Art/Research International (Journal)
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272 research outputs found
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The Shapeshifting and Boundary Crossings of Socially Engaged Art
No full textSocially engaged art practices are understood to borrow from and overlap with several disciplinary territories, crossing over into contexts that, in the process of engaging in civic work and everyday actions, obscure their identity as art and aesthetic practices. The article examines the complications that result from co-existing in various ontological sets of properties, through the presentation of a socially engaged project rooted simultaneously in art, social work, education, and ethnography, and where the author acts and performs as an artist, scholar, and facilitator. Participants in the project embody multiple identities which are dependent on changing perspectives and conditions. Arguing for a relevant ethical orientation to research adapted to the transdisciplinary positions of such community-based projects, the inquiry further interrogates the wrangle between the expectations that symbolic capital is typically accrued to artists engaged in these practices and the inconspicuous agency of quiet activism that offers potent alternative forms of resistance.
An Inspirited Artistic Co-Inquiry with Raw Energy
No full textThis is the first article of an in-process, creation-centred research project exploring raw energy through the authors’ distinctive and complementary inquiry practices of creation-centred research (St. Georges, 2020, in press) and spontaneous creation-making (Bickel, 2020; Bickel & Fisher, 1993). Raw energy, as conceived, is experienced as spirit-in-motion in a process of manifestation—of making the invisible visible—and is rooted in an intra)inter-relational aesthetic. This creation-centred inquiry is a relational and animated approach to creating, inquiry, learning, unlearning, and teaching. It resists the colonial lens by virtue of exploring inner subjective space, relinquishing colloquial aesthetic constraints, and enveloping a sacred space in which to restore, heal, and decolonize the imagination. Led by breath)spirit, touch, intuition, experiential and conversational exchanges, and compassionate relationships, creative lifeforce is activated to forge new ways of knowing—moving toward the extraordinary. This article engages with theoretical and explanatory text, visual and poetic storying, and interactive breath that invites the reader into this inquiring journey
Without Words: Breathing Within the Echoes of Circular (Un)Certainty
No full textOur ways of seeing, of being, of knowing in the world are shaped by relationship. These relationships reflect the complex dynamic that exists as we navigate between the living layers of human nature, desire, loss, connection and disconnection, certainty and uncertainty. Across the space of this piece, I seek to breathe, to move with observant awareness through emotion and cognition. I want to acknowledge the deep sense of absence that reverberates across my consciousness, an absence that is both spiritual and etymological. This absence reflects the complexity of my subjectivity as a mother, an educator, one who navigates within the narrative of colonization, and a synchronicity of spirit that transcends self. It is through the breath that I find myself in rhythm, connected to the land—spirit, (be)longing with/in (un)certainty. Poetry, prose, and photographs intermingle upon the pages, offering an assemblage of being, of (un)knowing, of breathing amidst (im)permanence. This work creates space for me to better know myself as scholar, teacher, mother—as one who lives upon a stolen, sacred landscape, while creating openings for dialogue, disruption, and praxis
Gasp. Struggle. Let Go.
No full textThis writing explores what continues to arise after my cancer diagnosis. A cancer diagnosis enlivens the question of what it means to live well with the Earth and its multi-dimensional beings and provides a necessary push to step out from the confines of a self and toward and into the wild fray of this life. I interpret my lived experiences through life writing. Readers and listeners might be drawn into recognition of their inescapable ecological interdependence. The necessity of cultivating an ability to listen and interpret the world and the human and other-than-human kinships becomes undeniable as I engage in life-writing and photography. Listening to words that arise in my writing and reviewing the photos I take continues to be my way of taking a journey toward learning to be open to the fullness of life, how life is lived, how life can be remembered and suffered and let go. Through this study, I am learning the necessary steps to unforget what I need and what the Earth might need of me. Cancer offers an opening for the practice of life-writing and of making sense of being in the world and of understanding the offerings that arrive when I nurture a commitment to care for the world and myself
Small Sounds in Familiar Places: A Poetic-Visual Inquiry on the Gravity and Synchrony of Love in Pandemic Times
No full textIn this article, the movement between the gravity and synchrony of love in pandemic times as revealed through the creative practices of poetry and cellphone photography is addressed. Informed by literature on slow scholarship published prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the author explores the ways in which listening to and caring for the small sounds of a familiar place–here a rural backyard–can act as a generative theoretical space to reconsider the meaning of love and its implications for academic work. The principal questions include: how can the practice of writing poems and taking photographs foster the intentionality of slow time? How can immersing oneself in this time provide insight into perhaps worn-out conceptualizations of what is considered precious? What implications, if any, can these insights have for understandings of love and the need for slow scholarship post-pandemic
Poetic Inquiry Coming of Age: A Review of "Poetry, Poetic Inquiry and Rwanda: Engaging with the Lives of Others" by Laura Apol
No full textLaura Apol’s Poetry, Poetic Inquiry and Rwanda: Engaging with the Lives of Others (2021) traces the author’s long relationship with survivors of the 1994 Rwanda holocaust in which thousands of Tutsi were murdered by their neighbors, and examines the ways in which her personal uses of poetry for coping with painful subject matter became a longitudinal poetic inquiry. This review responds to themes of relational poetic inquiry and the development of poetic craft and suggests that the author’s development reflects the development of the field of poetic inquiry and marks a stage of accomplishment.
