Un/Desired Landscapes: Acts of Sharing and Creating Knowledge Through Site-Specific Artwork

• In Event: Roundtable Session 29
  In Roundtable Session: Creativity, Complexity, and Engagement in Arts-Based Educational Research: Implications for Social Change

Abstract

This paper examines what cultural production can bring to current issues and how art can offer an alternate perspective - one that embraces the complex ways in which humans encounter the world around them and places emphasis on human agency (Sullivan, 2006). Questioning what is desired in the Canadian landscape (and as a symbol of national identity), the authors bring forth two interrelated research creation projects entitled “In/Visibility of the Abandoned School” and “Trading Routes: Grease Trails, Oil Futures” in order to demonstrate how acts of sharing and creating knowledge through site-specific artwork creates an interconnected series of processes that lead to unforeseen situations, repercussions, and actions that have important implications for social and political change.

Authors

• Ruth S. Beer, Emily Carr University of Art + Design

• Natalie LeBlanc, The University of British Columbia