Practice as Research – Body as a multi-modal research method

My research positions Practice as Research (PaR) - and specifically Haseman’s performative research paradigm - as the core methodological framework for my doctoral inquiry. Rather than treating artistic practice as something that supports research from the outside, I work as an artist‑researcher, where practice is the research. This follows Haseman’s argument that performative research “takes its name from J. L. Austin’s speech acts as an alternative to quantitative and qualitative paradigms” (Haseman, 2006, p.98), establishing a mode of inquiry in which knowledge is generated through doing, embodiment, and relational encounter.

Central to this approach is the body as a multi‑modal research method. The body operates simultaneously as site, tool, material, and analytic instrument. Through gesture, movement, proximity, affect, and material engagement, the body produces forms of tacit, experiential, and haptic knowledge that cannot be reduced to text or captured through conventional qualitative methods. In this sense, the body becomes a methodological engine - capable of generating, holding, and transmitting knowledge across sensory, affective, and conceptual registers.

My practice therefore unfolds through performance, intervention, and embodied experimentation, where the live, situated body functions as both the locus and the method of inquiry. This methodological stance allows the research to emerge through action, encounter, and material entanglement, rather than through detached observation or representational analysis.