Visiting lecture by Kevin Skelton
The title of Kevin Skelton’s public lecture is From musicologist to artist-researcher: a “way of being” with transdisciplinary methods. The lecture is arranged by Research Institute´ History Forum.
Abstract
As an artist-researcher in higher education, one must continually navigate a conceptual space in academia that resides between more established traditions of artistic practice and academic research. It is a transdisciplinary space, and the ongoing balancing act is further complicated by the need to also reconsider and engage differently with one’s personal experiences in both fields. It is perhaps for this reason that the field of artistic research is frequently concerned with defining what it is. However, carving out a unique path as an artist-researcher is often more attributable to how one enters, approaches, and engages with an investigative process. From this perspective, artistic research regularly necessitates extensive and ongoing methodological questioning. As a consequence, newly developed research approaches can themselves serve as important contributions to knowledge, particularly when other researchers — artistic or otherwise — apply and adapt them to their own thinking and doing.
This lecture will consider how my early studies in musicology and historically informed performance influenced my current interests and ongoing work in artistic research focusing on transdisciplinary innovation in the performing arts. I will explain how my efforts in historical musicology increasingly felt incompatible with my intellectual interests and artistic practice, precipitating my abandonment of academia to focus on a performing career nearly twenty years ago. However, I will also reflect on how musicology facilitated my eventual return to higher education and its influence on my doctoral research. Using concrete examples and case studies found in my PhD thesis, I will highlight how music-related scholarship in ethnomusicology, aesthetics, opera studies, source studies, and Wagner scholarship intertwined with my broader interests in critical pedagogy and performing arts higher education. This will reveal how my earlier perception of an incompatibility between academic research and artistic practice evolved into an appreciation of the potential of transdisciplinary methodologies. Indeed, I discovered how cultivating a new ‘way of being’ in and with research can be generative both artistically — between early music and contemporary art — and also methodologically — between musicological and artistic research.
Bio
Kevin Skelton has a multifaceted career performing, directing, choreographing, teaching, and researching. Equally at home on the concert and operatic stage, Kevin specializes in seventeenth-century music and experimental music theatre with a particular interest in combining classical singing and contemporary dance. He has created several videos and performances under the auspices of his own company ātmā and performed with such renowned companies as Opera Atelier, Boston Early Music Festival, LOD, Muziektheater Transparant, ISH, Nederlandse Reisopera, SPAC (Japan), and Sasha Waltz & Guests.
The recipient of numerous awards and scholarships, including grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and Ontario Arts Council, Kevin has completed graduate studies in voice, conducting, musicology, theatre, and choreography having studied at the University of Toronto, Indiana University, Oxford University, and the contemporary dance school PARTS in Brussels. www.kevinskelton.com
Abstract
As an artist-researcher in higher education, one must continually navigate a conceptual space in academia that resides between more established traditions of artistic practice and academic research. It is a transdisciplinary space, and the ongoing balancing act is further complicated by the need to also reconsider and engage differently with one’s personal experiences in both fields. It is perhaps for this reason that the field of artistic research is frequently concerned with defining what it is. However, carving out a unique path as an artist-researcher is often more attributable to how one enters, approaches, and engages with an investigative process. From this perspective, artistic research regularly necessitates extensive and ongoing methodological questioning. As a consequence, newly developed research approaches can themselves serve as important contributions to knowledge, particularly when other researchers — artistic or otherwise — apply and adapt them to their own thinking and doing.
This lecture will consider how my early studies in musicology and historically informed performance influenced my current interests and ongoing work in artistic research focusing on transdisciplinary innovation in the performing arts. I will explain how my efforts in historical musicology increasingly felt incompatible with my intellectual interests and artistic practice, precipitating my abandonment of academia to focus on a performing career nearly twenty years ago. However, I will also reflect on how musicology facilitated my eventual return to higher education and its influence on my doctoral research. Using concrete examples and case studies found in my PhD thesis, I will highlight how music-related scholarship in ethnomusicology, aesthetics, opera studies, source studies, and Wagner scholarship intertwined with my broader interests in critical pedagogy and performing arts higher education. This will reveal how my earlier perception of an incompatibility between academic research and artistic practice evolved into an appreciation of the potential of transdisciplinary methodologies. Indeed, I discovered how cultivating a new ‘way of being’ in and with research can be generative both artistically — between early music and contemporary art — and also methodologically — between musicological and artistic research.
Bio
Kevin Skelton has a multifaceted career performing, directing, choreographing, teaching, and researching. Equally at home on the concert and operatic stage, Kevin specializes in seventeenth-century music and experimental music theatre with a particular interest in combining classical singing and contemporary dance. He has created several videos and performances under the auspices of his own company ātmā and performed with such renowned companies as Opera Atelier, Boston Early Music Festival, LOD, Muziektheater Transparant, ISH, Nederlandse Reisopera, SPAC (Japan), and Sasha Waltz & Guests.
The recipient of numerous awards and scholarships, including grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and Ontario Arts Council, Kevin has completed graduate studies in voice, conducting, musicology, theatre, and choreography having studied at the University of Toronto, Indiana University, Oxford University, and the contemporary dance school PARTS in Brussels. www.kevinskelton.com