the barry harris harmonic method for guitar audio

For this exposition, I adopted the concept of 'rudimentariness', as defined by Mireille Rosello in the field of comparative literature, to help define this attitude and to see how it can also operate in a largely non-discursive register. This attitude can be identified in many registers of their project, including the way in which performers and audiences are interpolated somatically by the ceramic pieces in various staged encounters. I became particularly interested in the attitude with which the makers approached their site of investigation. In following the many facets of 'A Way of Making' over the past few years, I began to see parallels between the artists' investigation of the material of clay and questions that arise for me as a theoretician when working with an artistic practice or artwork. 'A Way of Making' is of interest to me precisely for how it calls for an analysis of the relation between different ways of creating and ways of knowing. I have therefore operated in the tenuous fault lines between different creative practices and forms of knowledge production.

My own formative and professional trajectory has meandered through various institutions, including universities, museums, and art academies. This form of artistic research aims to tackle the basics of what a curator and an artist are already busy with in their respective artistic professions. It is an empirical exploration of a medium and, as complete amateurs to the medium, an investigation of the various possibilities of ‘making’ with it. What interests me in this case is how the research is carried out in a parallel-site of investigation, one that is largely embodied. Artistic research often refers to a discursive or scientific investigation that informs an artistic practice, or to an ongoing investigation within an existing practice. I propose that their investigation of making through ceramics – and, hence, through the hands-on encounter with the materiality of clay – is an intriguing instance of artistic research.

This exhibition explores 'A Way of Making', an ongoing collaborative project in ceramics by curator Frédérique Bergholtz and performance artist Maria Pask.

The barry harris harmonic method for guitar audio