Writing with practice: Body Weather performance training becomes a medium of artistic research

Abstract

This article discusses an artistic research project that investigates the impact of Body Weather performance training on the perceptual process and modes of knowing of the performer. It revisits an early stage of my doctoral research, in which my main concern was to develop an embodied approach to the articulation of the knowledge created by the training practice. It begins with a brief introduction of the Body Weather training programme and the practice that is the focus of my investigation: the Manipulations. Drawing on the concept of bodily knowledge, it indicates the difficulty in providing a linguistic articulation of the tacit knowledge that is embodied in artistic practice. The article discusses how I address this issue by developing a ‘research score’ and creating a ‘Glossary’, and how these two are combined in order to think through the Manipulations. It provides a close reading of the process of alteration that is enabled by the Manipulations and a thick description of the research score, arguing that the latter allows for an equal relationship between practice and writing. It concludes by sharing observations regarding the expansion of training practice into a medium of research and the potential of my approach to research into training to become a mode of training research.