Documentation in Performance-Led Research

Abstract

This article begins by setting the question of why practitioner-researchers engage in the practice of documentation within the context of academic research conventions. The assumption that performance requires documentation for dissemination is brought into question through reference to Caroline Rye's provocative suggestion that documentation should be banned from the ‘practice as research in performance’ debate to bring into view transitory and provisional forms of dissemination. The article goes on to inquire into documentation's capability to provide knowledge that is similar in nature to the contributions of live performance, and to question whether documentation and performance should be defined as oppositional practices. These concerns are then addressed through the presentation and evaluation of philosophical notions surrounding the concept of ‘liveness’, drawing on the writings of Peggy Phelan, Philip Auslander and Martin Buber. The focus then shifts to examine how audiovisual documentation may become a dialogic knowledge-producing encounter. This question is pragmatically addressed through the presentation of a documentation method which is designed to articulate provisional and divergent perspectives on creative research processes. The article then concludes by evaluating the role of documentation in mixed-mode research (drawing on the work of Susan Melrose), while pointing towards a growing recognition of the need for a new model of performance-led research validation that accounts for the corroborative relationship between performance and documentation practices.