How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation

by Natalie Loveless

In recent years, the rise of research-creation—a scholarly activity that considers art practices as research methods in their own right—has emerged from the organic convergences of the arts and interdisciplinary humanities, and it has been fostered by universities wishing to enhance their public profiles. In How to Make Art at the End of the World Natalie Loveless draws on diverse perspectives—from feminist science studies to psychoanalytic theory, as well as her own experience advising undergraduate and graduate students—to argue for research-creation as both a means to produce innovative scholarship and a way to transform pedagogy and research within the contemporary neoliberal university. Championing experimental, artistically driven methods of teaching, researching, and publication, research-creation works to render daily life in the academy more pedagogically, politically, and affectively sustainable, as well as more responsive to issues of social and ecological justice.

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, Theory, Research, Academic, Social Justice, School

161 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 9, 2019

Reviews

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is OK. I had high hopes, and instead it entered the usual and well-worked terrain of practice-led research, practice-based research and - the key focus of the book - research creation.

I have read these debates for thirty years. 'Artistic research' - with or without the capitalization - has a very slow epistemological and methodological clock.

There is a lot of hand wringing in this book. Let me tell the reader - again - how I produce research while tenured in a North American university. At a certain point, the self reflection is occurring in a house of mirrors. Everyone is pretty boring when they keep reflecting (on) themselves.

My problem is that I am terribly interested in the end of the world. Making art is a secondary project. This book didn't engage with the end of the world, exploring how art changes through entangled social, economic, political and environmental crises. This book was written during the Trump administration. It could have been written in 1999. There were no fingerprints of the horror - the catastrophe - of the world outside of tenure and North America. We as scholars can do better.

[Savannah Elmore · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I did walk away from reading this with a few insights, the tone of this book in almost its entirety felt like it was over my head. The specific examples given of what the writer considers to be Research-Creation, and the Conclusion chapter were the most helpful parts. The rest seemed to just be a LOT of words and trying to string psychoanalysis together.

If I had to give one important and succinct message for this book though, it would be to stay curious/follow curiosity, and think outside the bounds of why we do the ways we do, to help out together a better world going forward.

[Farrah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loveless makes some strong arguments about the need for what she calls "research-creation." I'm having trouble getting on board with all the psychoanalytic theorizing she's doing, but her ideas about how and why research-creation are important make sense--and not only at the end of the world.

[Steve Llano · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an incredible, thoughtful push through a lot of theory. I say push because Loveless is incredibly eager to send us through her collection and collage of theory that she has been working with for quite some time to try to make the creation of art and the teaching of art within the container of the contemporary university make sense. I think she's done an admirable job, and I can understand why I feel pushed and pulled a bit - not threateningly - but in the presence of someone very excited.

The book is a proposal of sorts to consider the production and theory of art in the contemporary university "research-creation," a term Loveless explains best in the last chapter of the book where she also finally addresses the anthropocenic overtones of the book's title. This term is meant, I think, to have a very specific use - to make sense of a department that grants degrees both for the production of art and the production of theses about art. Instead of drawing a line here, or claiming one is more authentic, Loveless argues that both are art, and offers a way to theorize the production of all scholarly output as something well beyond a traditional model of a paper or performance.

I believe the book is applicable to anyone who teaches upper level courses in the university as it's a wonderful refreshing view by someone very excited to be applying theory to their classes in a productive way. By the end, I was convinced that research-creation should provide pedagogical and scholarly benefit to any academic program or unit at the university. It really opens up one's perspective as to what can still be accomplished here even when all one hears about is neoliberal student market-driven demands for particular courses.

The book is a fast, smart read that gets you thinking about familiar writers in new ways. The only part of the book I thought I might disagree with was her reading of Lacan, but this by no means is meant to indicate her read is weak, wrong, or missing something. I wish she had spent more time developing the argument there, but it does not subtract from the overall impact and interest in the argument for research-creation as a whole.

I highly suggest this book even though we don't get to the promise of the title to the end, but this last chapter is really excellent after you have read her work-up to it - or have been pulled along through a lot of complicated theory by a very excited and committed guide.

[Kenneth Haggett · Rating 5 out of 5]

In How to Make Art, Natalie Loveless provides a fantastic ethical-methodological-pedagogical approach to research-creation and education. Loveless draws from Donna Haraway, Thomas King, and (her love for) psychoanalysis—drawing primarily on Lacan and the objet supposé savoir/ objet petit a—to ground her methodological-pedagogical approach to interdisciplinary research-creation.

Interdisciplinarity—or, rather, polydisciplinamory—is at the core of her research-creation paradigm. Loveless encourages research-creation in a manner that draws from various disciplines as is necessary to ethically tend to one's research (questions). She uses theoretical polyamory as a crux to describe the academic insistence on allegiance to one's "home" discipline, rather than occupying a position of inter-/poly-disciplinarity. I found her application of theoretical polyamory (and compulsory monogamy) to monodisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity truly fascinating

At the core of research-creation is love—not an agape love, but an erotic love that *drives* one's research with passion. This is made all the more evident in her use of what she, as an academic, loves—psychoanalytic, queer, and feminist theory. Rather than approaching research as that which promotes academic "success" (or tenure) in the neoliberal university, Loveless encourages research-creation rooted in erotic to resist the academic, economic, political, social, and cultural structures that are pushing us closer and closer to the end of this (capitalist, neoliberal, colonial) world.

Having had the opportunity to learn from and engage with Natalie thrice, reading her work gave me a deeply comprehension of her pedagogical, epistemological, and ethical approach to research and education. Truly, and profoundly, inspiring.

[Aspen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parts of this work (largely the intro & conclusion) are very focused on the project of getting The University to recognize certain sorts of work within the bounds of the institutions logics and structures. As someone working & thinking outside of those institutions those parts didn't particularly interest me, but I still found much here that was interesting, useful, and premission-giving for thinkers and art-makers working outside of those institutions. For instance, the discussion of ethics and approaches to the HOW of art-making is relevant to any artist, and Loveless well articulates the value of stepping outside of rigid boundaries of a Discipline or Genre to discover what wisdom lies there.

Thank you for this book!

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNFd.

Like Loveless' ideas, don't like the writing. No sentence needs to be over 100 words long. Ever. There's no reason for it. Especially in a book arguing academia has too many gatekeepers and isn't accessible. Like, gee, ya think?

Maybe I'll pick it up again later, but right now I don't have the patience to deal with 116-word sentences. Did make for some good "what the hell, this is why I hate academia" text messages to friends though. "This sentence is 116 words long. A pair of em dashes, six sets of parentheses, one italicized phrase, four commas."

[Mélanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic

[Sophie Spruce · Rating 2 out of 5]

For me, any type of valid argument is overshadowed by Loveless’s tone and writing. She comes off condescending and I don’t find her ideas to be easily implementable.

[Sloan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The only chapters I thought were any good were the introduction, 2, and 3. Otherwise, it could have been a few blog posts.

[Noelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative and interesting but an unnecessarily opaque read. I wish I liked it more than I did.

[Jessie Emilie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The role of art and art education in a world full of crisis, asking big questions about why we make art at all. I read it in one of my MFA classes and... no lie...it was hella confusing at first. I felt like I was just nodding along pretending to get it. But the more we discussed it in class, the more it started to make some sense... kinda like decoding a cryptic prophecy with a group of sleep-deprived artists.