rescen.net

The website encodes and develops the research enquiry that led my initial establishment of ResCen, as a centre researching performance-making in creative and expert terms, by the artists themselves. It explores key PaR research questions, concerning the specificity of artist-centred practices and how these might be disseminated without calling upon conventional 'academic' input. Data on the site, and the ways it is articulated, make their timely contribution to knowledge clear: the site's design has to 'perform' what the data itself documents and records. In thematic terms, the central concerns with 1st-person making-processes clearly contrast with conventional reactive/responsive academic writing. The registers exploited are practitioner-specific and practitioner-determined, avoiding certain reactive/responsive 'academic' traditions. The site exploits a range of media, encoding the Research Centre's ideological position, while communicating widely to users over the period of critical development of PaR/practice-led research. The site attracts around 3,000 recorded visitors per month. Onsite is edited material recording ongoing dialogues between 6-8 core ResCen artists and invited speakers who are leaders in their respective fields, along with material from ResCen artists' research outputs. The site identifies the core artists in terms of their own continuing professional development; the material evidences the individuals' developing enquiry into 'own creative process', in terms that aim to expand understanding in the wider arts communities, as well as the university. My enquiry here seeks to establish new understandings of creative methods, extending their knowledge-bases; to explore and challenge traditional hypothesis-centred/critical-analytical research methodologies, profiling performance decision-making; and to redefine notions of research in terms of professional creative practice. The site equally links
ResCen artist enquiries with input from key Middlesex researchers, including Rifkin, Melrose, and Sofaer.