Dandelion, 2011

It seems an age since I last added something here. Indeed, the last post on this blog was way back in October 2010! Since my trip to Brussels to visit FoAM, things have been pretty hectic…

Anyway, reactivating. What’s that all about? Well, put simply, I’m going to try and post more regularly on here. While the writing has been on pause – at least on here – the blog has still been fairly lively. One of the earlier posts seems to have been picked up by a media class and transformed through a proliferation of their blogs; another post has also been taken up in a discussion elsewhere which I stumbled across. To make sharing more straightforward, I’ve added the ‘sharethis‘ plugin. And on this topic, I wanted to also thank those who have linked my blog to their website – much appreciated. I plan to update my rather small list of links in the coming weeks.

Overflows event, St Hugh's College, Oxford

I recently attended a very interesting informal workshop on doing a relational PhD called ‘Overflows: Flows, Doings, Edges III‘. When I heard about it, I applied immediately:

Finding a forwarded and apologetically cross-posted email nestled in my inbox was a rather nice surprise. Not only a workshop on doing a relational PhD, but the third of its kind! Thinking relationally is a challenge and perhaps one that would encourage and acknowledge a sense of experimentation and openness. It would be both a challenging and rewarding to be part of this gathering. I am very interested in hearing, and talking, about what thinking-doing relationally might facilitate in the way of a doctorate.

…

Some research questions that could be thrown into the ring for debate:

• How to foster conversation and discussion which can be generative? How to find overlaps or zones of similar interest without forcing particular agendas or selectively listening?
• The move to thinking of research materials rather than data has opened up all sorts of avenues for considering what counts as research. But are there still limits to what can be considered valid generated materials?
• Organising fieldwork is far from straightforward and involves all sorts of work which is often excluded from a thesis. Much of this organisation process is ad-hoc, provisional and serendipitous. How then to justify particular fieldwork sites beyond acquiring some sort of access?

I would be delighted to be considered to participate,

Thomas

The event started mid-morning, opening with a welcoming outlining the brief history of these sorts of workshops (the first was in 2007 at King’s College London, the second in 2008 at the Open University). There was then the seemingly obligatory introductions, but this was not as bad as it can be: participants choosing to be brief and on the whole, fairly witty. The first session was a discussion between those who had chose a particular topic, selected from: serendipity, translation/interference (these were combined), performativity and accountability. I opted for ‘Serendipity’ and was pleasantly surprised by how generative it was as a topic, leading to discussions about methods, writing and ethics.

After lunch we gathered as a group to have a round-table discussion, provisionally titled ‘Relationality’. There are such a number of different approaches that could fall under this broad banner but I was taken aback to note that it was almost considered synonymous with actor-network-theory (ANT). I wonder why there were not more students interested in different ways of thinking relationally… So the discussion foregrounded what it means, practically, to do relational research: paying attention to relations, connections, gaps, cuts. One question raised was: if all the morning themes were so similar, then what is that sameness? I didn’t really feel like this was addressed then, and I’m not sure if I have a decent answer for it now. Another question, a two-parter, was levelled at the group I had been involved in: (1) how to open up to serendipity and (2) how to write this? I can’t remember how I responded but now as I write about it, I find myself thinking about how Thrift (2004) suggests we might give a chance to encounters. Put differently, this is not just noting the many serendipitous events and encounters that form our research but actually taking them seriously, and not writing them out of our work.

The third and final session of the workshop was simply called ‘Overflows’ and styled as a flea-market. Participants were invited to bring an overflow along and to share it, and to explore what could be done with it. I moved from table-to-table, commenting and listening (I learnt of John Law’s notion of pin-board experiments, I think I need to look into this). After the wrap-up session, I was left thinking that working out why an overflow does not work could itself be a story. Moreover, how many loose threads are we allowed to leave in a thesis?

After the workshop had ended the keynotes for the launch of the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change’s (CRESC) Sixth Annual Conference: The Social Life of Methods. Although I had to try hard not to laugh at the acronym for the conference (SLoM), I was excited at the prospect of hearing John Law’s paper ‘The Double Social Life of Method’ and Katie King’s on ‘Knowledge-weaving’. Law’s argument was that methods are social because they (1) are shaped by the social and (2) help shape the social. In other words, methods are actively engaged in doing the social. I didn’t disagree but was perhaps hoping for something which would go beyond this point. And I wasn’t sure if he was using technique as synonymous to method. Katie King’s talk was dedicated to Susan Leigh Star and her term ‘methodological weaving’. Perhaps most interesting, were her comments on the ‘transcontextual’ and on writing with strings, knots and colours, rather than pen, paper and graphemes.

References

]]> http://www.spacesofexperimentation.net/oxford/overflows/feed/ 0 http://www.spacesofexperimentation.net/oxford/icy-traces/ http://www.spacesofexperimentation.net/oxford/icy-traces/#comments Thu, 19 Aug 2010 21:58:59 +0000 Thomas http://www.spacesofexperimentation.net/?p=1756

Tarfala Research Station, Sweden

On the same day that I found out that the AHRC Beyond Text proposal was unsuccessful, I received an email letting me know that my college newsletter was out. Nothing special, ordinarily. But this edition contains a short essay I wrote almost two years ago, as a sort of ‘thank you’ to the college for supporting my MSc dissertation fieldwork. The text, The Arctic Circle: Icy Traces, is a précis of my dissertation. I’m not sure who will read it, nor if they’ll find it of any interest but I’m pleased it’s finally out. You can read the whole newsletter here, or download my text here.

There is another short paper in publication (A human geographer vists Tarfala Research Station) from my time in Sweden, which will be part of the research station’s annual report. I’ll be sure to link to it when it’s available.

'mmm, that's interesting'

Following breakfast we started the day with a new activity: ‘Taking one step’. This was to be done with a partner and we would tell the other person of a particular problem, idea or thing which we felt was holding us back. We would talk through the situation and if we felt like we could take a step, then we would. No pressure or expectation. We all crowded back into the room after ten or fifteen minutes feeling refreshed – it’s not a bad way to start any day. What was left of the first session was to be the first of a three-part ‘Open Spaces’ event which would run through the merenda and the start of the second session. We were distilling the essences and flavours of the previous day: daring to make choices. The questions: What do you really have energy for? Where is your contribution most needed? What do you want to learn? And: what could a luminous green world be like¹, and what possible path can we take there? I wondered what sort of session I could host – I considered ‘Experiments in resilience’ – but decided that I wasn’t quite ready for it and that a discussion on ethnography or co-experimenting might be misplaced.

11:00 – Do we need new rituals?

12:00 – [Butterfly-time / merenda]

13:00 – Poetry of witness

Open spaces - part II

For the first part, I decided to attend the session which was interested in thinking about rituals and how they could be subverted to be more luminous. Making visible other values than money, as well as introducing waiting, or inefficiency, were suggested. I didn’t feel I had much to contribute so I focused on being attentive and listening carefully. When it was time for lunch, or rather merenda, I took a break to enjoy my food and had a moment to myself. I had been looking forward to the afternoon session, ‘Poetry of witness’, and was curious to see what this was about. Maureen, who was running the session, asked why I had come along and I told her that there was an interest in some parts of geography in thinking the event and the event-ness of the world. She looked surprised but pleased, telling me that poetry of witness was all about events. I was thinking of Dewsbury’s paper:

“about the importance of witnessing and how such an act, or call, makes place or our place in the world. Pushing forward the agenda of nonrepresentational theory, this is about attending to differences – those imperceptible, sometimes minor, and yet gathering, differences that script the world in academically less familiar but in no less real ways.” (2003: 1907)

While witnessing for Dewsbury is a “stance oriented towards being in tune to the vitality of the world as it unfolds” (Latham & Conradson, 2003: 1903), the poetry of witness is a dialectics of the personal and political where the social is a third space. I was far from comfortable with this (both dialectics and society) but persevered and asked a number of questions. Poetry of witness could be a luminous green practice as it makes things new, transformed somehow. It does not need to be extreme writing, to be sure it could be rather ordinary but may evoke a strong sort of response. As an example, Maureen read us a piece by Carolyn Fourché (‘The Colonel’).

Feeding-back, checking-out

When we all came together once more, the wall – showing what had been harvested so far – had been rearranged and organised differently. We were to put our session summaries (an A4 page of comments and questions) onto a framework of the ‘order of civilization’ (fast layers innovate, slow layers stabilise; the whole combines learning with continuity). The order was made up of the layers: art and fashion, commerce, infrastructure, governance, culture and nature. I wasn’t sure it was the easiest or most helpful structure to work with, particularly as it pre-existed the sessions rather than being co-created with them. Still, perhaps it was a generative constraint! The session reports, feedbacks, were interesting to hear and I noticed that the hosts were keen to moderate or intervene if conversations became conducted between only a handful of people, being careful to open it up to the group (or shut it down, to be continued later on).  Next, we were handed out stickers (stars, fruit, birds, all sorts really) and asked to put them on those sessions that we would like to pursue. It wasn’t meant as a popularity contest, more as a way of showing interest. Before we had lunch, and before we were to leave, we were asked to check-out. Sitting in a circle once more, we did not pass the witch around but instead would have to get up, walk to the centre of the room, collect it and return to our seats before speaking. I was keen to thank the organisers and remarked that I had enjoyed my first gathering and the sheer diversity of participants. I thought Nik’s (‘collective attention’) and Maja’s (‘chaotic experiment’) comments were spot-on. At the end, we all stood up – in a cricle, of course – and faced right, then all of us were to massage the person in front of us, and then to our left (at the same time as being massaged ourselves).

The sign of a successful event?

After lunch I was lucky enough to be offered a lift back to Brussels to catch my train by Pieter and Rasa. We were making good time, until we got stuck once more in Liege. This time it wasn’t a diversion but traffic jams that stretched back for miles. Somehow, thanks to some incredible driving I arrived minutes before my train was to leave, the last one of the day. I was allowed to board even though my ticket had said I should be there at least thirty minutes prior to departure! Unfortunately, I had further travel difficulties: the train was stopped at Lille as police boarded, then we were asked to all get off and be checked through security again. I arrived in London three hours later than planned, missing my connection and the last train to Oxford. Eurostar however, offered everyone a taxi ride home. Phew!

Home-bound

A few days after the gathering I found an email in my inbox:

Dear green luminousities,

The colourful posters and sticky notes from our days in Vielsalm have been captured and found their way into the maze of the Libarynth. Photos from various cameras (more or less obscure) are now residing on  flickr. In other words, we have uploaded some of the seeds from Luminous Green 2010 online. You can access it through http://lib.fo.am/luminous/retreat_2010. The seeds still need some sunshine from their creators and watering from participants to assist the sprouting… As during the retreat, we need your help to keep the connections, thoughts & plans alive. Below are a few suggestions how to do that in the short term:

- To capture your experience of the retreat: Could you write a short testimonial – in a few sentences, can you describe what you appreciated, what you missed, how you felt, what were the things that still linger in the back of your mind? You can send the testimonial to bxl@fo.am, or upload it at http://lib.fo.am/luminous/lg10_testimonials

- To complete the picture of the content of the retreat: Can you help us with the harvest by filling in the blanks, completing the sentences and adding finishing touches to http://lib.fo.am/luminous/lg10_harvest

- To enrich the Luminous Green library: Please add books, links, articles (…) to: http://lib.fo.am/luminous/recommended_reading

- To remember the pearls spoken at the retreat: If you have noted some of the memorable sentences by LG10 participants, please upload them here: http://lib.fo.am/luminous/lg10_pearls

- To collect condensed wisdom relevant to luminousity, greenness & resilience: Please add quotes (your own or by others) to the luminous green reader: http://lib.fo.am/luminous/reader_2010

- Anything else: Feel free to send a message to luminous@fo.am or spread the word elsewhere.

I think these entries might fit into the ‘anything else’ section, a sort of extended testimonial. Writing and re-reading my hastily jotted notes made me realise how much we managed to fit in to just a few days. I also include a slideshow of the photos from the event on Flickr.

—

References

Dewsbury, J-D. (2003) Witnessing space: `knowledge without contemplation’. Environment and Planning A, 35(11): 1907-1932

Latham, A. & Conradson, D. (2003) Possibilities of performance. Environment and Planning A, 35(11): 1901-1906

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Ethnographic research: a workshop with Georgina Born, Oxford

On Friday 16 May there was a half-day workshop on ethnographic research in my department run by Prof. Georgina Born:

Ethnographic research is one of the most fashionable, and perhaps most misunderstood, methods in the social sciences today. What does it mean to carry out ethnographic research, and how can it be defended against accusations that it is utterly unrigorous, or an entirely subjective engagement with the object of research, whatever that is? Is reflexivity a panacea for such criticisms? In this workshop, we look at a number of central issues in ethnographic research, from theoretical and epistemological questions to very practical challenges to do with how to go about ethnographic fieldwork.¹

I had attended the same workshop two years earlier, while I was studying for my MSc. This time around, with some experience of ethnographic attempts, it was even more interesting. Drawing on her own ethnographies of major cultural institutions (such as IRCAM and the BBC, to name but two), she held to two methodological (Foucauldian and Bourdieuian) injunctions: (1) attend to the historical specificity of each field and its coherence and differentiation; and (2) in analysing causality, trace the multiplicity of causes and the contingency of their conjunction. Put differently, the second is a counter-reductive injunction where you have to multiply the causes, to keep adding to the richness of a case. Georgina argued that ethnography is an analysis of the disjunctures, contradictions and discrepancies between discourse (what is said) and practice (what is done). Ethnography, she contended, can be both rigorous and robust and can approach (or aspire to) objectivity. Interpretation does not mean merely subjective. The workshop (perhaps more of a lecture than a workshop?) was fantastic and I found myself taking a lot of notes. Comments on: preparing and doing fieldwork, the concept of problematisation, post-positivist empiricism, Tarde and (neo-)Spinozist ontologies, difference as a methodological principle and operationalising multi-site ethnography, were all thought-provoking. Although I would normally like to work against having some sort of list, I think that these themes are really important and would like to explore them further here (there is however, no order).

Preparing and doing fieldwork is closely related to choosing a site; this quite literally situates the whole research, focusing or condensing a research problem and framing it in terms of a larger question which it can speak to. Ethnography is neither purely, nor primarily, inductive, yet neither is the ‘empirical’ subsumed by the ‘theoretical’. There are two kinds of background knowledge pre-fieldwork: substantive (about the object) and theoretical / conceptual (kinds of analysis and questions). Thus ethnography is both deductive, using background theoretical and substantive knowledge) and inductive (deriving concepts and analysis from empirical fieldwork): an oscillation between the two which is productive, making it possible for empirical research to amend and/or develop theory.

The concept of problematisation was considered through:

Rabinow’s idea of ethnography as a response to Foucault’s ‘problematisation’; and as a way of implementing what, after Deleuze, might be called a ‘post-positivist empiricism’ – an empiricism with inventive conceptual effects.

For Foucault, problematisation is an introduction of uncertainty, or a loss of familiarity, a rendering difficult of a previous way of understanding. For Rabinow, this is a particular style of inquiry, a shift from unseeing a situation not only as a given but as question. Georgina explained that her driving motive for her ethnographies was emphatically historical: to respond to, and problematise, a critical cultural historical moment (e.g. crisis in the musical avant-garde). She also asserted that instead of a ‘master-slave’ model of social theory in which theory (abstraction and reduction) presides over the empirical (complexity, subtlety, mess…), empirical research can have theoretical effects and serves a basis for conceptual invention. She quoted Deleuze, himself drawing on Whitehead’s notion of empiricism, to argue that the abstract does not explain but must itself be explained. Here, ethnography works towards a post-positivist empiricism.

Counterposing the work of Gabriel Tarde and Spinoza to that of Emile Durkheim and his explanatory tropes – a re-thinking of the Durkheimina settlement – Georgina argued against employing reified and deterministic notions of society, culture, area or region. This questioning of common-sense notions (and the superior truth associated with it) was challenged by her productive provocation: how could ontological hierarchies be possible, if you assume that the cause does not precede its effects; the whole, its parts; or unity, division? Ethnography, she argued, can suspend these judgements, or ontological hierarchies / assumptions, and be concerned with precisely the articulation of the relationship between the collective and individual.²

Drawing on Foucault’s ‘Questions of method’³, Georgina teased out three modalities of difference as a methodological principle: synchronic (differentiation of formation, coherence, dispersion), diachonic (dynamics, different temporalities) and analytical (a multiplication or pluralization of causes). She also drew attention to a part of the text which I rather liked:

Clearly, viewed from the standpoint of this style of analysis, what I am proposing is at once too much and too little. There are too many diverse kinds of relations, too many lines of analysis, yet at the same time there is too little necessary unity. A plethora of intelligibilities, a deficit of necessities. But for me this is precisely the point at issue, both in historical analysis and in political critique.

Later on in the afternoon, we discussed recent developments in ethnography, and in particular multi-site ethnography. Whilst highlighting some of the advantages of this approach, there was  a sense that it was onerous in terms of access, a trade off for depth in one site and thus might lose some of the benefits of ethnography (such as trust, empathy in relations, perhaps unable to build a subtle or complex picture). She suggested that multi-site ethnography might be worthwhile if you were hoping to: (1) follow the object, (2) explore abstract connections, (3) develop a comparativist study, capturing heterogeneity / multiplicity, (4) study difference over time, or (5) engage with non-linear, cross-scalar relations. When asked where my work would fall, I’m not sure it fits easily within any of the categories. Whilst it is comparative, it is not strictly a comparison of ‘experimental space A’ with ‘experimental space B’ and I would not hope to capture heterogeneity but perhaps evoke it, or provide glimpses of it. In another sense, I am following an object, although this would require an expanded notion of object which would include not only the space but also the materials, people and ideas: an enriched ethnographic object. I shall have to think more about this and why I have chosen particular sites to explore the relationship between geography, art and method.

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Experimenting with Geography: See-hear-make-do, University of Edinburgh

I am just back from a trip to Edinburgh for a rather unusual conference/workshop called ‘Experimenting with Geography: See-hear-make-do’:

an event dedicated to developing a diverse range of craft skills associated with audio, visual and site-specific methodologies, at different city locations, both inside and out-of-doors. It will take place at the University of Edinburgh, 3rd-7th May 2010.¹

The application forms were due in January and since then there has been a steady build-up to the five-day event, with an online forum. This was a space for us to introduce ourselves (e.g. myself) and for us to begin thinking about projects that we might like to explore when we met up. I travelled up on Sunday evening by train and checked in to a small but nice guest house a few miles from the centre. The programme began Monday afternoon with an introduction by Michael Gallagher, who had organised the event. Although he was self-deprecating and claimed his talk was “just the boring stuff” there was something else going on.The conference/workshop, it was hoped, would provide a collective and expanded sense of what is possible along the boundaries of academic-artistic practice, and how to go about it. An attempt to create a new community of experimental researchers who might develop a diverse range of craft skills. The projects that had been mentioned were not obligatory, but would provide some focus throughout the conference. Towards the end of the week, if we felt like sharing some work with the group, we would arrange sessions for ‘crits’ (critical feedback, as found in art-schools, rather than the Q&A at academic conferences).  More workshop than conference, the event was to be informal, convivial, experimental, collaborative and impose no obligations. Each half-day would comprise an introductory talk (of some sort) and then a practice-session.

First up was a presentation by Hayden Lorimer, a geographer whose writing I admire². It was no surprise then, that he was to talk about narrative and style. His paper, work-in-progress we were told, was titled ‘Some thoughts on narrative and style. Or, can geography produce special effects?’  and was, in his own words, a provocation with no clear answer. The paper was composed of six parts (1. Narrative Styles and Genres / 2. Scaling Narrative / 3. Inhabiting Narrative / 4. Learning to Value Narrative / 5. Styles of Learning Narrative / 6. The Politics of Style) and was a call to change cursive practices, to extend the notion of narrative and to re-consider geographical writing as a form of art. Hayden’s concern for leading with stories goes against those who claim that a geopoetics favours style over substance, instead arguing that, whilst it is not without risk, it can convene the particularities of place.

Through the process of storying into shape a place, self and world blur; tone and atmosphere are conjured up. It also asks questions of how we respond to these writings: is critique and evaluation possible, and if so, what shape might these take? Stories do not invite questions in the same way and there are no journal guidelines outlining the merits or mechanics of a good story. What space for a presentation without closure, for a celebration of the inexplicit? I asked Hayden if we needed to create new journals, new outlets for these kinds of writing but he thought it would instead be better if people tried to submit to established journals, and to try to change practices and approaches this way. After all, it’s not a case of getting away with it, more a question of getting on with it. Perhaps I might need to re-submit the paper on fieldwork… The paper ended with a hope that more geographers might be willing to experiment and, foreshadowing Nigel Thrift’s paper later on in the week, noted the need for more languages, new expressions, and more poetic, emotional and personal styles of writing.

The second half of the afternoon was ‘Songs from before – creating the conditions for appreciative listening’ and was animated by two questions:

What might it mean to speak up imaginatively for the archive’s existence as a site as much as a set of sources? What might it mean to give greater voice to those social contexts orbiting out steadfast consultation of documentary content?

To give the workshop, and those methodological provocations, greater grip and focus, it pivoted around a single historical item/object/text: an illustrated sound-book, called ‘Songs of Wild Birds’. Listening, discussion, reading, interpreting, and later, our own recordings. A sound archive, bird-song as a mobile event (transformed, warped) and a querying of the relationship between ‘archive’ and ‘field’. Not bad for an afternoon.

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Zagreb publication launch, IfREX

The following day (16 April) the students met to launch, celebrate and discuss a recent publication resulting from a fieldtrip to Zagreb in the first semester. The publication, a collection of posters were not quite what I had expected but meant for a number of ways of creating your own publication, without being restricted by page numbers or a particular order. Not everyone had contributed something for the posters as it was optional and students had joined since the trip (IfREX is now in its third semester) but everyone was keen to have a look through and after a short introduction, the room quietened as people explored the posters.

When we came together again to discuss the posters, Eric and some of the students more directly involved in the production talked about how and why they had made various decisions about the final output. Falling somewhere between documentation and an artwork in itself, the posters were both flexible and specific, and searched for a way of being individual within a group. The students were initially quiet – it was a Friday afternoon – but fairly soon became rather animated. Not all were happy with the posters and there were complaints about how fragile they were and the folds down the middle. This was countered by those who argued that the fold allowed for the posters to be put together in different ways, like pages, and that there were all manner of playful possibilities. The ephemeral quality of the posters seemed to mirror the shortness of the trip to Zagreb. For me, it was an engagement with evocation rather than representation.

Later on, after a short coffee break, Eric presented a lecture which looked at space and perception through Japanese gardens which the group had visited at the end of the second semester during a trip to Japan. Beginning with an interest in phenomenal narratives, Eric explored the sakuteiki (Japanese records of garden-making) and the spatial and perceptual dimensions of particular techniques (such as borrowed landscape, miniaturization, altered perspective, folding screen, and hide and reveal). Although there was a tendency to focus on the visual and on cognitive science, there was much of interest in this talk which was not afraid to digress. It even ended with a reading from Beckett’s Molloy!

Fieldlife, TML

I’ve been back from Montreal for a few weeks now and it all seems very far away at times. I have met up with my supervisors to let them know a bit about how things went and I’m now trying to work on an account of my time there. It’s not going to be some coherent piece, let alone a chapter, but perhaps some strands of thought will emerge as I write. Or at least I hope so! At the same time I’m also trying to outline the structure and chapters of my thesis. It’s certainly an iterative process but I think it might be useful to explore how some of the constraints of a PhD might prove to be enabling or generative.

Expect some more posts in the new year, have a merry Christmas,

t

Library card and key to the TML

I’m now two weeks into my stay in Montreal and am starting to find my feet. I know where to get my food and buy my ink cartridges, I have a key to the lab and a (provisional) library card. However, I’m still not too sure what I am doing in terms of methods, I have terrible internet connection (when I do have a connection, that is!) and it’s getting pretty cold. Fieldwork/fieldlife; modulations of intensity.

On that note, Joe and I have just submitted a paper on precisely this sort of theme to the journal ‘Performance Research‘, following their call for contributions on ‘Fieldworks’. Here’s the outline of our proposal:

As geographers we are often recognised by our commitment to fieldwork and it is arguably one of the discipline’s motifs. Yet despite the intimacy between geographers and fieldwork, the actual doing of fieldwork remains a black-box; particularly for students who, whilst well-drilled in ethics and risk-awareness protocol, can be unfamiliar with the messy yet productive encounters that fieldwork can afford. Therefore we propose to write a short, performative piece which traces some of the small stories from our respective Masters research. One story narrates the ethnography of glaciological research in Sweden, whilst the other illustrates the ethnography of a participatory mapping group in Colombia. The aim here is the animation of the frenetic rhythms of fieldwork, or as we call it, fieldlife; the contention that the space-times of research are not compartmentalised into desk/field or work/play binaries, but are contingent, overlapping and unfolding encounters; events which can, and should be, deployed productively rather than omitted, from an on-going ‘writing-up’ process. We think that this paper intersects with both the performance-led and scholarly concerns of the proposed issue of Performance Research.