Personal Information
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Given name: Adam Nasser









Surname: Benmakhlouf









Email: a.benmakhlouf@ed.ac.uk









I understand that by submitting this form, I consent to the use of my data for the purposes of the 2026 Forum on Artistic Research'.: Yes









I agree to the terms of service.: Yes













Your contribution
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Title: Attempts to locate the body are continuing: A practice-led enquiry into artists' workshops, care and non-normative writing within contemporary art institutions









Format: Performance (8)









Main language: English









Abstract:
'Attempts to locate the body are continuing' (ATLTB) is a collection of experimental writing in which I articulate my lived experience of running and participating in artists’ workshops. I identify workshopping as a key set of practices in contemporary art prioritising innovative sociality, collective care and non-normative methods of thinking and making together. 

The emphasis on embodiment and situated forms of knowledge, in resisting the structure of the objective passive audience and the active artist practitioner, makes workshopping’s powerful effects often come across as ineffable as they emerge and are felt in an entanglement of bodies working together in the interstices of more recognisable work, learning or social contexts. Unsayability of its impact threatens its realm for expansive study, improvisation, anarchic intimacy and unique ways of being in the world. As a disabled, queer, nonbinary working class person of colour, I recognise the workshop as distinctively valuable to marginalised bodies in society.

I propose an hour-long performance of hybrid creative-critical writings, combining my PhD thesis' performance writing, fictioning, embodied poetic prose, and analytical-reflective accounts of my own invisible labour setting up queer, decolonial, working class, crip workshopping spaces, and methodological reflections to ensure ATLTB is shareable as a systemic method of artistic research, and reproducible beyond its own content and context.

'Attempts to locate the body are continuing' not only discusses, but evidences the capacities of endangered conceptual worlds to generate distinctive forms of innovation through the multiple registers and kinds of knowledge which coexist in my performance. Each one catalyses the other, across embodiment, collective organising, theoretical reflection and active accounts of praxis, making for a delicately arranged rhizomatic structure of learning and worlding through exceptional presence, sensitivity and care.










Image: https://www.sar2026.ie/system/files/webform/submit_contribution/413/ADAMBENMAKHLOUF_CCA040523_TiuM_highres33.jpg









Short biographies of the presenter(s):
- Adam Nasser Benmakhlouf is a writer and artist who lives and works across Scotland. They are a Lecturer in Fine Art in Edinburgh College of Art and Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Writing at University of Dundee. They are finalising their 5-year Collaborative Doctoral Award (2021-26), titled ‘Attempts To Locate the Body Are Continuing’ with Dundee Contemporary Arts and University of Dundee, fully funded by the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities. New works from this project have been presented in Dundee Contemporary Arts (2022), The Yale Centre for British Art (2023), Listen Gallery (2023), CCA Glasgow (2023), Manchester Whitworth Gallery (2024), and Hospitalfield, Arbroath (2022-24). 










Previous presentations or iterations of the research:
The work I propose for my performance has been developed extensively through public sharings from 2021-present, for example:

My one-act play 'Twig and Stump' in Dundee Contemporary Arts, May-June 2022
My one-act play 'Magenta Velour Glove' in Centre for Contemporary Art Glasgow, May 2023
My embodied poetic prose in Manchester Whitworth Gallery, British Art Network Queer Working Class Event Programme, and in University of Durham, Critical Neurodiversity Studies Conference















Requirements
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Additional information:
I have not provided an exhibition as this is listed as relevant to project presentations only. The writing has been extensively developed under the generous supervision of Professor Maria Fusco, the pre-eminent international practitioner of interdisciplinary and experimental writing. I developed this material over the course of 2021-2026 as a fully-funded Doctoral student in the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities. As a Lecturer in University of Edinburgh, I'm now further refining my work as a professional academic researcher with full institutional backing.










Spatial and technical requirements :
I would like to use a clip-on microphone, a projector. I'm happy to adapt to a range of spatial configurations, and have good experience of performing in academic layouts.










Potential risks or ethical concerns:
I do not foresee any risks or ethical concerns










Create a user account for SAR 2026: Yes









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