Unclogging the Ears: Nonstop Languaging as Autotheory in Art and Academia

Abstract

This text emerges from the autotheoretical performance practice of nonstop languaging, developed during my Master Studies at HOME OF PERFORMANCE PRACTICES, ArtEZ University of the Arts. My ongoing artistic research is enacted through this practice and proposes a writing of the self that is not focused on recalling facts or narrating stories, but rather on tracing my thoughts in real time through language (languaging) and witnessing them simultaneously with another person. I perform autotheory by merging methods of articulating autobiography (carrying the self in language) with methods of forming and digesting theory. For this Special Issue, I created a new work in which nonstop languaging enters the framework of an academic paper. The autotheoretical work was developed through a series of radio performances at radio WORM, followed by a period of artistic research on transcription and citational practices. The result is an overload of words, thoughts, citations, experiences, theories, and memories that seek their own linearity. The practice of nonstop languaging contributes to the current artistic and academic discourse on autotheoretical modes of working with language, particularly within contemporary art, and further afield. This article invites readers to engage with an expanded view of autotheory in practice, and suggests that, by encouraging the shaping of an audience of engaged readers/listeners, autotheory can offer a space in which the confinements of knowledge production and dissemination within artistic academic discourse can be renegotiated.