Art/Research International (Journal)
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A Review of Two Conferences: The Head and the Heart of Arts in Prisons
No full textThis is a comparative review of two conferences held in North America in March of 2018. Carceral Cultures was presented by the Canadian Association of Cultural Studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, from March 1-4. The purpose of the conference was to bring together cultural theorists, practitioners and activists to contemplate the carceral. The Shakespeare in Prisons Conference was presented by the Shakespeare in Prisons Network at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, from March 22-25. The focus of this conference was to bring together artists and theorists who work in the field of arts in corrections, not limited to the works of the Bard. As a sometime practitioner-researcher of Prison Theatre I have found it interesting to compare the two conferences in terms of how each appealed to my head (cognition), and to my heart (affect), in engaging with the politics and aesthetics of arts in prisons. The conferences were divergent in so many ways, and yet now converge in my mind to deepen my understanding of the work that I do, and strengthen my resolve to continue resisting the broken (in)justice system through art-research-activism
Poetic Existential: A Lyrical Autoethnography of Self, Others, and World
No full text“Poetic Existential” is a collection of lyrical autoethnography. This body of work explores existential themes relating to globalization and the immigration/refugee humanitarian crisis, “freedom” as personal/political/geographical ideology, and my own experiences of being a situated self alongside others. Lyrical poetry coaxes a person to embody and present experience through restrained (Faulkner 52), yet evocative descriptions – without the neat folds and contextual blanketing common to many narrative approaches. The challenge of autoethnographic poetry is to perform a focused crystallization of experience via lyrical aesthetics (arrangement, word choice, rhythm, rhyme, phrase and line structure, etc.). In the accompanying artist statement, I theorize my poetic engagement with attention paid to what the lyric facilitates in my scholarly work. In this exploratory fusion of lyrical expression, autoethnography, and existentialism, I hope to summon the aesthetic powers of poetry in the service of self-reflexivity, and in relation to the plight of millions of disenfranchised others
Waiting for Me: Exploring Autoethnodrama
No full textI In this paper, I explore autoethnodrama through the writing of a performative play text. I move between the tandem voices of my current self (30-year-old graduate student and drama teacher) and my past self (14-year-old Year 9 student) as I grapple with new theoretical ideas and academic forms of writing, as well as my place within the educational and scholarly worlds. Along with intertextual references to Waiting for Godot, my voices move between the conversational, the scholarly, the absurd and the poetic, as I try to capture a dream-like quality, perhaps reminiscent of my subconscious at a point in time. I negotiate fragments of identity and try to reconcile new theoretical concepts with practice as I attempt bring my past into the present and uncover purpose, with apologies to Beckett
“Blackboxing it”: A Poetic Min/d/ing the Gap of an Imposter Experience in Academia
No full textEntering academia is a journey often fraught with many intense emotions, including shame, self-doubt, and fear. As such, this exploratory paper aims to expose and “dwell poetically” (James, 2009) on such feelings of novice academics, particularly the “imposter syndrome” experience, through an act of creative vulnerability and meaning making. Employing critical poetic inquiry, this paper offers and examines found poetry mined from a first year language and literacy education PhD student’s early academic writing. This poetry writing was done while simultaneously “minding the gap” existing in the “black box” of the PhD experience (Stanley, 2015), and framed through the lenses of the “personal” as “political” (Hanisch, 2000) and shame resilience theory (Brown, 2006), resulting in a poetry “cluster” (Butler-Kisber & Stewart, 2009) that “speaks shame” (Brown, 2006), composed with the aim to invite comfort, connection, and community, particularly with emerging scholars
Too Subtle for Words: Doing Wordless Narrative Research
No full textInspired by the wordless novels of early twentieth century Belgian artist Frans Masereel, this paper introduces wordless narrative research, a dynamic method of inquiry that uses visual storytelling to study, explore, and communicate personal narratives, cultural experiences, and emotional content too nuanced for language. While wordless narrative research can be useful for exploring a range of social phenomenon, it can be particularly valuable for exploring preverbal constructions of lived experiences, including trauma, repressed memories, and other forms of emotional knowledge often times only made accessible through affective or embodied modalities. This paper explores the epistemological claims of the method while describing five considerations for doing wordless narrative research. The paper concludes with a presentation of an excerpt of There is No (W)hole (Horwat, 2015), a surreal wordless autoethnographic allegory, as an example of wordless narrative research
Exploring Creativity from Within: An Arts-based Investigation
No full textThis paper illustrates how art making generated a novel understanding of the creativity of health services, a context more often noted for its complexity, rule-bound operations and tensions, than for its creativity. Art was used to identify the researcher’s driving forces, facilitate reflexivity, and to explore research participants’ experiences of creativity. What emerged was a practice-theoretical conceptualization of creativity and a connection with the Aristotelian concepts of praxis and poiesis, and the formulations “creative implementation” and “creative activism.” This work provides researchers with a platform for conducting multilevel (individual, team and organizational creativity) and multidimensional (creativity plus innovation) research that is not only applicable to health services, but also to organizations that share some of the characteristics of health services.
Tilling the Garden of Joy/Sorrow: A Poetic Inquiry into the Rhizomatic Complexities of Growing into and through Collective Spaces
No full textA pilot research project turned ongoing program sought to explore the experience of participating in an inclusive Campus Community Garden. In the confines of institutional research the project undertook a specific focus on uncovering the perceived benefits and barriers to participating preschoolers, older adults, individuals with mixed abilities and their caregivers from residential and intermediate care facilities. This paper describes a parallel exploration as an occurrent act of art making; an evolving rhizomatic process of poetic reflection on images and privileged notes from the field. In this work, the authors uncover the shape, movement, and colour of the joy/sorrow of tilling the garden through creative expression
Creating a Warmth Against the Chill: Poetry for the Doctoral Body
No full textUsing a series of poetry conversations, the authors give voice to their experiences of the doctoral process to illuminate the emotional and affective-political experience, and engage with the neo-liberal powers of the doctoral journey. They write poems to remember the body, and bring justice to the many bodies that have experienced the chill inside the “ivory tower.
A Review through Dialogue: Ruthann Knechel Johansen’s “Listening in the Silence, Seeing in the Dark: Reconstructing Life after Brain Injury”
No full textAs educators, we never know what stories our students may be carrying with them. This book holds insights and treasures for anyone who has been witness to or experienced the hard fight back from a near fatal trauma and the resulting loss of identity. As educators, researchers, and parents it is important to understand the difficult struggle of returning to life after suffering from a traumatic brain injury. This book is a beautiful and heart-wrenching testament to that struggle, and the ripple-effect through family, friends, and community when circumstance changes an individual’s life in an instant. Ruthann Knechel Johansen has opened up many spaces which allow for contemplation, examination, and ultimately a dialogue in response to her son’s car accident and subsequent coma and traumatic brain injury
Review of “Good Question: Arts-based approaches to collaborative research with children and youth” edited by Michael J. Emme and Anna Kirova (2017)
No full textIn this edited volume published as an e-book, Good Question: Arts-based Approaches to Collaborative Research With Children and Youth, Michael Emme and Anna Kirova wonder whether communities of adult researchers, artists, educators, and youth working in collaborative and playful ways can co-construct inquiry practices which support young people to lead their own research investigations. The collection is composed of three parts. The first part, “Comics,” focuses on research methods designed for children and youth. The second and third parts, entitled “Collaborations” and “Theory” respectively, include chapters written by new and experienced researchers/scholars who elaborate examples of collaborative arts-based research with children and youth. The design of Emme and Kirova’s contribution to the literature is highly imaginative. In a time of burgeoning interest in arts-based research approaches, the volume has earned a key place. It will no doubt become an essential work for those interested in such innovative research with children and youth