Woven tablecloth from Conversations with the Seminals in Wonderland (The Researcher Tea Party), Folded & woven selection of academic papers/teachest, 2014 - 2016
Gazing
"Back and forth auto-ethnographers gaze, first through an ethnographic wide-angle lens, focusing outward on social and cultural aspects of the personal experience; then they look inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract and resist cultural interpretations " (Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p.739). |
Reflected Self Portrait, in Self Portrait, May, 2016
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I gaze as a collector, a curator and a placemaker, storyteller and teacher, reflecting on the reflections of a life lived in a protean career (Bridgstock, 2007). I have always been a learner, desperate to find new ways of knowing, and collected this knowing as stories that I bundle together and then share in the role I find myself in as artist, researcher or teacher. As a result of loving stories, I am also a storyteller and I listen intently to stories shared with me. Upon reflection, my love of art teaching is partly out of the ability to share the bundled and collected stories of artists, art works, artistry and creative cultures inside a storied curriculum. One of the aspects of storytelling and storytellers that I admire most are the moments that are chosen to be spoken, chosen, or told as well as those we inherit. As Flood reminds me “our identity is framed by the history of self related to us by our parents, grandparents and others over time” (2016). Why are some personal and artist stories told and retold? What do the stories we retell mean for the creative self or for a creative culture? Is identity as Anzaldua (1999) suggests, a cluster of stories that we tell about ourselves and that others tell us again and again. Are we constantly re-designing our identities through the stories we choose to share in moments? If so, can digital portfolios for learning in art education tell us about who were are as we design and curate through reflection over time? Can they show us what we can do as a reflective mirror to the self as artist, art maker and artful inquirer? Can portfolios make the common art practice threads obvious to us when displayed and exhibited online? Are we able to see the themes, ideas, selections and provocations visible through curation? Can digital portfolios in art education enable a space for sustained creative practice that opens and creates the possibilities for creativity?
I have been living in a world of stories as an artist, researcher and teacher for many, many years and found myself like Alice falling down the rabbit hole into a yet to be discovered space of new experiences, knowledge, discourse and experience. Informed by creativity, identity and curriculum in art education, this A/R/T Portfolio is an exploration into learning in and through personalised portfolios as both process and product to affect creativity and identity as artist. Created as a bricolage of creativity, a study as an assemblage, rendered in the excess of art, research and education I have collected and curated my many journeys in and around W(w)onderland in this site, in sight, cited as a multi-modal dissertation. This inquiry is presented as an authentic a/r/tefact. A product of process and sustained creative practice through the selection of artefacts from a collection of a/r/tographical images and essays, and ethnographic video.
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversation?” Suddenly, Alice saw a scurrying white rabbit run by her, it was looking closely at its pocket watch. Interested to see where this gorgeous but hurried, rabbit with watch was heading, Alice followed closely behind. She found herself falling after the rabbit, after tripping down a hole. Falling for what seemed like forever, Alice found herself passing doors, bookshelves and leading corridors. She was spiraling down into the earth through what must have been a rabbit hole in what felt like the longest of falls, when finally, she stopped.
Being in a digital wonderland as an a/r/tographer is like being boundary less, without borders and margins. This ‘becoming pedagogical’ journey is “a state of embodied, living inquiry whereby [I AM] committed to learning in and through time” (Leggo & Irwin, 2013, p.4) as a digital participatory a/r/tist. “Becoming pedagogical is an active, living inquiry whereby teachers are in a continuous process of inquiry, engagement, and learning as pedagogues” (Leggo & Irwin, 2013, p.4). Here in this Portfolio as a thesis, I present a digital site for examination created as the result of a continuous, iterative process of deep reflective inquiry. Reflection through gazing, gazing in on the self and of those around me. This Portfolio is curated as a living digital discussion for the field with nine artist co-participants via video as method, to create a site for ongoing discourse that lives well beyond the initial publication for assessment through voice and storying, and demonstrates this shifting and constantly changing space of digital research and portfolios. The videos are a/r/tefacts, remnants and byte sized ethnographic stories of a collaborative project now intertwined within my own. Here live in this Portfolio, I have chosen not to screen capture digital pages for you of digital sites as visual clutter, or decoration, rather, to create openings to new spaces to explore you won digital wonderland through links that direct and re-direct your path to new sites rhizomatically. The portals or windows lead out of the Portfolio and into the lives of the participant artists. Each of them recorded and exhibited for new stories and memories to be generated from their reflection on self as artist and their practice of curation in digital spaces. Experiencing the potential of the rhizomatic digital space on your own, you can flow through the space/s as you please, entering rendered sites like Alice with each new key turn, video window or via hyperlinks to new spaces beyond the curation; to see how the material practice of sites affects and effects how you read the next space you enter; how each digital space your enter changes and evolves your experience as audience; and how through relationality you grow through the participatory experience of sight in site. Here, I demonstrate the potential of art-research-teaching in the digital rhizome of portfolios.
Gazing as a/r/tographer, through the critical lens of auto ethnographer offers new insights. Gazing back on the stories and journeys collected from the co-participants, has shifted my gaze. Gazing has allowed me to weave thinking, making, relating and doing in and out of all of the a/r/tefacts created, edited and curated here. Gazing in on my own practice, my histories and my own stories of being and becoming a/r/tist have been recorded here for you to gaze on, to provoke a shift through the reflection in the looking glass of your own creativity, identity, practice and stories of being and becoming.
I have been living in a world of stories as an artist, researcher and teacher for many, many years and found myself like Alice falling down the rabbit hole into a yet to be discovered space of new experiences, knowledge, discourse and experience. Informed by creativity, identity and curriculum in art education, this A/R/T Portfolio is an exploration into learning in and through personalised portfolios as both process and product to affect creativity and identity as artist. Created as a bricolage of creativity, a study as an assemblage, rendered in the excess of art, research and education I have collected and curated my many journeys in and around W(w)onderland in this site, in sight, cited as a multi-modal dissertation. This inquiry is presented as an authentic a/r/tefact. A product of process and sustained creative practice through the selection of artefacts from a collection of a/r/tographical images and essays, and ethnographic video.
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversation?” Suddenly, Alice saw a scurrying white rabbit run by her, it was looking closely at its pocket watch. Interested to see where this gorgeous but hurried, rabbit with watch was heading, Alice followed closely behind. She found herself falling after the rabbit, after tripping down a hole. Falling for what seemed like forever, Alice found herself passing doors, bookshelves and leading corridors. She was spiraling down into the earth through what must have been a rabbit hole in what felt like the longest of falls, when finally, she stopped.
Being in a digital wonderland as an a/r/tographer is like being boundary less, without borders and margins. This ‘becoming pedagogical’ journey is “a state of embodied, living inquiry whereby [I AM] committed to learning in and through time” (Leggo & Irwin, 2013, p.4) as a digital participatory a/r/tist. “Becoming pedagogical is an active, living inquiry whereby teachers are in a continuous process of inquiry, engagement, and learning as pedagogues” (Leggo & Irwin, 2013, p.4). Here in this Portfolio as a thesis, I present a digital site for examination created as the result of a continuous, iterative process of deep reflective inquiry. Reflection through gazing, gazing in on the self and of those around me. This Portfolio is curated as a living digital discussion for the field with nine artist co-participants via video as method, to create a site for ongoing discourse that lives well beyond the initial publication for assessment through voice and storying, and demonstrates this shifting and constantly changing space of digital research and portfolios. The videos are a/r/tefacts, remnants and byte sized ethnographic stories of a collaborative project now intertwined within my own. Here live in this Portfolio, I have chosen not to screen capture digital pages for you of digital sites as visual clutter, or decoration, rather, to create openings to new spaces to explore you won digital wonderland through links that direct and re-direct your path to new sites rhizomatically. The portals or windows lead out of the Portfolio and into the lives of the participant artists. Each of them recorded and exhibited for new stories and memories to be generated from their reflection on self as artist and their practice of curation in digital spaces. Experiencing the potential of the rhizomatic digital space on your own, you can flow through the space/s as you please, entering rendered sites like Alice with each new key turn, video window or via hyperlinks to new spaces beyond the curation; to see how the material practice of sites affects and effects how you read the next space you enter; how each digital space your enter changes and evolves your experience as audience; and how through relationality you grow through the participatory experience of sight in site. Here, I demonstrate the potential of art-research-teaching in the digital rhizome of portfolios.
Gazing as a/r/tographer, through the critical lens of auto ethnographer offers new insights. Gazing back on the stories and journeys collected from the co-participants, has shifted my gaze. Gazing has allowed me to weave thinking, making, relating and doing in and out of all of the a/r/tefacts created, edited and curated here. Gazing in on my own practice, my histories and my own stories of being and becoming a/r/tist have been recorded here for you to gaze on, to provoke a shift through the reflection in the looking glass of your own creativity, identity, practice and stories of being and becoming.
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Gazing at practice based a/r/t research
“Rather than deny or separate the researcher from the research and the personal from the relational, cultural, and political, qualitative researchers embrace[d] methods that recognize[d] and use[d] personal-cultural entanglements” (Adams, Holman Jones & Ellis, 2014, p.22). The self or auto, is always artist - researcher - teacher. I am an a/r/tographer, this means that my research is an embodied praxis that allows me to look, read, write and make through the lenses of an intertwined, woven and entangled self. I choose to remain entangled, within the interwoven threads of the artist, the researcher and the teacher as a/r/tographer. As a/r/tographer (Irwin & de Cosson, 2004) while re-searching in this rhizomatic auto-ethnography, I embody all aspects of the study as an arts based researcher (Leavy, 2009; Barone & Eisner, 1997), narrative inquirer (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), storyteller and educational researcher. I am a/r/tographer, and as a result, my own narrative and art practice are always woven through my work, physically or digitally. As artist, my artmaking practice throughout the knowing (Theoria), doing (Praxis) and making (Poesis) (Aristotle as posited in Sullivan, 2000) has been to use the theoretical voices that help to shape my ideas as foundations for my praxis. I choose to weave all of these actions as a reflective practitioner into this A/R/T Portfolio to continue my conversations beyond this inquiry and ensure that they are always relational, inter-related, not attached, but interwoven texts that live on digitally in future pedagogies in this site and in further inquiries in others sights. “Action research practices are deeply hermeneutic and postmodern practices, for not only do they acknowledge the importance of self and collective interpretation, but they deeply understand that these interpretations are always in a state of becoming and can never be fixed into predetermined and static categories” (Carson & Sumara, 1997, p.33).
I have decided to tell the story of an a/r/tographer, gazing as critical auto-ethnographer to design, to create, to make and to rhizomatically write this research, and curate it here in this digital Portfolio. As a/r/t-auto(ethno)grapher (Sameshima, 2008, p.49), I “reflexively explore ... as a way of achieving wider cultural, political or social understanding” (Pace, 2012, p.2). I am utilising “an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural” (Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p.739) to gaze inwardly firstly, then outwardly to art education and digital pedagogies. If “a/r/tography is a living practice of art, research and teaching: a living métissage; a life-writing, life creating experience” (Irwin, et al., 2001) then as auto-ethnographer I am making, writing and teaching a/r/t. “A/r/tographers live research. Within a/r/tography are the living practices of art making, researching, and teaching (hence the a-r-t in a/r/t)” (La Jevic & Springgay, 2008, p.71). The relationships between these three aspects of my identity as artist/researcher/teacher reflect this rendered contiguity. They are wrapped and overlapping around me inside the inquiry at the centre of the rhizome. The lenses of learning that this sense of self enable are multifocal as a critical pedagogue. In “becoming pedagogical …[I have] ..shift[ed] from desiring to be an educator as expert to becoming an educator as inquirer and a shift from desiring to be an artist as expert to becoming an artist as inquirer (Leggo & Irwin, 2013, p.4). Becoming pedagogical lenses are more like a phoropter, the multi layered lenses that change focus, determining the ability to see through a range of creative possibilities, critically.
I have decided to tell the story of an a/r/tographer, gazing as critical auto-ethnographer to design, to create, to make and to rhizomatically write this research, and curate it here in this digital Portfolio. As a/r/t-auto(ethno)grapher (Sameshima, 2008, p.49), I “reflexively explore ... as a way of achieving wider cultural, political or social understanding” (Pace, 2012, p.2). I am utilising “an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural” (Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p.739) to gaze inwardly firstly, then outwardly to art education and digital pedagogies. If “a/r/tography is a living practice of art, research and teaching: a living métissage; a life-writing, life creating experience” (Irwin, et al., 2001) then as auto-ethnographer I am making, writing and teaching a/r/t. “A/r/tographers live research. Within a/r/tography are the living practices of art making, researching, and teaching (hence the a-r-t in a/r/t)” (La Jevic & Springgay, 2008, p.71). The relationships between these three aspects of my identity as artist/researcher/teacher reflect this rendered contiguity. They are wrapped and overlapping around me inside the inquiry at the centre of the rhizome. The lenses of learning that this sense of self enable are multifocal as a critical pedagogue. In “becoming pedagogical …[I have] ..shift[ed] from desiring to be an educator as expert to becoming an educator as inquirer and a shift from desiring to be an artist as expert to becoming an artist as inquirer (Leggo & Irwin, 2013, p.4). Becoming pedagogical lenses are more like a phoropter, the multi layered lenses that change focus, determining the ability to see through a range of creative possibilities, critically.
My daughter Imogen looking through the many lenses of a phoropter at the Optometrist.
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The multifocal phoropter lenses, such as those we find at the Optometrist serve as a metaphor for gazing, gazing inwardly, gazing back and gazing forth. Seen here next to my daughter Imogen, a phoropter has a range of lenses that work together to highlight and frame sight. Just like Imogen wearing a range of glass lenses here, phoropter lenses serve as a metaphor for critical auto ethnography. This metaphoric understanding has allowed me to make clear distinctions about selections of memories, experiences and stories that I live by, to highlight, blur and reify in this narrative. In my researcher life, the metaphor of the phoropter lenses have allowed me to see through the many lenses of that critical auto ethnography have opened for me, as a series of new frames that highlight practice and research as an a/r/tist. The overlaps, connections and interwoven aspects of a/r/t are highlighted upon each new click and rotation of glass. Just like these lenses, that rotate, reticulate, and frame sight, my identities are always intertwined, always layered like a Robert Rauschenberg combine painting.
My sight is multi focused, layered and framed, while this site is collaged, assembled, and woven. |
Practicing “auto-ethnography is a form of critique and resistance that can be found in diverse literatures ... and texts that identify zones of contact, conquest, and the contested meanings of self and culture that accompanies the exercise of representational authority” (Neuman, 1996, p.191). Through doing auto ethnography video ethnography and writing, making and reading as a/r/tographer through the lenses that critical auto-ethnography open, I am reminded of whom I am through reflexive and cricitally reflective art making, self reflection and critique. Theorising these considerations of where I come from and what my beliefs are in this becoming, continue to reverberate and resonate. I have lived as a portfolio pedagogue here in this site, critically and creatively exploring and synthesising knowledge, living the inquiry in multiple roles as I made, wrote, edited and curated betwixt sites and spaces.
Like Alice, my journey is a shared story. She is the key character of the story, but she is nothing without the relationships and connections she makes along the way. Through conversations, conferences, teaching, seminars, workshops, classes, exhibitions, meetings and reading I have been an a/r/tist in Wonderland. The action of meeting each of the co-participant artists and having the privilege of editing and reviewing their thinking to generate a/r/tefacts for this Portfolio furthers this sharing of the artist story. The stories shared with me opened new and insightful understanding of my own practice and path, to artist. They are curated here within my thinking, writing and artworks to further open this story to include your own reflection of self as you listen to their journey and story telling. This embodied and performative aspect of creative inquiry has been an important encounter of gazing in and at practice based research. I have been enabled, as an embodied researcher and practitioner to take my work to new audiences, presenting at technology conferences and international higher education conferences, outside of the art world as a/r/tographer. These nodes of inquiry have been built off of this Portfolio, and my experiences in portfolio pedagogy that transcend disciplines in my “interactive and reflective ‘research acts’, involving critical and creative practice” (Sullivan, 2006, p. 19-20). As a/r/t-auto(ethno)grapher, my re-search gaze is multifaceted and multilayered as a qualitative practice based researcher. I always foreground or ‘out’ myself to contextualise my thoughts in my community as a practitioner, as arts based. It shifts the gaze. I embody my research as artist, creativity informs my knowing, doing and relating.
"I am creative" (Allen, 2015, p. 15). I am an artist, researcher, teacher.
I choose to embody and to perform the research process and curate the multiplicities of entangled meaning making (Barad, 2010) here. Therefore, art is data, art is research. I make data as art, art as researcher and research art as data. This Portfolio is both data as process and product in/of/as/for research. The self or auto, is always artist-researcher-teacher.
As an artist/researcher/teacher much of my work is lived and is based upon making art as a researcher-teacher, researching as an artist-teacher and teaching as an artist-researcher. The gazing, through self reflection, pedagogical exploration and the a/r/t-auto-ethno-graphic gaze enables me to look back and forth, “first through an ethnographic wide-angle lens, focusing outward on social and cultural aspects of the personal experience; then ... inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract and resist cultural interpretations" (Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p.739). I choose to combine both a/r/tography and critical auto-ethnography as a rhizomatic methodology to reify the in-between space here in the digital. The in-between space, Irwin and Springgay (2008) suggest, we focus our gaze, because the “meanings reside in the simultaneous use of language, images, materials, situations, space and time” (p. xix). Here in the digital, invisible space, I have a new site to inhabit, gaze inwardly and generate new knowledge for.
Like Alice, my journey is a shared story. She is the key character of the story, but she is nothing without the relationships and connections she makes along the way. Through conversations, conferences, teaching, seminars, workshops, classes, exhibitions, meetings and reading I have been an a/r/tist in Wonderland. The action of meeting each of the co-participant artists and having the privilege of editing and reviewing their thinking to generate a/r/tefacts for this Portfolio furthers this sharing of the artist story. The stories shared with me opened new and insightful understanding of my own practice and path, to artist. They are curated here within my thinking, writing and artworks to further open this story to include your own reflection of self as you listen to their journey and story telling. This embodied and performative aspect of creative inquiry has been an important encounter of gazing in and at practice based research. I have been enabled, as an embodied researcher and practitioner to take my work to new audiences, presenting at technology conferences and international higher education conferences, outside of the art world as a/r/tographer. These nodes of inquiry have been built off of this Portfolio, and my experiences in portfolio pedagogy that transcend disciplines in my “interactive and reflective ‘research acts’, involving critical and creative practice” (Sullivan, 2006, p. 19-20). As a/r/t-auto(ethno)grapher, my re-search gaze is multifaceted and multilayered as a qualitative practice based researcher. I always foreground or ‘out’ myself to contextualise my thoughts in my community as a practitioner, as arts based. It shifts the gaze. I embody my research as artist, creativity informs my knowing, doing and relating.
"I am creative" (Allen, 2015, p. 15). I am an artist, researcher, teacher.
I choose to embody and to perform the research process and curate the multiplicities of entangled meaning making (Barad, 2010) here. Therefore, art is data, art is research. I make data as art, art as researcher and research art as data. This Portfolio is both data as process and product in/of/as/for research. The self or auto, is always artist-researcher-teacher.
As an artist/researcher/teacher much of my work is lived and is based upon making art as a researcher-teacher, researching as an artist-teacher and teaching as an artist-researcher. The gazing, through self reflection, pedagogical exploration and the a/r/t-auto-ethno-graphic gaze enables me to look back and forth, “first through an ethnographic wide-angle lens, focusing outward on social and cultural aspects of the personal experience; then ... inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract and resist cultural interpretations" (Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p.739). I choose to combine both a/r/tography and critical auto-ethnography as a rhizomatic methodology to reify the in-between space here in the digital. The in-between space, Irwin and Springgay (2008) suggest, we focus our gaze, because the “meanings reside in the simultaneous use of language, images, materials, situations, space and time” (p. xix). Here in the digital, invisible space, I have a new site to inhabit, gaze inwardly and generate new knowledge for.
Through the Looking Glass: I am a/r/tographer
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Belinda Allen
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As a child I grew up surrounded by art, books and music. It is a lovely memory that I have of growing up in a world that was surrounded by knowledge, and art played a big role in that. I was the recipient of many art gifts growing up and I was lucky enough to have both creative and travel loving parents who took us as a family to many cities and countries and always to each museum and gallery in those spaces.
I also grew up knowing what artists did and I knew that art teachers played a big role in developing, shaping and supporting a young artist through their formative years. My mum and her art teacher friends were great mentors and impacted on their students’ lives and I knew all about each of my mum's students, their practice and their struggles through my mum’s stories of school. I have nice memories of winning an art prize when I was young and a moment in year seven that marked moments when I knew I could do art. I was a typical stereotype art student in school, a challenging student and a pain for many of my teachers, including my art teacher whom I craved attention, to direct and shape my practice. I wanted a knowledge of art and the art world and I needed to know more about the stories. The lives artists’ led, where they lived, who they were friends with and what they knew. My mum was the mentor in this space and loved to tell the stories of the art makers. She knew so many of the life stories and anecdotes of art makers that she told through great stories.
It was my mum who pushed me to make, remake and often start over with my art works and alongside the historical and theoretical discussions about art, she shaped the way that I later taught art. It wasn’t until I was at art school becoming an art teacher myself that I realised that my mum had been such a catalyst for my career. She had earlier at the same institution had her visual arts knowledge directed by Eisner’s (1968) domains of studio practice, criticism, history and aesthetics.
‘Just wait until you get to art school’, was a quip that my mum used to get me through the drudgery of high school that I loathed. My mum had been right, and when I got to art school in Sydney it was what I had been waiting for. I met people who loved art. Lived art. Were art makers, art story tellers. I was able to experiment, play, make, create and learn in this disciplinary art world that I would later teach to my own students.
I also grew up knowing what artists did and I knew that art teachers played a big role in developing, shaping and supporting a young artist through their formative years. My mum and her art teacher friends were great mentors and impacted on their students’ lives and I knew all about each of my mum's students, their practice and their struggles through my mum’s stories of school. I have nice memories of winning an art prize when I was young and a moment in year seven that marked moments when I knew I could do art. I was a typical stereotype art student in school, a challenging student and a pain for many of my teachers, including my art teacher whom I craved attention, to direct and shape my practice. I wanted a knowledge of art and the art world and I needed to know more about the stories. The lives artists’ led, where they lived, who they were friends with and what they knew. My mum was the mentor in this space and loved to tell the stories of the art makers. She knew so many of the life stories and anecdotes of art makers that she told through great stories.
It was my mum who pushed me to make, remake and often start over with my art works and alongside the historical and theoretical discussions about art, she shaped the way that I later taught art. It wasn’t until I was at art school becoming an art teacher myself that I realised that my mum had been such a catalyst for my career. She had earlier at the same institution had her visual arts knowledge directed by Eisner’s (1968) domains of studio practice, criticism, history and aesthetics.
‘Just wait until you get to art school’, was a quip that my mum used to get me through the drudgery of high school that I loathed. My mum had been right, and when I got to art school in Sydney it was what I had been waiting for. I met people who loved art. Lived art. Were art makers, art story tellers. I was able to experiment, play, make, create and learn in this disciplinary art world that I would later teach to my own students.
Gazing inward at embodied a/r/t research
Embodied research practice invites new possibilities for creativity and the creative self to be explored through critical reflection. “A key aim of practice-led research is to observe, study and learn, but also to transform the production of meaning and its relationship to the community of users” (Drummond, Keane, West, 2012, para. 2). I am drawn to critical auto-ethnography as a practitioner, to further theorise my reflections on a/r/tographic renderings because it invites me to re-consider my embodied praxis by untangling the interwoven aspects and then open possibilities to re-weave and fold the narrative and art making. Informed. This embodied way of knowing, has allowed me to develop my a/r/tographic pedagogy while gaining understanding through the editing of ethnographic videos (Harris, 2016) that respond to the sites and material contexts that I place them within through the curation of artefacts. Video was selected as a method to offer a participatory audience relationship within the Portfolio. The videos are at once participatory art works as voices of authorativity and image as research. "For [Nicolas] Bourriaud, the relational artist is a social engineer, who establishes ‘situations’ to be used, rather than objects to contemplated" (Rottner, 2011, para. 4). Participatory art is referred to as art that is "created through the participation of people in addition to the artist or art collective. In participatory art people referred to as citizens, regular folks, community members, or non-artists interact with professional artists to create works" (Finkelpearl, 2014). The videos serve as artefacts of our discussions, evidence of captured thoughts and discourse and provocations to you as a new audience of the voices curated amongst my own, shared and framed by an a/r/tographer.
"All art is potentially participatory, if viewers are willing to engage with the work. However, in Bourriaud’s formulation, not all participatory art is relational. A relational work, for Bourriaud, does not aim at a critique of the art institution or an expansion of the definition of art, but rather focuses on the social interactions sparked by the art exhibition" (Rottner, 2011, para. 3).
As a visual arts teacher, I also taught new media art through photography, video and digital imaging and this art practice has been an important aspect in my digital pedagogy, a/r/tist practice and experience. Each of the videos that were recorded in the Australian summer of 2015 in this study, were then archived, stored away and reflected on, framed and re-framed as stories and as memories in Wonderland. I let them shape my a/r/t gaze. The collections of the in-situ recordings of our discussions were not revisited again until I began to write and curate this rhizomatic text as auto-ethnographic narrative. Each artist was cut and edited to respond and continue our relational conversations in a seamless narrative where our voices and thoughts weave together. They are edited through my lens of a/r/tographer, critically gazed upon as auto-ethnographer. I have engaged with the ethnographic collections as artist, as researcher and as teacher, and then curated this A/R/T Portfolio as a/r/tist - an affordance that only a digital site as portfolio enables.
In positioning my own practice and research in the study as a/r/tographical, I am legitimising the emergent process of this multi-modal embodied research to demonstrate creativity and artistic identity, and search for the answers that provoked this a/r/tographical exploration in the first place. Through storying performed and embodied renderings I am prompted to further new sights of inquiry in this gaze:
Is it possible (and useful) to determine the characteristics of the digital identity of a visual artist that is present in a constructed digital portfolio? In doing so, how might secondary visual art students benefit from structured, curricular support for the building of artist identity through digital portfolios?
I have re-searched and read widely, often finding myself lost in the depths of a dark well or conversely somewhere out in the wonders of wonderland. Arts based educational research allowed me to explore my notion of self through discussion (recorded) with my community of practice, and consider my own assumptions and understanding about how I (re)present myself as artist-researcher-teacher through sustained creative practice and reflection. This opened the possibilities to making within artful inquiry and a new site of practice in the studio. “To be engaged in the practice of a/r/tography means to inquire in the world through an ongoing process of art making in any art form and writing not separate or illustrative of each other but interconnected and woven through each other to create relational and/or enhanced meanings” (Irwin & Sinner, 2013, p.2). As film maker, video ethnography allowed me to continue my metaphoric journey into wonderland through a new digital site. These vignettes curated here, are captured as short grabs that respond to my thinking, curated as artefacts that lay claim to my knowledge. Each artist participated in a place that suited them and their work. From their studios, workplaces and lounge rooms, or via recorded skype calls to universities and studios on the other side of the world, I was able to spend time getting to know my co-participants through two provocations on their practice. This guided discussion was opened by an invitation to co-participate and included:
The purpose of this study is to explore arts based educational research (ABER) into contemporary professional visual artist portfolios through a number of lenses to support identity development and formation of self as artist. In order to conduct the research, ten artists will be participating. The participants will consist of myself as artist, researcher, teacher and you as artist participant as I use visual arts based research methods to explore contemporary professional visual artist portfolios and artist identity.
What will I be asked to do?
Should you agree to participate, you will be asked to contribute and collaborate with me in the following ways:
Firstly, I will ask you to participate in an initial discussion with me that will take approximately one-two hours. I would like to hear about your art practice and how you use your digital artist portfolio. You can tell me your story in any way you feel comfortable on the day of your choice in your surrounds, perhaps by beginning with telling me about your material practice and your journey as an artist. I aim to be flexible in my approach to the research by listening to your story and to allow you to tell me your story at your pace.
With your permission, the interview will be recorded on a Digital Camera so that we can ensure that we make an accurate record of what you say. I anticipate using the edited film as part of my thesis submission and reflective art making as a fellow participant.
"All art is potentially participatory, if viewers are willing to engage with the work. However, in Bourriaud’s formulation, not all participatory art is relational. A relational work, for Bourriaud, does not aim at a critique of the art institution or an expansion of the definition of art, but rather focuses on the social interactions sparked by the art exhibition" (Rottner, 2011, para. 3).
As a visual arts teacher, I also taught new media art through photography, video and digital imaging and this art practice has been an important aspect in my digital pedagogy, a/r/tist practice and experience. Each of the videos that were recorded in the Australian summer of 2015 in this study, were then archived, stored away and reflected on, framed and re-framed as stories and as memories in Wonderland. I let them shape my a/r/t gaze. The collections of the in-situ recordings of our discussions were not revisited again until I began to write and curate this rhizomatic text as auto-ethnographic narrative. Each artist was cut and edited to respond and continue our relational conversations in a seamless narrative where our voices and thoughts weave together. They are edited through my lens of a/r/tographer, critically gazed upon as auto-ethnographer. I have engaged with the ethnographic collections as artist, as researcher and as teacher, and then curated this A/R/T Portfolio as a/r/tist - an affordance that only a digital site as portfolio enables.
In positioning my own practice and research in the study as a/r/tographical, I am legitimising the emergent process of this multi-modal embodied research to demonstrate creativity and artistic identity, and search for the answers that provoked this a/r/tographical exploration in the first place. Through storying performed and embodied renderings I am prompted to further new sights of inquiry in this gaze:
Is it possible (and useful) to determine the characteristics of the digital identity of a visual artist that is present in a constructed digital portfolio? In doing so, how might secondary visual art students benefit from structured, curricular support for the building of artist identity through digital portfolios?
I have re-searched and read widely, often finding myself lost in the depths of a dark well or conversely somewhere out in the wonders of wonderland. Arts based educational research allowed me to explore my notion of self through discussion (recorded) with my community of practice, and consider my own assumptions and understanding about how I (re)present myself as artist-researcher-teacher through sustained creative practice and reflection. This opened the possibilities to making within artful inquiry and a new site of practice in the studio. “To be engaged in the practice of a/r/tography means to inquire in the world through an ongoing process of art making in any art form and writing not separate or illustrative of each other but interconnected and woven through each other to create relational and/or enhanced meanings” (Irwin & Sinner, 2013, p.2). As film maker, video ethnography allowed me to continue my metaphoric journey into wonderland through a new digital site. These vignettes curated here, are captured as short grabs that respond to my thinking, curated as artefacts that lay claim to my knowledge. Each artist participated in a place that suited them and their work. From their studios, workplaces and lounge rooms, or via recorded skype calls to universities and studios on the other side of the world, I was able to spend time getting to know my co-participants through two provocations on their practice. This guided discussion was opened by an invitation to co-participate and included:
The purpose of this study is to explore arts based educational research (ABER) into contemporary professional visual artist portfolios through a number of lenses to support identity development and formation of self as artist. In order to conduct the research, ten artists will be participating. The participants will consist of myself as artist, researcher, teacher and you as artist participant as I use visual arts based research methods to explore contemporary professional visual artist portfolios and artist identity.
What will I be asked to do?
Should you agree to participate, you will be asked to contribute and collaborate with me in the following ways:
Firstly, I will ask you to participate in an initial discussion with me that will take approximately one-two hours. I would like to hear about your art practice and how you use your digital artist portfolio. You can tell me your story in any way you feel comfortable on the day of your choice in your surrounds, perhaps by beginning with telling me about your material practice and your journey as an artist. I aim to be flexible in my approach to the research by listening to your story and to allow you to tell me your story at your pace.
With your permission, the interview will be recorded on a Digital Camera so that we can ensure that we make an accurate record of what you say. I anticipate using the edited film as part of my thesis submission and reflective art making as a fellow participant.
Gazing through a/r/tographic lenses
A/r/tographic lenses enable a specific investigation in site (artist participant studio, my studio and this Portfolio) and how to cite these experiences and methodologies. In this case I chose to use authentic multi-modal research tools that weave their way through art, research and pedagogy that our students are asked to do in digital portfolios in a range of contexts. My exploration of digital space here in this A/R/T Portfolio is furthered by this place, curated as a research site, a sight/site for art and teaching cite. I have been made more aware of the complex and multifaceted understanding of a/r/tography through the study of myself through lenses the renderings invite. As a “relational and ethical inquiry” (Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p.xix) a/r/tographers experience, feel, understand, see and relate to space and place through there interwoven identities. We assemble and collage space and time as artist-researchers, and frame our learning experiences in education as artist-researcher-teachers.
“A/r/tographers live research. Within a/r/tography are the living practices of art making, researching, and teaching (hence the a-r-t in a/r/t). A/r/tographical researchers may begin from a familiar place, for example a material process or an autobiographical narrative, which is then intertwined and in conversation with unfamiliar questions, things hidden, or silenced” (La Jevic & Springgay, 2008, p.71).
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As a/r/tographers so vividly imagine, the vitality of living in the in-between space is powerful. The in-between, the gaps, the boundary lines are places of creativity and within these spaces, places for possibility and disruptions for performance through embodiment I have found openings. A/r/tography as research is experienced through an inquiry in the world, in a range perspectives and through a number of lenses at the centre of a rhizomatic space. Auto-ethnography has allowed me to see the distinct fields of inquiry within this place, initially designed as a study through the three independent and silo’d identities. My early study design asked that I research as a separated, untangled artist, researcher and teacher to offer knowledge in three spaces. It was developed around narrative stories and collections of video through the gaze of art educator and art maker. What felt like triggers or provocations, through art making and reflexive writing, changes and actions began to shift and turn in the rhizome. No longer could they sit as singular methods, each identity morphed and wove their way together and offered me the opportunity to investigate through the lenses of the artist-researcher-teacher. A becoming. A turn to a/r/tography. I had always proposed through the study design in 2012 that I would approach this project as artist-researcher-teacher. |
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What happened in the year that followed through physically weaving cut academic papers as artist, was a folding of the selves, into a woven form, a becoming as a/r/tographer. These folds were uncovered further in a series of works I made about my twenty years of art education, with a paper folded cup and saucer created from seminal papers in my fields of inquiry. Each year had a story told in its selection of text, and decorative painting. The final saucer made in late 2015, has no cup, left in my hand as the mad hatter’s tea party continues through this curation.
It simply states I AM.
It simply states I AM.
The a/r/tographic turn was not gradual, built upon over years of study, it was early on when my epiphany impacted and disrupted my line of inquiry. “While epiphanies are self-claimed phenomena in which one person may consider an experience transformative while another may not, these epiphanies reveal ways a person could negotiate "intense situations" and "effects that linger—recollections, memories, images, feelings—long after a crucial incident is supposedly finished" (Bochner, 1984, p.595). The first of many epiphanies over the years I have experienced, resonated in this living inquiry, was the shift in self-efficacy and identity, a reverberation. My becoming as a/r/tographer was pivotal to this study, and I had a moment of thinking that if this thesis achieved and found anything, it must propose a/r/tography and its culture as a rhizomatic methodology for art education and artist-teacher pre-service educators.
The more I wrote, the more I was making to understand, to investigate and explore. I was mapping my journey as artist through my identity and creative practice, yet the researcher and teacher personas were always there wanting to be heard alongside the artist. Unable to continue on this a/r/tographic exploration without only making, I set the date for my PhD exhibition, left my ongoing researcher role in a university and began to work full time as an artist to curate my first solo show to open the digital doors on my artist-research, artist-teacher self portraits and pedagogical insights through artmaking.
The more I wrote, the more I was making to understand, to investigate and explore. I was mapping my journey as artist through my identity and creative practice, yet the researcher and teacher personas were always there wanting to be heard alongside the artist. Unable to continue on this a/r/tographic exploration without only making, I set the date for my PhD exhibition, left my ongoing researcher role in a university and began to work full time as an artist to curate my first solo show to open the digital doors on my artist-research, artist-teacher self portraits and pedagogical insights through artmaking.
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Each day, I opened the gallery in Blackheath, I wrote. Each day the writing became more reflexive. This reflection upon self made something very evident, another epiphany - this thesis had to be rewritten digitally as a curated digital a/r/tographic exploration. The exhibition, the curated collection of works created as a/r/tographer and the subsequent discourse with my audiences had altered my point of view, it had made clear what was in the folds, under the weave, what lay close by. An a/r/tographic representation of self now offered new possibilities for presenting what I was seeking to present from the start, but now as an insider with a critical gaze on myself as a/r/tographer within my art community. While my lived experience and embodied inquiry is identified as a/r/tographic, the critical lens of auto-ethnography and ethnographic video allowed me to see the culture of a/r/tography from angles that have evolved and developed my understanding. |
Just as Alice pondered the purpose of a book without pictures as she leant over her sister’s shoulder, I asked myself about the validity of a digital research thesis without artworks and without paper in a bound book. Through creative practitioners and my seminal leads like Shaun McNiff (1998), Patricia Leavy (2009), Rita Irwin (2004), Graeme Sullivan (2006), Adele Flood (2003, 2009, 2010), Tom Barone and the late Eliot Eisner (2012) I am able to gaze into wonderland and with confidence say that this thesis is valid creative research. In positioning my own practice and research in the study as a/r/tographical I am legitimising arts based research and a/r/tographic methodologies through epistemological diversity (Barone & Eisner, 2012) to demonstrate creativity and artistic identity authentically. As Allen (cited in Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2012) questions echo in my thoughts here, “Why is your story more valid than anyone else's? What makes your story more valid is that you are a researcher. You have a set of theoretical and methodological tools and a research literature to use” (Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2012, NPN). Allen’s questions have stayed with me in my field notes and early memories as I peered in on a/r/tography through critical auto-ethnography. Allen alongside my supervisor’s “is this real research?” pokes, have ensured that my ongoing critical reflections have been informed by a number of discourses.
“Arts-based research, a term first coined by Eisner, is based on the assumption that art can teach us in ways that other forms cannot” (Leavy, 2014) and is “particularly useful for research projects that aim to describe, explore or discover” (Leavy, 2009, p.12). To explore identity and identity of self as artist, arts based research has allowed me to also explore my notion of self through my own sustained creative practice, and consider my own assumptions and understanding about how I represent myself as artist-researcher-teacher for art education. If research is “a process of researching - that is, of coming back again and again to perceived phenomena, scrutinising the world, and thereby re-experiencing it” (Irwin & Sinner, 2013) this A/R/T Portfolio is both a product of research, as well as the process of an a/r/tographic becoming, that reverberates in the opened and rendered excess of a living inquiry through contiguity, metaphor and metonymy.
“Arts-based research, a term first coined by Eisner, is based on the assumption that art can teach us in ways that other forms cannot” (Leavy, 2014) and is “particularly useful for research projects that aim to describe, explore or discover” (Leavy, 2009, p.12). To explore identity and identity of self as artist, arts based research has allowed me to also explore my notion of self through my own sustained creative practice, and consider my own assumptions and understanding about how I represent myself as artist-researcher-teacher for art education. If research is “a process of researching - that is, of coming back again and again to perceived phenomena, scrutinising the world, and thereby re-experiencing it” (Irwin & Sinner, 2013) this A/R/T Portfolio is both a product of research, as well as the process of an a/r/tographic becoming, that reverberates in the opened and rendered excess of a living inquiry through contiguity, metaphor and metonymy.