Shift/Work: Speculations: ISSOTL17 Paper

Shift/Workshops are composed and disseminated by being performed. Playing the score leads to it being re-calibrated for future performances. Speculations was commissioned by the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India. It was first performed at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop (3-4 March 2017). At ESW, three ‘branch’ scores were composed to be performed in Kochi (22-23 March 2017) and at the Kristiansand Theatre, University of Agder, Norway (28-20 Aug 2017) producing further branch scores. A SoTL analysis of Speculations was presented at ISSoTL17 in Calgary, October 2017. Recalibrated through intense peer-review, a ‘Scroll Score’ of the generative composition to date was published as an open educational resource (OER) for ISSoTL17 (12 & 14 Oct 2017) and published on shift-work.org.ukShift/Work: Speculations is an innovative methodology that synthesises practice-based and practice-led research methods to transform our understanding and knowledge of artistic research (AR). It develops powerful insights into how Peer-2-Peer methods transmute speculative artistic practices by coupling the taking of risks with experiencing their consequences. Speculations combines new theories of paragogy with SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching & Learning) and Participatory Action Research (PAR) methods to develop and enhance a metacognitive understanding of AR. Through this, it invents a new theoretical framework - the ‘paratechnic’ - a means to collectively ‘score’ and disseminate artistic research as an OER. This is of particular importance to widening participation in the arts and restoring their civic purpose.‘Speculation’ is a unifying ethics (or cognitive bias) in AR commonly expressed as ‘without a script’ or ‘not knowing’. Drawing explicit attention to an implicit ethics within AR, and exposing it to the scrutiny and practices of non-artistic learners, raises awareness of its operations and limitations. This, in turn, enables us to repurpose, invent and practice metacognitive forms of speculation that have operational significance for, and beyond, AR.Speculations (Punctum) and newmaterialism.eu have been pivotal in suggesting ludic and non-anthropocentric forms of emergence that might foreground, and move beyond, AR's cognitive biases. Generative Shift/Work composition activates material probes as autopoetic catalysts for problem creation. As component interactions made radically distinct objects from the same material, speculation enabled Shift/Workers to formulate the concepts, equipment, and techniques to generate the truly collaborative ability to fabricate common research objects.Originality:Speculations is an original contribution to artistic knowledge, art andragogy and artistic research that implements emerging methods in paragogy and pioneers SoTL in art. A theoretically reflexive, participatory, and openly accessible paragogy for artistic research, Speculations liberates artistic knowledges by common-ing the proprietary ‘secret skills’ of the guild-monotechnic.Significance:Speculations has broad political, ontological and epistemological significance. Establishing a collective ontology for art practice though paragogy, Speculations exemplifies collectivist whole-systems thinking. Speculative research methods recognise that art is a subsystem of society - rather than separate from it - and ensure it has a pragmatic sense of its transformative potential.Rigour:Speculations is a scholarly, coherent, iterative system of meta-cognitive peer review. Composition is scaffolded with an academic and artistic community of ‘Shift/Workers’. Shift/Workers compose and play-test each other’s workshop scores before calibrating them through collective peer-review. Scores are then re-performed, iteratively, at international peer-reviewed artistic and scholarly events.