A Transdisciplinary Understanding of an Artistic Practice in Dance and Performance

Author

Eleni Tsachtani, Bard CollegeFollow

Date of Submission

Fall 2013

Academic Program

Dance

Project Advisor 1

Leah Cox

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Artist’s Statement: My transdisciplinary understanding of artistic practice

I value this is as a chance for me to articulate what I have come to view as the difference between an “interdisciplinary” and a so-called “transdisciplinary” artistic practice. I place here emphasis on the word “practice” for this is not an attempt to convince of the theoretical soundness for the substitution of a term for another, based on etymology, art history and an epistemology; the aim is to show through examples of my artistic and personal evolution how I have laid the foundations of a future personal practice which transcends the boundaries of art disciplines, but does not need to force them all into one piece for the sake of interdisciplinarity.

The term interdisciplinary art has been used to encompass all art for which it is clear and observable that its birth roots are complex, spreading across art forms. I will nevertheless use the term in a more restricted sense, so that it stands for the kind of art which sprouts from an intention to bridge art forms, and so that it contrasts with art that ends up being interdisciplinary, regardless of whether this is apparent in the final product; I shall call the latter kind of art and practice “transdisciplinary”. Why is this differentiation important? If I include moments and aspects of multiple art forms in one piece in order to show the connections between arts or indeed connect the arts, this choice is made for the sake of and in the eyes of an audience. I wonder what such intention can give back to the artist herself. Admittedly, I can only speculate, for my tendency is away from an aim of this sort: I think that a will to connect the arts seems too externally imposed and it shows that the artist is past herself. By that point, she has come to value the criteria of a trend or an anti-trend as this can be inferred directly, through historical or temporary practice, or vicariously, through the opinion of critics and theoreticians.

How then can the pre-defined boundaries of an art form be overcome, if not through an active choice to put a sample of it in the same temporal and spatial plane with a different art form? In as much as I do not seek to connect them, I do not aim to destroy the boundaries between them, for the two expressed intentions are a tautology. How can I possibly then end up with art that I view as transdisciplinary especially even if it is not always viewed as such—or viewed as interdisciplinary for that matter? But far more importantly, why would I want to make art which is transdisciplinary according to my view of it? The reason made itself apparent as the journey and then the process became increasingly enjoyable.

Distribution Options

Access restricted to On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Tsachtani, Eleni, "A Transdisciplinary Understanding of an Artistic Practice in Dance and Performance" (2013). Senior Projects Fall 2013. 6.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_f2013/6