Musing on the Artist-Researcher in Collaborative Practice - Bodies in Flight's Do the Wild Thing! Redux

This article explores a practice-as-research in performance project – Do the Wild Thing! Redux (Arnolfini UK, December 2012), more particularly my contribution to this collective installation work – Muse. The project was commissioned by Performing Documents, a three-year research project, hosted by the University of Bristol (UK), in partnership with Arnolfini (Bristol), which investigated a range of models for the creative and curatorial re-use of performance and live-art archives (visit www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/research/performing-documents). The research was organized into three strands, each with a dialogic relationship between artists and scholars at their core: Redux – artists returning to their own archives; Remake – artists turning to archives of others; and Replace – curators exploring by means of an exhibition the theme of artists at work in the archive. DTWT!R proposed a method of non-collaboration forcing its collaborators to work apart and solely in their own media before coming together at Arnolfini to install their elements into a single gallery space.