The article focuses on creative research as a practice, a form of making, attending to the making of mistakes – errors, deviations, detours – as the uncertain ground of an emerging methodological paradigm. Our specific focus here is upon media and performance practices. Guided by references to a range of theorists who place mistakes in the centre of their thinking – Russian formalists, Giuliana Bruno, Maurice Blanchot, Tim Erchells, and Tim Ingold – this article explores the potentials for error in method – and the potentials of error as method. We begin by observing a genealogy of mistakes as method in the theories of Russian Formalists, recognising a longstanding fascination with errors and mistakes – ‘mistake as a constructive principle’ for Yuri Tynianov and estrangement for Viktor Shklovsky, then move on to the notion of errare as ‘a map of theoretical and emotional itineraries’ for Bruno. We continue by proposing how these fascinations shape contemporary interdisciplinary methodologies in the humanities, from qualified success to absolute failure. Our preoccupation with error spans every level of creative processes, as mistakes become not only object of enquiry, but a methodological paradigm. The second part of the article focuses on practices that use error as method. In making, practising, performing – in creative research of all kinds – erring is linked to temporality. Practice itself may be recognised as a continuous journey, where method is only ever understood as provisional. In relating such temporalities to philosophical discourses on errors, the article moves towards erring as a contemporary research tool.
