The International Journal of the Arts in Society: Annual Review

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Restoring Inanna and the Huluppu Tree: The Productive Tension between Creativity and Data in Practice-Led Research


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1 Curtin University, Western Australia, Australia
     

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'Restoring Inanna' is a practice-led, autoethnographic doctoral research project which explores how the four to five thousand year old stories and poems of the Ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna can speak to contemporary women. Using a performative storytelling process that involves original songwriting and theatrical devices to both investigate the topic and present some of the results, the research will culminate in a one woman devised performance integrating several of Inanna's stories and poems. Creating a devised performance requires a range of minute by minute creative decisions, some thought out and some intuitively discovered through improvisation. In this case the devised performance is part of a wider research process. Creative decisions are thus both enhanced and complicated by a range of data threads which need to be woven through: contextual research across multiple disciplines; a journal documenting creative processes and decisions, as well as personal responses to the stories and the research process; and discussion forums. Sometimes the artistic and research aims are congruent, other times they are in conflict. This paper attempts to untangle some of the knotted data threads which both feed into, and are generated by, the first creative development period relating to the story: 'Inanna and the Huluppu Tree'.

Keywords

Music and Theatre, Devised Performance, Songwriting, Practice-Led Research, Auto Ethnographic Research, The Goddess Inanna from Ancient Sumer, Mythology, Women's Issues, Storytelling, Cross Disciplinary Research.
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  • Restoring Inanna and the Huluppu Tree: The Productive Tension between Creativity and Data in Practice-Led Research

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Authors

Raelene Bruinsma
Curtin University, Western Australia, Australia

Abstract


'Restoring Inanna' is a practice-led, autoethnographic doctoral research project which explores how the four to five thousand year old stories and poems of the Ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna can speak to contemporary women. Using a performative storytelling process that involves original songwriting and theatrical devices to both investigate the topic and present some of the results, the research will culminate in a one woman devised performance integrating several of Inanna's stories and poems. Creating a devised performance requires a range of minute by minute creative decisions, some thought out and some intuitively discovered through improvisation. In this case the devised performance is part of a wider research process. Creative decisions are thus both enhanced and complicated by a range of data threads which need to be woven through: contextual research across multiple disciplines; a journal documenting creative processes and decisions, as well as personal responses to the stories and the research process; and discussion forums. Sometimes the artistic and research aims are congruent, other times they are in conflict. This paper attempts to untangle some of the knotted data threads which both feed into, and are generated by, the first creative development period relating to the story: 'Inanna and the Huluppu Tree'.

Keywords


Music and Theatre, Devised Performance, Songwriting, Practice-Led Research, Auto Ethnographic Research, The Goddess Inanna from Ancient Sumer, Mythology, Women's Issues, Storytelling, Cross Disciplinary Research.

References