LAUSR

Abstract It is tempting to see the process of performance research, particularly practice-based research, as one of excavating past stages of performance process as they become buried underneath the accrual of a performance text as it comes into being. This approach, however, presents a key problem in practice-as-research: as the artist-researcher, how can I be both creator and observer of my process? How can I be both on the ground peering into the excavation, and ‘in the trenches’ doing the creative work? In this paper, I envision another methodological lens for engaging with performance process, by way of my practice-based research project You Know How I Feel. This self-reflexive performance proposes that we might think of creative process not as an accumulation of layers, but as a network of bifurcating mediations. Following Bruno Latour, I propose that our research might seek not to dig up the ground below us, but rather to re-animate the networks of mediations that bring us to our creative present. This paper follows my move from an ‘excavation’ model of research to a ‘re-animation’ approach, illustrating how I resolved the conflict of the artist-researcher attempting to be both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the work.