This paper explores artistic research in Bangkok as a heterogenous assemblage of specific methods and situated practices that contemporary performing artists develop in and through the performance projects and in relation communities of those who care about the nonmainstream performing arts in Bangkok. It will provide a tentative mapping of some parts of this assemblage tied to performance research and their supporting artistic communities of practice. This mapping emerges from direct observation, document research, interviews and surveys with artists, academics, and researchers in the performing arts. The paper first locates how some contemporary performing artists in Bangkok seek new insights and embodied ways of feeling and moving that to share with others. The paper seeks to locate the diverse, intertwined modes of knowledge making through performance practice by using of examples from various performing arts traditions and disciplines in Thailand’s capital. It relates them to the communities supporting artistic research and links the work of artists, academics, cultural workers and community actors. Together, they work to organize, design, create, and evaluate performances in Thailand’s capital in ways that engage, challenge, and form communities of those who care about the contemporary performing arts. The paper addresses how performance practice research done by artists, academics and cultural organizers engages and shapes communities and how communities affect research done in performance-making processes.
Keywords: Performing Arts, Artistic Research, Bangkok, Community-Building, Performance Practices, Devising Theatre, Object Theatre, Embodied Knowledge, Minor Theatre, Contemporary Thai Performance