Creative Practice Research in the Age of Neoliberal Hopelessness

Agnieszka Piotrowska, PhD, is an award-winning international creative practice researcher, educator, psychologist and filmmaker known for her dedication to inclusivity. Based in the UK, Professor Piotrowska has presented her work internationally, inspiring others through cross-cultural collaboration. She is a member of the General Council of the Visible Evidence, the most important global network for documentary studies. Formerly Head of the School of Film, Media and Performing Arts at the University for the Creative Arts, she currently supervises PhD students at Staffordshire and Oxford Brookes Universities. From 2018 to 2024, she was Professor of Film and Cultural Studies at the University of Gdansk, directing the Visible Evidence conference there. She has given keynotes internationally, focusing on the links between theory and practice. Her acclaimed documentary Married to the Eiffel Tower and her new award-winning experimental film work in Zimbabwe have received global recognition. Professor Piotrowska’s extensive publications on psychoanalysis, culture and cinema include Psychoanalysis and Ethics in Documentary Film (2014, 2023) Black and White: Cinema, Politics, and the Arts in Zimbabwe (2017) and the monograph The Nasty Woman in Cinema and Culture (2019), as well as four edited collections.

In times of affective capitalism, information overkill　and the neo-liberal university　Creative Practice Research, in exquisite and challenging ways, makes visible to which extent artistic research as system-critical craft and politics can help us to produce deep knowledge and resist the growing co-option and institutionalisation of creativity itself.

• List of FiguresNotes on ContributorsAcknowledgements 1. Introduction – Against Compromises and ComplicitiesAgnieszka Piotrowska2. Against the Grain: Women Film Practitioners and Theorists Talk Creative Practice and TheoryJill Daniels, Rachel Velody and Eylem Atakav3. Married to the Eiffel Tower (2008) – Notes on Love, Loss and KnowledgeAgnieszka Piotrowska4. Creativity and Neoliberalism: Between Autonomy, Resistance and Tactical Compliance Thomas Elsaesser5. Tactical Compliance and the Persistence of ElsaesserWilliam Brown6. Storytelling and Game PlayingAlexis Weedon7. Autonomy and the Other Woman: Queer Active Agency and Postcolonial ExpectationsJenny Barrett and Rosa Fong8. From Neolithic to NeoliberalTony Clancy9. First-Person Expression on ‘non-Western’ Screens – China as a Case StudyKiki Tianqi Yu 10. Scholarly Exploration of the Creative Process: Integrating Film Theory and PracticeWarren Buckland11. Teaching Practice as Theory: Guerrilla FilmmakingWilliam Brown12. Baits of Falsehood: The Role of Fiction in Documentary or From Untheorised Practice to Unpractised TheoryBruce Eadie13. Repented (2019) – A Creative Intersemiotic TranslationAgnieszka PiotrowskaNotes on Agnieszka Piotrowska’s RepentedThomas Elsaesser14. How Do You See Me? The Camera as Transitional Object in Diasporic, Domestic EthnographyNariman Massoumi15. ‘Shut Your Hole, Girlie. Mine’s Making Money, Doll’: Creative Practice-Research & the Problem of ProfessionalismRoberta Mock 16. Feminist ‘Pensive-Creative Praxis’ and Irigaray: A Porous, Dialogical EncounterJudith Rifeser17. The Paths of Creation or How Can I Help My Dybbouk to Get Out of Me?Isabelle Starkier18. ‘We Want to Kill Boko Haram’. Reflections on the Photographic Representation of Children in a Displacement CampTunde Alabi-Hundeyin19. Between ‘counter-movement’ (Ingold) and ‘living with ghosts’ (Demos)Mischa Twitchin20. Screen Memories: A Video Essay on Smultronstället / Wild StrawberriesCatherine GrantIndex