Creative synthesis is an expression of the new knowledge that has been generated as a result of the heuristic research process. It is not simply a summary, but an expressive representation of the meaning made by the researcher (Moustakas, 1990).
By exhibiting the poster within the village, the synthesis returns to the lived, embodied experience from which it emerged, allowing meaning to unfold through viewers’ encounters with the artwork. This aligns with Bourriaud’s concept of relational aesthetics (Bourriaud, 2002), in which meaning is produced through social interaction, and with Kwon’s theory of site-specific art, where location is integral to the work itself.
The poster was exhibited within the place where it was created rather than a conventional gallery to create an encounter between artwork, place, and audience. The exhibition functioned as a relational space in which meaning could be generated through engagement.
Furthermore, Kwon argues that the meaning of artwork depends on where it is encountered (Kwon, 2004). The noticeboards in the centre of the village isn’t just a convenient location, it is where the experiences occurred, where the researcher lives, where the artwork returns. The location itself becomes part of the creative synthesis.
Making and exhibiting a poster which illustrates the peak moment of realisation and shares my depiction of the lived experience, is a risky move. This research came to be about the ongoing process of becoming and the impact that minor gestures and embodied practices can have on that. It would be incomplete if I were not to see those acts of disruption through by sharing my work. This final act of hanging a poster in my village, is once again deterritorialising, but an exhibition is a line of flight; it is an essential process of creating identity.
Identity is not constructed in isolation but formed through assemblages (Deleuze & Guattari, 2013). You exist within an entangled meshwork (Ingold, 2016); rather than standing outside of the world, you stand within it. It is a crucial concept to understand the self as a fold (Deleuze, 1993). It is not separate but it is the folding in of the outside. The self is always in the intermezzo of the folds, which are infinite; it is always in the process of becoming.
Bourriaud, N. and Copeland, M. (2002) Relational aesthetics. Translated by S. Pleasance and F. Woods. Dijon: Les presses du réel.
Deleuze, G. (1993) The Fold, Leibniz and the Baroque. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (2013) A Thousand Plateaus. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Ingold, T. (2016) Lines. Oxon: Routledge.
Kwon, M. (2004) One place after another: site-specific art and locational identity. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Moustakas, C.E. (1990) Heuristic research : design, methodology, and applications. London: Sage Publications, The International Professional Publishers.