Milli mála - 01.01.2010, Blaðsíða 170
kreppa, the collapse of the Icelandic banking system, had just
happened a few months previous, it seemed that a play about fall-
en top managers who have yet to come to grips with their unem -
ployment and loss of status might be a relevant way of exploring,
critically analysing and discussing the current Icelandic situation.
Process, product, and a variety of methods
In my research in the field of spoken artistic production processes,
I have usually focused on artistic processes and included the artis-
tic product without separating it from the process. Drawing on the
French literary approach critique génétique36, which investigates
written texts37 in their development and context, I regard the artis-
tic product, such as the performance of a theatre play, as part of the
artistic process. I think that the artistic product should be looked at
– in research terms – as only one part or stage of the artistic pro-
cess, and should not be seen as a separate or independent product
that exists in isolation. It can clearly not be seen as an independent
product as it was not just ‘thrown into its final form’ but went
through different stages of an artistic working process. Separating
a process and a product from each other seems to be an unhelpful
approach. If I apply this approach to artistic production processes
in foreign-language teaching, such as the Top Dogs project, the two
performances (of our rewritten version of an existing play) at the
end of the semester are to be seen as the final stage of the artistic
and collaborative working process. These end-of-semester per-
formances are where we had ‘arrived’ at that point, based on our
ideas, efforts and other factors, such as the availability of the per-
formance space (basement in the nordic House), the technicians
who cleared the space and fixed the lights, and the participants.
Who knows where we would have ‘arrived’ a week later, but would
it matter? Each performance (‘final stage’ or ‘product’) shows
where the collaborative process has arrived at that particular
moment in time.
CrEaTIng SPaCE
170
36 almuth grésillon, Literarische Handschriften: Einführung in die “critique génétique”, Berlin,
Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1999.
37 I developed a method for analysing spoken artistic text productions (directing analysis), c.f.
andrea Milde, “art as a Process of revision: The audience and the End Product”, The
International Journal of the Arts in Society, 2(2)/2007, pp. 151–156.
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