Art Installation as Method

Abstract

This article discusses the use of art mediums as methods to enhance the theoretical and political intentions of an academic work. More specifically, it traces the author’s moving from one artistic method to another, in order to show how the engagement with the theory that is afforded by each is different. Taking performance ethnography as a methodology, the author argues that two different artistic mediums (performance text and art installation) function as significant tools of method that inform his research on various forms of transphobic violence. The author discusses the ways in which the author’s experience as a transsexed (transsexual) researcher and artist informed the move into this methodology, and the ways in which the chosen method of art installation allows the work to perform and be performative more effectively than the original paper-based performance text method.