Knowledgeable Artefacts: The role of performance documentation in PaR

Abstract

The documentation of research practice is a central concern for practice-based researchers, whose projects involve a consideration of multiple sites in which knowledge is produced and experienced.

My own practice as research PhD involved a series of performative explorations of gendered play in the built environment. The documentation I produced was in the form of artists’ pages (inspired by the regular feature in performance research), containing diary entries and responses overheard from members of the public, as well as comments about my engagement with each examiner. Whilst writing up my research, I found it necessary to consider the knowledge I had gained through the process of documenting and from an engagement with the documentation itself.

My article explores the role of documentation as another site of knowledge production and performance within the thesis.