For the arts-based research project originalcopy we have developed a methodology termed performative research. Its conceptual starting point is a category of linguistic expression called “performative utterances”,1 which according to John Langshaw Austin refer to the reality-forming dimension of language as opposed to expressions that simply describe the world. As an example of performative utterances Austin provides statements such as the word “yes” in marriages and links the success of these speech acts to their incorporation in conventionalized and repeatable forms, such as the wedding ceremony.
In originalcopy we extend the reality-forming character of performative utterances in linguistics to the field of fine art and the practice of copying. The element of repetition is key in this extension into visual arts. Following Austin, the repetitive aspect of performativity was further developed by Jacques Derrida with the term “iterability”2 and later actualized in a sociopolitical context by Judith Butler,3 who anchors the possibilities for the re-interpretation of our reality in the iterative change of speech acts. The concept of iterability is not only decisive for the success of speech acts and for their reality-forming power, it fundamentally underlies the nature of the copy with its repetitive, recursive, and reproductive characteristics.
Transferred to originalcopy and the method of performative research, we use iteration as a means to investigate the effects of the copy on current artistic practices. Through an oscillating movement—an echo chamber—between the act of copying and the discussion of its methodology we aim to inscribe the performative research in the thematic framework of originalcopy. Similarly, we develop the entire methodology from and within the artistic practices investigated with originalcopy. Following Anke Haarmann, originalcopy is thus obliged to a field of arts-based research that not only offers an aesthetic experience but also reflects “the conditions of one’s own position in the medium of artistic practice” and thereby investigates “something with the specific means of art”.4
By copying copying methods and subjecting them to a simultaneous investigative and artistic process, the approach of originalcopy is thus both self-referential as well as performative. On the one hand, originalcopy draws its research mode from Niklas Luhmann, who sees “pure self-reference”5 as impossible. Similar to Luhmann, who understands the self-reference of semiotic signs as “escorting” and therefore embedded in other referential moments, self-analysis is inherent to originalcopy. On the other hand, the project follows Derrida and Butler, who both see iteration as “forming a close union with the concept of change”.6 In this sense, only through the combination of the repetition of copying acts and the built-in analysis of their general repeatability is it possible to uncouple the research from its own means and thereby re-interpret the relation of original and copy anew. By maintaining a balance between these processes, the performative research can feed back into the research field and at the same time constitute it.
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1 Cf. John L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words: The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955, ed. James O. Urmson (London: Oxford University Press, 1962).
2 Cf. Jacques Derrida, “Signature Event Context,” in Limited Inc (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988[1972]), 1–25.
3 Cf. Judith Butler, ‘Excitable Speech’ A Politic of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997).
4 Anke Haarmann, “Gibt es eine Methodologie künstlerischer Forschung?” in Wieviel Wissenschaft bekommt der Kunst? Symposium of the Science and Art working group of the Austrian Research Association. Vienna, Academy of Fine Arts, November 4–5, 2011. Accessed August 22, 2016, http://www.oefg.at/legacy/text/arge_wissenschaftkunst/wissenschaft_kunst/Beitrag_Haarmann.pdf.
5 Winfried Nöth et al., Mediale Selbstreferenz. Grundlagen und Fallstudien zu Werbung, Computerspiel und den Comics (Cologne: Herbert von Halem, 2008), 12.
6 Sybille Krämer, “Was haben ‘Performativität’ und ‘Medialität’ miteinander zu tun? Plädoyer für eine in der ‘Aisthetisierung’ gründenden Konzeption des Performativen,” in Performativität und Medialität, ed. Sybille Krämer (Munich: Fink, 2004), 17.