Song As A/r/tographical Exploration

• In Event: Roundtable Session 45
  In Roundtable Session: Rallying Calls: Arts-Based Engagement Within Relational Communities

Abstract

This paper reports on an a/r/tographical journey centered on the creation, documentation, and community-sharing of a song. The practice-based artistic inquiry examined the interstitial and liminal identities that resulted from the author’s transition from artist/teacher to artist/researcher/teacher (i.e., artographer). The song produced by this process, and its resulting legacy, celebrates and affirms that artistry embodies scholarship and pedagogy. The merging of words and music creates a text that carries information in a multi-modal format. The combination of music, music performance and lyrical expression are held as a transformative means of human knowing and communicating. Poetic inquiry, lyric inquiry, and a/r/tography are used to provide theoretical insights on song, story, and how art can teach us about our knowing.

Author

• Danny Bakan, University of British Columbia