By coincidence I listened to Henrika Ylirisku, university lecturer in design at Aalto University, recount the research process for her doctoral dissertation Reorienting Environmental Art Education (2021). It was an interesting and visual presentation of her use of theoretical reading and orienteering practices to thoroughly rethink her approach from a traditional phenomenological humanistic ground to a relational, posthumanist one. She mentioned one text that had been influential during her process and had given it as reading material for the students; naturally I was curious and wanted to check it out. “On the Need for Methods Beyond Proceduralism: Speculative Middles, (In)Tensions, and Response-Ability in Research” by Stephanie Springgay and Sarah E. Truman. Published in Qualitative Inquiry in 2017 was easy to find and I read it in the evening.
 
Not that interested in the discussions within art education and not at all knowledgeable about the debates concerning qualitative methodologies in social sciences I found the text slightly tiresome, with the constant referencing and strong emphasis on reading, that is, with the authors showing how well they know what everybody else has argued before daring to share any of their own experiences. Some of the points seemed reasonable and familiar, like the “insistence that methods are generated both as a means to produce, create, and materialize knowledge and practices of dispersal, collective sharing, and activation of knowledge at the same time.” (Springay and Truman 2017, 9), which leads them to suggest the creation of research events rather than gathering data to be analysed. This can be useful in many types of community art and educational contexts and for contemporary forms of performing arts that try move beyond showbusiness. In my own work participatory events or performances, which could be understood as producing knowledge and disseminating it at the same time, are rare. Usually I “generate knowledge” or make art on my own, and what I then show to others, even if “traces from the process” or variations rather than finalised artworks, is nevertheless something else than what happened “in the field”.
 
The following section (from the middle) of the article could serve as a kind of summary:
Regardless of what methods are incorporated, they (a) cannot be predetermined and known in advance of the event of research; (b) should not be procedural, but rather emerge and proliferate from within the speculative middle, as propositions, minor gestures, and in movement; (c) should not be activities used for gathering or collecting data. Instead methods must agitate, problematize, and generate new modes of thinking-making-doing; and (d) methods require (in)tensions, which trouble and rouse ethical and political matterings. (Springay and Truman 2017, 9)
 
As an artist my relationship to methods is somewhat different, even though I feel that methods are the core of what I can try to develop and contribute to other researchers, besides the artworks themselves. Insisting on ‘how’ questions easily lead to methods as results or outcomes. I have often repeated the idea that artists already have their methods, they have their practices, and should develop or articulate those practices into research methods. This means, however, that the methods dictate what kind of questions can be asked or what kind of problems can be dealt with using those methods. If I take Springgay’s and Truman’s proposal seriously, I should not only rely on my old methods and practices, my accustomed and familiar ways of working, but try to develop new methods, experiment with new ways of working, or “thinking-making-doing” and clarify the “(in)tensions.”
 
References
 
Henrika Ylirisku, 2021. Reorienting Environmental Art Education. Aalto University Department of Art https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/items/51f412c0-45be-42cc-b5d3-293918ae9f65
 
Stephanie Springgay, Stephanie and Sarah E. Truman. 2017. On the Need for Methods Beyond Proceduralism: Speculative Middles, (In)Tensions, and Response-Ability in Research.
Qualitative Inquiry Vol. 24. Issue 3. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800417704464