Image Description: A long gallery space with dark charcoal walls and a high vaulted white ceiling lined with track lighting. Colourful sci-fi collages are evenly spaced along both side walls and the far wall. A black bench sits in the centre of the polished concrete floor.
I am writing to you from the in the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts, where my exhibition is currently on view. It feels like the perfect place to reflect on one of the reasons I chose to pursue graduate studies in Queen’s University’s Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies program which was the opportunity to engage in research-creation as part of my Ph.D. dissertation.
Queen’s Cultural Studies Department defines research-creation as “an approach to research that combines artistic, curatorial, making, or design practices with academic research to support the development of knowledge through creative expression, scholarly investigation, and experimentation.” sees it as “a continuous relation between a research question and the creative exploration, an interplay”. They continue, "Research Creation is when an act of creating is the act of conducting research through and in the moment of the creative act itself”. At its most basic, it is when your creative practice and your academic research work hand in hand, each informing and expanding the other.
For me, my research creation has taken the form of a portfolio of collage works alongside exhibitions I have participated in as an artist (like this one), as well as exhibitions I have curated. For others, research-creation might involve filmmaking, performance, installation, teaching experiments, workshops, and community-based projects. For example, one colleague developed public artist workshops where participants co-created artworks that later became part of an exhibition. Many students in my department, Film and Media, produce (you guessed it) films. It looks different for everyone.
Kingston offers a range of spaces where research can take public form. The Art and Media Lab is associated with the Film and Media Department but is available to other students through a proposal process. Other possibilities include apply to , , , , , and
If you are a graduate student wondering what research-creation might mean for your own work, I would encourage you to think expansively about where your research can happen and what form it might take. 
My exhibition offers one example of what research-creation can look like, and it may be worth experiencing in person as a form of research-creation in practice. In it I explore my developing theory of infrathin images through collages that imagine alternative futures of the past, or distant future. If you are interested in seeing how this approach takes form in practice, cannot get enough sci-fi after watching Project Hail Mary, or simply want to step into an alternative future for a little while, feel free to stop by Infrathin Images at the Art and Media Lab at the Isabel Bader Centre, open April 15–24, Monday–Friday, 10am–4pm.
How to survive grad school? Research Creation.