Stitching Together Arts-Based Mapping with Emergent Cartography

• In Event: 75.052 - Research De/sign: Theory as a Thimble for Tailoring Methodological Excess

Abstract

Purpose
I investigate ways in which concepts and practices of arts-based mapping might be used for inquiry, communication, and meaning-making in qualitative research about participatory museum practices. Further, I explore how consideration of theory relating to post-representational cartography (Kitchin & Dodge, 2007) and material-discursive entanglements (Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2010; Coole & Frost, 2010) guides development of my research. I address how these theories influence my research design by prompting consideration of relationships between objects, spaces, people, ideas, and actions.

Theoretical Framework
My research “loosely and imperfectly” (MacLure, 2013) stitches together disparate fabrics of theoretical and material practices of arts-based educational research, social art practices, participatory museum practices, cartography, and relational ontology. I consider how these materials shape arts-based mapping as a mode of inquiry through several aspects, including: the narrative capacity of mapping; mapping as creative process and production; mapping as interpretation of networks; and what is neglected when mapping.

I utilize arts-based mapping as it allows thinking in complex ways about research and educational relationships. Mapping affords a modality that moves from representation to production in arts-based educational research (Barone & Eisner, 2012; O’Donoghue, 2008, 2013), qualitative methodology (Lather, 2007; MacLure, 2006, 2011; McCoy, 2012), and artists’ mapping practices (Crampton, 2009; Krygier, 2006; O’Rourke, 2013). Through mapping practices it is possible to inquire into and produce “the intra-actions ...[that] make available relational ways of knowing that are materially grounded” (Kuntz & Presnall, 2012, p. 11). Further, in arts-based mapping the knowledge and material produced are always being made, just as “maps are constantly in a state of becoming, constantly being remade” (Kitchin & Dodge, 2007, p. 335). [Thread 1]

Warrants for Point of View
In research about museum education and interpretation it is vital to account for material-discursive inter- and intra-actions considering the importance of objects in museum practice (Paris, 2002). Further, given the spatialized nature of gallery-based and community-based learning, considering ways to use mapping as a research method allows greater latitude for expression of impacts of museum education practices. [Thread 3]

Modes of Inquiry and Data Sources
In this paper, I rely on theoretical stitching techniques that bring together disparate scholarly, interpretive, and artistic practices. This includes baroque method (MacClure, 2006), a methodology of encounters (McCoy, 2012), diffraction (Barad, 2007; Kuntz & Presnall, 2012); and juxtaposition (Pinar, 2009). These modes are explored for their potential in research design employing arts-based mappings that allow for spatialized understanding of the impacts of participatory museum practices. [Threads 2 & 4]

Scholarly Significance
Mapping as a mode of inquiry has the potential to address the concerns of various researchers and practitioners who assert that museum evaluation techniques are misaligned with current participatory museum practices (Adair, Filene & Koloski, 2011; Bishop, 2012; Simon, 2010). Through employing arts-based mapping that is stitched together with theoretical threads, this study recognizes that there is a productive conversation between artists’ mapping, qualitative research, and art participatory museum practice that allows for considering museum practices differently. [Threads 2 & 3]

Author

• Elsa Lenz Kothe, The University of British Columbia