Experimenting Artaud: cartography as an arts-based research methodology and creative artistic research in the performing arts

Abstract

One of the most important aspects of an artistic research is the need to use the most appropriate research methodology to each case. When it comes to the Performing Arts, which have gained strength in the latter half of 20th Century as an independent field of knowledge, this need becomes even more frequent –and the appropriate methodologies that take the creative process of the actor as researcher into account are still at a consolidation stage. In this work, through a case study, we intend to investigate Cartography as a possible methodology for research based on arts in the Performing Arts field. The Case Study addresses some aspects of the Creation Workshop held during a semester at the Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP / Brazil). The theoretical reference includes authors like Antonin Artaud, Gilles Deleuze Jacques Derrida and Sueli Rolnik. In this course, given by the authors, artistic propositions for the use of voice and body, extracted from the Artaudian thought for the creation of a ‘new theatre’ in the twentieth century, were experimented by the students and mapped in their evolution until the presentation of the final scenes / performances. This paper discusses some observed aspects of the process.