GROUND TESTS: Situating Advanced Practices

Abstract

GROUND TESTS is a four-year practice-oriented creative research project. It takes up the operationalisation and field-testing of the principles, networks and capacity building also activated by related COST Action CA18136, “European Forum for Advanced Practices” (EFAP). Specifically, we investigate the possibility of inclusive, respectful and embedded empirical research in the arts, design and through media and technology. Stemming from the knowledge practices of artistic, design, media and technology research, the project investigates contemporary principles, practices and values of creative research, and communities that address complex and cross-cutting challenges of society, politics, economics, ecology. Our extra-disciplinary investigations provide contemporary artistic, designerly, ethnographic and anthropological interventions and studies; in-situ, empirical interventions and future-facing scenarios for ground-testing the prospective, open proposition of new research practices, concepts, propositions and visions. We will create contemporary and speculative investigations; practice-based, empirical field-lab explorations. Importantly, it is our intention to 'ground' theoretical discourses on method and practice, through surveys and discourse-oriented work, but also by situating direct accounts and instances which develop empirical activities, enacting institutional and inferential means and accounts. In precipitating these new perspectives, practices and representations, we cooperate with ongoing initiatives and communities expanding the theoretical, organisational, capacity and synergy of extra-disciplinary research through art and design. Ground Tests' research actions and material case studies are articulated through three parallel and complementary streams: * Research Stream 1, “Advanced Practices, Becoming” creates opportunities for media and sensory-ethnographic interactions and anthropological learning and collaborations in situ with Project Study Partners and Study Contexts.* Research Stream 2, “Advanced Practices, in Practice” constructs an in-the-wild research field-lab for fieldwork that enacts action research instances at a specific site of contested heritage, ownership, geopolitical resonance and dissonance, and works with communities and publics there.* Research Stream 3, “Advanced Practices, To Come” provides for propositional techniques and new archetypes for the further advancing of practices, and for representing the preconditions, expectations, and consequences surrounding this kind of work to broad communities. The project culminates as contemporary, practice-informed, interventionist fieldworks that enable change and futures for trans- and extra-disciplinary practice-based investigations.GT forms the context for the PhD project of Benoit Verjat. It further enables and formalises working relationships within the EFAP network, and with a set of Study Contexts and Project Study Partners, also beyond this network. The proposed project strengthens ongoing collaborations between Dr. Jamie Allen, EFAP COST Action Swiss Management Committee member and Senior Artistic Researcher at the Critical Media Lab Basel (IXDM, FHNW) and Sciences Po médialab in Paris, through Dr. Ricci and Mr. Verjat.The impact, longevity and diversity of the knowledge practices characterised, circumscribed and brought forward through Ground Tests is assured by its community-concern and reflexivity, listening to, creating and addressing diverse audiences. GT, in conjunction with EFAP, will advance into our uncertain future important, inspired and inspiring new orientations for research, knowledge practices, and change-making.