Being Alongside and Becoming Researcher: Art Practice, Accountability and Convergence in the Studio

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of a period of autoethnographic fieldwork conducted at Venture Arts, an art studio in Manchester (UK) that provides infrastructure to support people with intellectual disabilities to participate in the visual arts. The analysis is concerned with two 'discomfort zones' that have become apparent in the research period. The first is my positionality as a researcher in the studio space. In this section I draw on new materialism and critical disability studies to propose my methodology, mode of analysis and strategies of writing. In writing towards an understanding of my positionality and associated affective flows, the second discomfort zone provides an exposition of my emerging methodology. In this section I analyse my fieldnotes to explore the tensions and alliances between different zones of practice in the Venture Arts studio, and their relationship with existing conceptions of contemporary art and relational art. While each of these lenses offers tools through which to understand the artistic practice that arises out of the studio, none of them does completely. Instead, I propose an alternative account that recognises the overlapping, converging and co-constituted zones of practice in the Venture Arts studio.