On the art of practice and the practice of art

The notion of creative practice can be approached from many angles. I hope that as this discussion forum grows, the concept of creative practice will be elaborated in different ways. To begin with, however, I want to pose a series of questions as “starting points” for a consideration of creative practice. These are simply the questions that preoccupy me. Some of them have to do with the content of practices themselves. Others are logistical and administrative. Still others come out of my scholarly work and may appear eventually in my dissertation and/or articles.

Many of these may later become full posts. But I hope that others will also find some of these questions provocative, and will take them up in their own ways.

• ART / PRACTICE: Am I right in suggesting that “art” and “practice” are two sides of the same coin? Is it accurate to say that we are in a historical moment right now in which embodied practices have been split apart from the performing arts? Is this a rift that can be healed, or is it a necessary principle for secular democracy?
• RESEARCH / EPISTEMOLOGY: What constitutes “research” in the sense of embodied rather than discursive knowledge? When is creative practice a form of research? Is it important to establish rigorous standards for this? What types of knowledge are learned through creative practice, and how is it learned? Are embodied practices “created” or “discovered”?
• ECOLOGY / SUSTAINABILITY: Is there a relationship between creative practice, as I understand it here, and the current ecological situation? Are embodied practices necessarily ecologically sound and/or sustainable in a way that commercial art projects (for example) are not? If there is an alignment between creative practice, as I understand it here, and sustainability – does this translate into any kind of political activism? Or are sustainable practices themselves politically significant even if they do not interact directly with electoral politics or stage boycotts?
• SPACES / INFRASTRUCTURE: Where do you work? Does it matter? What differences exist between the same creative practice when it is done in a beautiful studio space; in a dingy basement; outdoors in a forest; or outdoors on a city street? What is the relationship between the dance studio, the theatre rehearsal room, the karate dojo, the yoga studio, the expressive arts therapy room, the classroom, and the yurt? Do we need to build new organizations (or new buildings) to house transdisciplinary projects? Could there be a building that would hold multiple spaces of this kind? (The closest I have seen to such a vision is the School of Dramatic Art in Moscow, formerly run by Anatoly Vassiliev.)
• BUSINESS MODELS / FUNDING: What can we learn by comparing the business models of the acting conservatory, the university, the yoga / martial arts studio, the private therapy practice, and the touring theatre or dance ensemble? Can funding sources that usually support one category of creative practice be used to support another? In what language and from which grantmakers can we seek funding for projects that bridge art and practice?
• PEDAGOGY / TRANSMISSION: Would it be fair to say that teachers of “art” tend to emphasize the original voice of the student, while teachers of “practice” tend to emphasize the value of tradition? What is the relationship between the “speed” of a creative practice and the hierarchical nature of the teacher-student relationship? Is it possible to have a dynamic of equality and partnership while practicing a very slow and patient traditional form? Could it ever be desirable to institute a strong hierarchical relationship when creating totally new works of art? Has there been a global shift away from guru-disciple relationships founded on total authority and total devotion? Is this an effect of democracy, of secularization, or of consumerism?
• SPIRITUALITY / RELIGION: I know artists and practitioners alike who studiously avoid all explicitly spiritual language. Others, like Peter Brook, are willing to use words like “spiritual” only in very specific contexts. Many others freely use this language to discuss their work, either from a religious perspective (Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Islamic…) or via the traditions of mysticism (Zen, Hasidic, Gnostic, Sufi…) What is at stake in the difference between religion and spirituality, and above all in the relationship between each of these and creative practice?
• SEXUALITY / INTIMACY: When can sexuality and/or physical intimacy be considered a form of creative practice? Is the revelation of love through physical contact merely analogous to the performer’s work or are they in fact comparable forms of creative practice? Sexuality has very often been a part of embodied practice, from Hindu tantra to the ancient Greek mystery cults. It also appears in contemporary “art,” but in a very different way. Is the erotic an essential aspect of creative practice? What is the relationship between the erotic and the intimate?
• SPECTATORSHIP / RITUAL: If creative practice is a spectrum from slow to fast, what relation does this bear to the question of audience? What is the difference between audience, spectators, and witnesses? Is there a difference between performance and ritual? Many artists feel that if a work is not performed publicly, it does not “count” – or at least it does not count as art (perhaps it is therapy instead). But what is the nature of the “public sphere” in which art performances take place and which validates them? Are yoga studios in New York City public performances of a certain kind? What happens when we read (or enact) performance as practice and practice as performance?
• INDIVIDUAL WORK / GROUP WORK: What is the nature of a work that occupies an individual over many years but is never taught or performed? Can a “personal practice” of this kind have any value for other individuals or for the “public” (whatever that is)? Does creative practice begin with the individual? Or with the encounter between two or more people?
• LEGACIES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: For me the legacy of Jerzy Grotowski has been massively influential – from the Gardzienice Theatre to Rena Mirecka to the Workcenter in Pontedera. But I recognize that before I knew anything about Grotowski, I was touching some of the same issues (although for me less deeply) through the legacy of Judson Church and the modern and postmodern dance movements in the United States. Were the 1960s and ’70s a time in which ideas related to creative practice were put forth? Where did they go after that?
• EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPIES: Many artists completely reject the idea of therapy, taking it as a synonym for self-indulgent. What does it mean to make private experience public? Are there therapeutic practices that could benefit from being shown publicly and/or serve as valuable public performances? And similarly, what is the role of technique and craft in a therapeutic process? Is therapy the secular replacement for religion? Exactly what is this thing called “self-indulgence,” and what are its dangers and powers?
• MARTIAL ARTS / HEALING ARTS: It seems to me that what are known as “martial arts” in my cultural context (New York City) are actually part of a much larger web of practices that include healing and meditative practices, religious and spiritual practices, artistic and creative practices. In the martial artists, the idea of martial efficacy (self-defense, or the ability to determine how physical confrontations turn out) is a crucial foundation. There is much debate about which martial arts are really useful in a fight and which are not. This is also true in healing arts from yoga to reiki. In both cases it is not so easy to rigorously verify what is actually being accomplished. Scientific tests do not function. What then is the role of the martial and/or medical applicability of these practices? What does it mean for such practices to “work” or “not work”?
• POST-COLONIALISM / ANTHROPOLOGY: All of these questions emanate from particular geographical and historical moments. How might the notion of creative practice be used cross-culturally without imperialism? How could this term be translated into other languages, not just linguistically but also in terms of cultural context? What lessons (positive and negative) can be learned from anthropology and performance studies?
• SOCIAL JUSTICE: What does creative practice have to do or say about racism, sexism, homophobia, and economic injustice? How can the language of social justice encounter the language of creative practice? Moreover, how can they come together in action? Is political activism an embodied practice? Is embodied practice a political statement? Is Gandhian “nonviolence” a creative practice?

I know there is a lot here. Does it all hang together in any meaningful way? Please feel free to post your thoughts in response to whichever of these questions interests you – and let’s see where the conversation goes.

Also, please feel free to propose additional questions and starting points as comments to this post. I will use these starting points to create post categories for the forum.