Asymmetries: Iterations in/through Artistic Research - Nduka Mntambo

On Artistic Research

“Is there such a thing as artistic knowledge? What kind of knowledge can supposedly be produced only within the traditional studio? Will this knowledge mutate when worked through practices (for example, archival or relational practices)? How is it different than other forms of knowledge?” - Ido Govrin 1 (2019)

My work as an image maker, researcher and teacher is to explore how the field of Artistic Research can produce counter-hegemonic knowledge(s). My research practice draws from a multidisciplinary perspective ranging from cinema, urban studies, visual and performance arts, and critical race theory. I use a speculative and experimental ethos within the field of artistic research in and through cinematic practices. My work grapples with the densities of perspectives, velocities of values and frequencies of affects within the context of the ‘global south’ perspective. 

In and through the framework of Artistic Research, I attempt to orchestrate a variety of wandering experiments that are liberated from academic scientific research assumptions. The multi-disciplinary ethos in my work draws from the potentialities and methodological abundance of artistic research and its courage to fail, misread, decode, inscribe, and remix situated knowledge(s). Artistic research offers conceptual coordinates that are constantly re-calibrating to the dynamic contours of both image-making in the world and pedagogic efforts in the context of a film school.

My ongoing artistic research on cities and art considers ways in which multiple expressions and interpretations of cities of the global south can best be understood when processes at the fringes are articulated through creative/artistic practices. Often these expressions are in languages or forms that seek to challenge dominant or pre-determined forms and give rise to modalities that are determined from within the (artistic) communities that occupy fringe spaces. 

My research explores forms of contemporary artistic practice in order to explore and re-imagine city life beyond the confines set upon it. In particular, the research and its explorations relates to cinema aesthetics and its political confrontation with a fixed idea of cinema and the ways it is presented.

Year

2021