Abstract:
My interest in artistic autoethnography stems from the epistemological question after the togetherness of experience – affect and emotion - and the form finding process in visual art. Artistic autoethnography as I understand it consists of two strands: The first is the autobiographical connectedness with the artistic form finding process. It can be followed through an artist’s professional biography like a narrative. The second is the artistic perception in connection with artistic knowledge. It that can be found in the artistic form itself, as it arises for example in Cézannes notion of the tache. Both, artistic perceptions and autobiographical foundations build analogies and lead to a model of artistic autoethnography. Artistic autoethnography places itself on the borderline between research and art and insofar has much in common with the epistemological presumptions around artistic research.

Artistic or evocative autoethnography can be distinguished from analytical or social-scientific autoethnography. The latter follows the path of qualitative research and involves a combination of fieldwork, interpretive qualitative data, and systematic data analysis. Different from that, the so called evocative autoethnography has its epistemological foundation in art. It is singular and subjective by nature. The knowledge it produces arises in the process of the making and reception. It is shared between the artist researcher his or her audience.

Whereas the artistic quality is fundamental in evocative autoethnography, most of them are written texts and come as autobiographical informed narratives. It is my attempt to propose possible ways of including visual art into the frame of evocative autoethnography. In that sight I investigate the painter’s gaze as a specific way of participatory observation. Its inherent empathic quality connects the painter, the painted, the painting, and, like an after image, the viewer.

About Gabriele Schmid:
Gabriele Schmid studied Fine Art and Art Education at the University of Arts Berlin from 1985 – 1994. She graduated with the 1st state exam for Art Education and as a Meisterschülerin of the University of Arts. From 1994 – 2004 she was employed as a research assistant at the University of Arts Berlin at the faculty of education where she finished her dissertation in 1999. From 2004 – 2007 she held a deputy professorship at the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Olden¬burg for Art Education. Since 2007 she is professor for aesthetic education at the Hochschule für Künste im Sozialen, Ottersberg. Currently she holds the position of the academic principal for research, studies and teaching at the HKS Ottersberg. Gabriele is a member of the executive board of the Society of Artistic Research since 2015. In the current research project “Artistic Interventions in health promotion and prevention” (2016-2020), founded by the Ministry of Lower Saxony (Niedersächsisches Vorab), she is responsible for the strand of artistic and arts based research and is especially interested in artistic autoethnography. As an artist she is working in the fields of sculpting, drawing, video and installation.

Gabriele Schmid: After Images. Participatory Observation as Artistic Autoethnography

Zeit:
Dienstag, 19. Juni 2018, 19 Uhr

Ort:
Fakultät Kunst und Gestaltung
Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 7, Raum 116
99423 Weimar