© joão leal

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1. Uma experiência de percurso da exposição final, "Resistir à Narrative, aglutinadora de parte significativa dos trabalhos presentes nesta secção. Esta exposição aconteceu na Casa Museu Abel Salazar, entre 26 de Novembro de 2016 e 07 de Janeiro de 2017.

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   An experience of the final show, "Resisting Narrative", with a comprehensive selection of the works included in this section. This show happened in Abel Salazar's Museum House, between the 26th of November 2016 and the 07th of January 2017.

2. Resisting Narrative - Artistic research, narrativity and the constraints of academia

   This practice-led research consists of film and photographic-based work that is responsive to the personal journey of undertaking a PhD. The artistic practice reflects the pathways and journeys undertaken as both a researcher and teacher and the struggle with the structural constraints of academic research and the need to maintain the freedoms of artistic practice. The research takes its cue from the notion of artistic research as “unfinished thinking” (Borgdorff, 2012, p. 143)— and the inevitable collisions and conflicts arising from this in terms of the demands of academia.

   Theories of narrative are central to the explorative processes of the artistic practice.

   Is narrative inevitable to all artistic works or can art resist and counter narrative structures? Does an artist’s working process necessarily involve a narrative? And does the process of undertaking art as academic research mean it is harder to avoid narrative and the demand for intelligibility and coherence?

   Art practice is traditionally averse to regulations and very prone to non-narra- tive. This practice-led research explores the tensions arising when art practice is put into a highly regulated research environment, one that is constructed as a well-structured traditional narrative. This does not mean the results from the practice have to become academic, in the sense that they can be understood and replicable. On the contrary, they should remain as artworks, coherent in terms of the artist’s concerns and aims. But at the same time, within academia, they have to be configured as research.

   Through a series of distinctive but related artworks (video, photography and in- stallation), all exhibited in specific response to a space that functions as a mu- seum to another artist and teacher, the author explores the tensions between his working process as an artist and the process of PhD research.

   The practice is contextualized by an engagement with narrative theory and an examination of a number of artworks that can be seen to resist sense and mean- ing. The case studies include works by Gabriel Orozco, John Cage, João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva and Tacita Dean. While all can be seen to resist narra- tive, the thesis will also explore how narrative is unavoidable.

   Reference:

   Borgdorff, H. (2012) ‘The Production of Knowledge in Artistic Research’, in The Conflict of the Faculties - Perspective on Artistic Research and Academia. Leiden University Press, pp. 140–173