Oddsherre/DDSKS January 2020

Efva Lilja

What Makes Sense?

On the notion of practice in relation to in-depth research in the arts

A Prayeri
I am my flesh, my blood, my fat, my muscles, my legs, my skin, my hair and my sweat. I am
my nails, lips, ears…

I am what I spit, shit, bleed and weep

I am what I will be and what I was at the same time

I am what I know, what I feel, what I believe, what I imagine

I am what I lack, what I do not know, what I cannot do

I am what I wish
I am my unwillingness, my resistance and my struggle

Right now and for a while longer I am

Artistic Research for Whom?

Our reality must be scrutinized with a critical eye. We all live and work in a context, in a
reality we can influence through what we do and say, how we think, how we live and act, how
we deal with practice, how we communicate. Given the current situation for culture and art in
Europe, the markets for performing art are experiencing rapid change towards an increased
commercialization and populism on the one hand, and marginalization on the other. The
entertainment business is alive and kicking. But art has another function. Art mustn’t rub the
right way. It must provoke, activate, engage and introduce new fields of desire. These are
factors that affect the need for research activities and the expectations they must meet. In our
present day, in the digital society where information and models of understanding are
constantly simplified, art can stimulate critical thinking and reflection about the complexity of
our world and how this is depicted in the never-ending media flow that surrounds us. With the
digital explosion and the requirements from a globalized world, there is a sharp increase in the
demand for artistic research, for interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research methods,
communication of it, and the transfer of results into implementation.

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The object of artistic research is artii. As artists we engage in research to become better at
what we are doing, for improvement in the arts. We introduce new ideas in order to develop
sustainable practices, to rethink art, become leaders, increase audience engagement,
investigate new presentation formats or to tackle political and societal issues. We do it for the
relevance of art in an ever more complex and diverse society. Research findings inform and
enhance our work. The threat to artistic research is political ignorance, political opposition as
well as a conservative view of knowledge, which tries to mold art into the established
structures of academia. Another threat is our (read: artists) own prejudices and/or
unwillingness to let go of traditional “boxes”, hierarchies and various safety nets. Or maybe
just lack of communicative ability.

Not all artists are potential researchers, but all innovative art demands a certain amount of
research. Some artists do this in an academic context, some outside of academia. Anyone can
call themselves a researcher or claim a research practice, but to gain formal recognition as a
researcher, one must fulfill the required sharing and documentation that makes one’s research
available to peers/colleagues for an exchange of views, project reviews, and critical dialogue.
To do that, we have to find a language that serves our purpose.

The past
Art becomes important only when it offers an alternative to the given, when new situations
are constructed. This demands of the artist courage, knowledge of art, culture, society and
politics. The responsibility always lies primarily with the artist, and secondly with the
counterpart – the audience or the public. The links are the producer, the curator, the media.
When it comes to research, the responsibility lies first and foremost with the artist, and
secondly with the counterpart – the academy.

I have been involved in the development of artistic research on a European level since the
1990s. For 25 years I have witnessed in Sweden a development from a situation in which the
academic world actively worked against artistic research to a climate of openness and co-
operation, in which the artistic researcher is given real opportunities to work on an artistic
basis, supported by a legal framework and sufficient infrastructure. The latter refers to
application of artistic methods, formation of artistic theory (read language), and financing of
senior artistic research on par with humanistic or scientific research. Art is afforded the same
opportunities to influence society as other field of knowledge. This has not always been a

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given. As artists, we have been actively engaged to make this happen through lobbyism,
activism and as experts in our field. But - what do we then do with these opportunities? How
does all this contribute to the development of the arts? How does it affect our ability to
produce, research, engage, and facilitate dialogue? Does it really?

In many countries there is still both resistance and opposition to artistic research on artistic
basis and art is forced into areas that demand methods, theories and training developed for the
humanities and science. Art runs the risk of being held hostage by universities where artistic
quality will be subjugated by pedagogical or scientific standards. How will this affect art?
And to what extent are we, the artists, to blame if this happens? All too many of us adapt into
systems and situations that do not serve our artistic aims, being all too obedient.

I am focused on contemporary choreographic performative art – an area that is seriously

disadvantaged, not in my own, but in many countries. In some countries, there is no higher
education on an artistic basis or no education at all above the BA level. Many European
countries accept an artistic basis at the BA level but demand traditional academic training for
an MA or PhD. This applies also to a so-called ‘practice-based’ PhD. Judging from some
academic institutions I have visited; this means a weaker artistic result. The reasons for this
are either or that (1) candidates are accepted on the wrong criteria; or (2) those who select
candidates are not merited or are poorly updated on contemporary art and/or its role in
society; or (3) the market compels less competent artists to choose an academic career, for
lack of professional opportunities; or (4) universities design their programs in a way that runs
counter to innovative art; or (5) senior artistic research is not considered a priority. We have
to be aware!

The Future
Objects are moved around their translations, transposed into transgressing boundaries.
Different artforms and cultures have different needs. The language in and of artistic research
always has a collegial dimension. We need time to think – to practice thinking to be able to
develop one’s language. You need time to critically reflect about the art you would like to
see/do/experience, about society and politics – and you must have time to fantasize. Alone
and together.

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The idea is that all artistic researchers must have the same opportunities as researchers within
other fields of knowledge. Only then can art be properly represented within the academic
world. All higher art education should be affiliated with research, be in close dialogue with
the major influencers and innovative artists in the respective fields.

Research at its best, stimulates collegial interaction and makes collective effort possible. We
do have needs in common and are certainly capable of suggesting alternatives for
development and change. Research can contribute to new market platforms with the aim of
making contemporary art available to broad and diverse audiences; it can focus on
empowerment, capacity building and social cohesion; it can initiate, develop and implement
social innovation processes based on cultural and artistic formats; it can promote
interdisciplinarity, methods and instruments for cultural production and innovation processes.
It can move you to an improved or more developed space, providing something you did not
even knew you needed.

It is up to us as artists to focus on how we can make academic infrastructures embrace artistic

research, and which aspects we think can enhance the relevance of art and its presence in our
lives. This, I say, takes a measure of individual and institutional disobedience. Boundaries
must be expanded and extended, conventions based on tradition exploded… Get rid of the
subordination, excuses and depreciation of the self. Be proud of what you know, your
insights, experiences and skills. We can do it.

What do We have to do?

To move on we must practice thinking, questioning and generously rephrase the
commonplace with integrity and individuality. We must work to bring spatial as well as
conceptual sites into dialogue with the contemporary, to seek enhanced living in movement.
That is how our attention is sharpened. That is how alternative expressions are created. That is
how language is developed. That is how systems are changed. The act of living embodied in
and through movement. Academia in turn, must offer conditions to make it possible for the
artist to take the risks needed to work with research and innovation, including work for
endangered practices. This is a question of infrastructure, leadership and politics. Politics
shape the conditions.

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We must work with the notion of language and challenge the status quo. We have to stop
adopting our processes into irrelevant formats and insist on artistic theory and methodologies
sprung from practice. We have to stop defending and instead propose. We have to stop
competing and instead support. We have to practice solidarity and sharing. We must be brave
and make sure that we are not stuck in a given tradition or convention. We must avoid
mirroring actualities and instead take the lead in development and innovation. To do this, one
must stay in shape and be on the move, physically and intellectually. That is how we can
stimulate ourselves to insights that make us capable of dealing with the inescapable
uncertainty and fuzziness of the future. Whatever you do, it must be done fully to attain
relevance, to make a difference.

To keep in shape and be creative, we need in-depth work processes, risk-taking, experiments,
research, collegial dialogues and of course international exchange. We are dependent on
meeting others in order to catch sight of ourselves, of our ideas, thoughts, opinions, and tastes.
Of the beauty of longing. Of political positioning. Through in-depth work processes and
research, we can assume the right of interpretation and responsibility of and for issues for
which art may hold the answer.

Exercise 88iii

Convince yourself that you can manage everything you want to do if you just do it one thing at
a time. One thing at a time.
Do it.

What I do
In my practice I choreograph processes of thinking, transforming thinking into linguistic and
audible layers. I reveal the thinking within the doing, with a focus on processual proceedings.
Through the choreographed movement I speak of experiences, from experience, about the
hierarchies that guide language, art and everyday life, about infrastructure, power and about
who owns the right of interpretation. Much of this daily brain racking is unarticulated, a given
state like breathing or coughing. I work with the methodology of listening and thinking as
practice; with text, imagery and dance. Through observation of actions, by documenting,
drawing, writing, dancing and engaging in dialogue with others, I train myself in the
techniques of unmasking.

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I work with choreography as an open and inclusive order spanning a number of disciplines; I
uncover hidden stories, images and words that otherwise would risk drowning in nationalistic,
populistic and/or reactionary political ideologies; I move freely from my area of expertise,
thinking that choreography offers the tools I need for a variety of creative processes, within
spatial, conceptual, linguistic and philosophical expressions. I use my experience on
uncertainty as a distortion of reality and I address uncertainty as a falsity, a state that hinders
me from embracing beautiful moments of serendipity. A measure of distraction serves to
obstruct a precipitous clarity. The work (practice) stimulates to new insights that make me
capable of dealing with the fuzziness I cannot escape. I produce objects, installations,
performances – but also theories and methods for leadership, organization, processes and
production. In doing so, I contribute to new forms of collaboration, economies, and many
other things. Among the public I am known for some as the choreographer, the dancer, the
author, the filmmaker, the painter, the professor or the activist. To me, it is all the same. I am
an artist, at work.

Working: listening, thinking, moving, experimenting, risking, fighting, failing, doubting,

observing, fantasizing, resting, dreaming, celebrating, doing nothing, being hyperactive,
crying, laughing, screaming…

Choreography is thought practice converted into survival strategies through actions; actions
that stimulate us to think beyond the already spoken, beyond the already seen and beyond
what we think we know. Choreography can be seen as a method of investigation into the
relation between the physical and the material. I walk. I talk. I dance. My body mediates the
thought. Thoughts move quickly without weight and mass. Meanwhile the movement of the
body require both time and space. I draw. I paint. I write. Writing is a visual practice that
gives the inertia that comes from the movement of the hand. Writing is linear while drawing
and painting is more like the kind of thinking that moves in many different directions and
speeds at the same time. It becomes like dancing. With this definition, language can be verbal,
written as text, signs, images or as movements. Drawings and paintings as text, words as
images, movements as linguistic dimensions of moving… Language as the cultural motor, the
force behind the action.

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When one experiments or produces projects for the market, there are neither demands for
documentation, publication, nor for collegial sharing. Nor is there much time for in-depth
processes, to reflect, or to live non-productively. No time for the laziness that allows thoughts
to wonder… To be frank, many artists adapt their ideas and themes to those of public debate
or current trends. A filter of political correctness is often added to the work. The result is just
a confirmation or a mirroring of realities which in turn makes art instrumental. If so, we will
get art that does not initiate or lead the debate - but follows, just as when art institutions
prioritize works limited to trends. On the other hand, we have artists who are brave enough to
insist, infiltrate, initiate activities and processes that push us further. Artists with experience
and knowledge of great interest for research. Artistic processes cannot be streamlined and
adapted without losing their relevance. Much of the contemporary dance scene includes
qualities that otherwise would get lost in our everyday life. It is about language. And courage.

Next
Attention. Participation. Experience. That’s how our sense of empathy and engagement is
stimulated. We become active in the creation of meaning by using our experience, knowledge,
intuition and reflection in our interpretation of what is happening in the work and between us.
This in turn gives us tools to support humanitarian values and an ability to understand the
perspectives and positions of others. When we are offered the chance to talk about and
through performative art, we strengthen the foundations of freedom of expression and the
democratic society. Art is “society making”.

As attentive, creative and empathic individuals, we are all needed with our different identities,
insights and visions. With our practices. With our labor. With our compassion. We turn
impressions into action. We are a part of the public debate. As artists and researchers, we are
crucial for the development of art but also for societal and cultural development. Artistic
methods and actions are used to question and query the current state in a way that generates
thoughts and a creativity that leads to new insights about matters that would otherwise remain
hidden.

Yes, art can activate our senses, emotions and thoughts. Every thought turns into movement.
Movements turn into words. Words as a manifestation of thoughts and wonders, yet useless to
those who get stuck and embedded in bodies without organs. When everything is in flux, in a
state of constant stirring, it forces us to proactively and creatively rearrange and make both

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movements and words understandable. That’s how we carry on. Thinking and moving into the
unknown, trying to describe the untouchable.

Yes, let’s sing a song in defense of the freedom of expression and the artistic freedom that is
now under threat in many countries! Read the Freemuse report “on the state of artistic
freedom”iv. Sing louder and dance more! Yes, let’s dance around the political movements that
are against radicalism in art. Yes, let’s open our minds and encourage constructive ideas for
cultural development. Art is an important agent in our western cultures and an integral part of
the civil society. Make the world aware of the uncertainty and lack of infrastructure that is
now a threat to many pioneering and innovative activities. We must be on the move!

Our bodies are archives for all they have lived, their memories and experiences of
concrete meetings, events, historical heritage, cultural and philosophical attitudes. If
we want these archives to be accessible, we must simply know how to communicate.
And we are all active in the creation of our futures, of futurities to be approached as a
consequence of practice. Are you among those who mill about and jostle, or do your
make new way? Let us do research and offer art as a meeting-place!

i
Do You Get What I am not Saying? Efva Lilja, Ellerströms 2012, www.ellerstroms.se
ii
Art, Research, Empowerment. On the artist as researcher. Efva Lilja, Swedish Ministry of Education and
Research 2015, https://www.gov.se/rapporter/2015/01/u14.011/
iii
100 Exercises For a Choreographer and Other Survivors, Efva Lilja, Ellerströms 2012, www.ellerstroms.se
iv
https://freemuse.org/resources/item/the-state-of-artistic-freedom-2019/

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A story: The Body as an Archive in an Art-Laboratoryiv
Jammed in my seat on the bus, squeezed and stuck, I make believe that I’m a tree. Even the
pushiest of the men, young and restless, can lean against me as if I were a trunk. My skin, my
bark, is scarred by all it has been through. The scars make an imprint on his tired face. I let
out a little twig to scratch his cheek. It gives him a fresh mark.

The messy, milling crowd that fills the square where I alight as a human body, has
provokingly many disparate aims. I freeze and once again turn into a tree. I stand still as the
tree that makes all the others choose, round me, wonder…until a woman with a pram runs
straight into me. This time my body is scarred (not the bark). Still provoked I find myself
challenged to think up strategies for acts of penetration and exposure. I train myself in the
ability to distinguish in this mess that which can be considered warm and positive. I too need
something to lean on.

My body is an archive for all it has lived, its memories and experiences of concrete meetings,
events, historical heritages, cultural and philosophical attitudes. It is an archive with many
departments. According to the encyclopedia I check with, an archive is a society’s collection
of documents. My collection has not found its material form. My bodily archive collects itself
in different layers of consciousness.

To make use of all that shapes the me and my now, I need a space. That’s how it has been.
That’s how it is. The space can be physical, mental or maybe digital. The space is where and
what I decide that it must be. Sometimes a room with a floor, with walls and with a ceiling.
The space is my body and my lab. I move in where I for the moment want to live and to be.
To develop, to engage in and to produce art in a research context makes the lab important as
an abode, a place to be. You need the lab. What is there to lean against?

At times the work feels like a deadly threat to all I’ve taken for granted. At times. Otherwise
you just trod on, repeat yourself and get lost in the ruins of established conventions that
scream out what is proper. Those are the days and nights when the lab is closed for repairs.

The young man has followed me from the bus stop. He walks determinedly to catch up with
me. He wants something from me. My tree identity offers no cover. He has already seen
through my stillness. I’m convinced that he is carrying a knife. A knife that will easily peel off
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both my skin and my bark. A knife that can carve new signs in the choreographic texture of
the body and create new files in the archive. So – I welcome him with an air of warmth and
heartiness. But in fright.

I’ve worked as an artist for thirty/forty years. Always in exploration, experimenting with the
seemingly impossible. For fifteen/twenty years my work has also been that of a researcher.
That work has always found itself inside the mental and physical spaces where I reside,
spaces that both create opportunities and put up barriers. The positive laboratory room
comes in the shape of a studio, a workshop, the Arctic ice, a cafe, an interval, a web site, an
edit suite, another interval, a shaded bench behind a house, a lover’s nest or a fight… I
cannot build myself into a context that I’m unable to reproduce. If I have to meet the young
man I will. If I don’t, the narrative stops here and now.

Okay. I will.

My research gets its nourishment from meetings. It demands a challenge, critical reflection as
a trigger to give my own resistance enough power to reformulate (reframe) itself. Through his
voice I can envisage new spaces and opportunities to penetrate. I have to risk being not just
scratched but scarred. And we meet. You can call it research bonding if you like.

We have so much fun! He laughs. I laugh. Then we work silently side by side in different think
spaces. Then we dance. Then we talk more and say that we wish for more and to go further,
but in different ways. The physical spaces where we exist must give room for creativity,
talkativity and seclusion, since at least I very soon will come to the point where I cannot stand
so much closeness. The outer spaces frame much of the development of the inner ones. Our
creativity evolves in relation to the support or the resistance offered by the space. My work
cries for that which cannot compare itself with what we knew before. Most of the spaces I
enter, confirm what we take for granted.

The continuous journey between inner and outer spaces, between mental and
physical rooms is quite tiring. I separate the rooms by habit, behavior and
determination. That’s how I keep track of myself and continue to expand my archive.

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One of the conversations with the young man (who is now less funny and not tired at
all), is about what constitutes meaning and the coherence between what we see –
think – feel and do. It is about how to create trust in that which we have yet to see…

The thoughts we think, the emotions we feel, the decisions we make, the dialogue we
engage in – all of that is affected by the space in which it plays out. We agree that a
good space is a space with room for the unforeseeable. It has clear contours that set
limits for the inside-outside dichotomy. It doesn’t ”run with the grain”, it isn’t
”saturated”. It has enough room for us to contribute, consciously or intuitively. It
has room for meetings. A good space stimulates movement in both body and mind. A
good space for creativity is not predictable. I now want him to move on. Make
company with others who mill about, or lie down, or jump a little, or something.

I close my eyes and think how differently I use my eyes if the space stimulates my
senses. People inhabit and man. I let my thoughts wander in the space I long to
encounter. The dynamics of a room is enhanced by asymmetry, a highlighted corner,
a staircase, a ceiling… The image deepens if your eyes spontaneously scan in
different directions and levels. Warmth opens the body, cold closes it. It mustn’t be
cold. It is hard to think when you are cold, and I find it hard to concentrate if I find
the room ugly. Similarly, with sound. Sounds of ventilation, machinery, music, hard-
drives, traffic, chatting, wind, vacuuming, drilling – all of that will affect the way I
see and experience. Matched against other sounds, sounds as color, as temperature.

Let different rooms have different temperatures, so that you become more aware
when you move between them. Inside and outside. Coolness opens up the brain, but
all senses are a part of your perception. Physical traces like wear, objects placed out
or left behind express style and taste. All of this affects you.

The space where I am (the bus, the square, the studio, the large stage, the grocery
store), are the spaces in which my now is played out. You who see me and read what
I have to tell (or choose not to tell) – read what you want to read. Part of your
reading depends on the room where you are just now and what you are prepared to
file into your own archive. Are you among those who mill about and jostle, or do
your make new way or are you a tree?
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