of Mobilities Studies and Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University. It explores the ways in which art interacts with the already inter- or trans-disciplinary field of Mobilities research, which explores how people, ideas and goods move on a global, national and local scale, and has its foundations in social science. IN CONCLUSIONWriting this chapter allows me a space to reflect on my practice and research and how it relates to Arts and Humanities and more generally, the academy. I will reflect on the strengths of the approaches, which includes the thrill of the unknown, creating fun spaces to meet and interact with people with sometimes diametrically different worldviews; learning new skills and knowledges, satiating boredom, keeping myself, my collaborators and audiences on our toes, earning new audiences, resisting being boxed in and thus confusing the sceptics (and gatekeepers) who cannot place/situate you, and coming up with innovative, creative insights and even solutions to existing problems. I will outline the some of the positive feedback and real changes that the RUN! RUN! RUN! and #MagicCarpet have or are achieving. My key aim however is to catalyse colleagues to think bold and to come up with yet other bold approaches, whether this includes working with art practice and art practitioners or not. And now is the time to think bold, not close in or be tribal.

AB - SCOPE In relation to Arts and Humanities Research, this chapter explores • Method, process • (Artistic) practice and praxis• Creativity, experimentation, failure and risk• Performativity• Theory and practice / theory as practice / practice as theory• Writing and publishing• Disciplinary boundaries• The development of my research and myself as a researcherFORMAT I propose a book chapter, within which there are textual and imagery interventions. There are sections in which the language is more performative and autobiographical. There might also be sections which are written ‘badly’ and ‘dyslexically’. There are also images that will punctuate throughout the text as illustration and counterpoint. This approach enacts being ‘ill-disciplined’: disrupting the way things are done and making new connections in and beyond the academy.RUNDOWNMy chapter rallies for art practice in arts and humanities research as a process to disrupt the status quo, make new connections across disciplinary boundaries and make new combinations of bodies of knowledge, asking new questions, creating new problems and creating new insights. It introduces the interrelated approaches: ‘productive antagonisms’ (Latham and Tan 2017) and the artist as a ‘running-messenger’ (Tan 2014) who is ‘ill-disciplined’ (Tan and Asherson 2018). SITUATIONResearch Councils argue that ‘major societal challenges’ like mental health demand ‘novel’, cross-disciplinary efforts (RCUK 2017), and that the arts and humanities have a ‘key role to play’ (AHRC 2017). The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing inquiry report puts forward a robust argument for how the arts can ‘stimulate imagination and reflection’ and ‘change perspectives’ (2017). Yet the report rejects art that is ‘lofty activity which requires some sort of superior cultural intelligence to access’ (p21). The exclusion of ‘lofty’, intelligent arts from health is reminiscent of its exclusion in the academy (Elkins 2009). Perhaps exacerbated by the current climate of fear, fear of the other and funding cuts, academics retreat to ‘silos’, and only work with artists as short-term contractors to tick the ‘impact’ and ‘public engagement’ boxes, not as part of a meaningful interdisciplinary inquiry. Could we think about art practice and art practitioners as part of the solution? As natural creative thinkers, artists have the capability to fundamentally alter the way things are done –could we work with and even nurture artists to be leaders as we move forward together in such times of uncertainty? MY APPROACH My practice and research mobilise the body and mind in (com)motion as a mode of interrogation/intervention in a world in (com)motion. By extension, I consider my role as a connector, disrupter and ‘running-messenger’ who is ‘ill-disciplined’, scampering within/between/across artistic/disciplinary/geopolitical boundaries to gather diverse and distinct bodies (and bodies of knowledge) together to engineer spaces of ‘productive antagonisms’. In other words, instead of solving problems or resolving differences, this is about catalysing new insights and new questions. Restless, shifty, and exuberant, my approach is turbocharged by my Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), dyslexia. I will examine a key case study, #MagicCarpet and touch one two related other projects. Along the way I will draw a range of existing work, including that of Callard and Fitzgerald 2015, Hawkins (2013) and Büscher(2017).CASE STUDY: #MAGICCARPET #MagicCarpet takes place at King’s College London, where I am based. It is co-led with a psychiatrist in 2017, and investigates mind-wandering and how that relates to the creative process and the neurodevelopmental disorder of ADHD and through this, open up questions about how we understand disorder, disability, difference and diversity, including neurodiversity. We use participatory installation, drawing and performance. This work is situated in the fields of arts in health or creative health. From this body of work I want to develop the term of being ‘ill-disciplined’ which was first raised in productive antagonisms to encompass the subversion of the notions of illness. I started to think critically about ‘illness’ after my own diagnoses. Indeed, ‘productive antagonisms’ play out classic ADHD traits including making unusual links, courage and novelty-seeking. Hence, with #MagicCarpet and my new work, I détourn or overturn the disorder and deficits of ADHD into my creative methodology, to open up new platforms that allow play, experimentation and disruption to invigorate other forms of knowledge. OTHER RELATED WORK#MagicCarpet draws on RUN! RUN! RUN! Biennale #r3fest. I founded and co-led #r3fest with a geographer in 2014, which explores running as an art and humanities discourse. This body of work was founded at University College London, where I also completed my PhD in fine art on running. This work is building a new genre or field ‘Running Studies’ (Whelan 2015). We go for group runs, make drawings and films, use running as a psychogeographical approach, incorporate running as a metaphor in our work and so on. We coined the term ‘productive antagonisms’ to frame our work. Here, the ‘usual norms of disciplinary practice were temporarily suspended’. This piecing together and curation requires ‘a certain amount of artistry’. It also rests on a ‘playful suspension of critical disbelief’, ‘a willingness to explore, experiment, mess around with unexpected and indeed unlikely lines of connection and influence’, which is ‘something artists are very skilled at’, since ‘making good art involves a willingness to practice a bit of ill- discipline’, a ‘willingness to run across the boundaries that separate disciplines’ to ‘see what happens when these boundaries are over run, out run, re-routed’. This draws on a non-Cartesian, Chinese (Daoist) system to relate the body, mind and the world, the agility and spontaneity of running (Latham and Tan, 2017), running as a methodology and metaphor (Tan, 2018a) and the traditions of art intervention and détournement or subversion best exemplified by the efforts of Marcel Duchamp and the Situationists (Tan, 2017, p.67)I will also explore how ill-disciplinarity and productive antagonisms relate to the artistic traditions of collage, montage and juxtaposition, and how I have cultivated and nurtured these techniques over the years through my own work as an artist (since the 1990s), including in ISLANDHOPPING (2002-2005 Japan), which unpacked ‘island’ as a geopolitical and cultural concept, and how meanings shift as myself and the audience ‘hopped’ about. This took place in Tokyo, where I lived. I will also look forward, into the future, by touching on a new strand that I am helping to kickstart, which is on Art and Mobilities. This work is with colleagues at the Centre of Mobilities Studies and Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University. It explores the ways in which art interacts with the already inter- or trans-disciplinary field of Mobilities research, which explores how people, ideas and goods move on a global, national and local scale, and has its foundations in social science. IN CONCLUSIONWriting this chapter allows me a space to reflect on my practice and research and how it relates to Arts and Humanities and more generally, the academy. I will reflect on the strengths of the approaches, which includes the thrill of the unknown, creating fun spaces to meet and interact with people with sometimes diametrically different worldviews; learning new skills and knowledges, satiating boredom, keeping myself, my collaborators and audiences on our toes, earning new audiences, resisting being boxed in and thus confusing the sceptics (and gatekeepers) who cannot place/situate you, and coming up with innovative, creative insights and even solutions to existing problems. I will outline the some of the positive feedback and real changes that the RUN! RUN! RUN! and #MagicCarpet have or are achieving. My key aim however is to catalyse colleagues to think bold and to come up with yet other bold approaches, whether this includes working with art practice and art practitioners or not. And now is the time to think bold, not close in or be tribal.

KW - Artistic research

KW - Practice

KW - Practice-led research

KW - Leadership

KW - Interdisciplinarity

KW - Collaboration

KW - Arts in health

KW - Arts and Humanities

KW - Running

KW - Running studies

KW - Neurodiversity

KW - Dyslexia

KW - neurodevelopmental disorder

KW - ADHD

KW - Ill-disciplined

KW - Creative methodology

KW - Critical methodology

M3 - Chapter

BT - Beyond Borders?

A2 - Taylor, Jacqueline

A2 - Bettison, Emily

A2 - Hussien, Hassan

ER -