In the Splash Zone

• In Event: 29.058 - Understanding the Strength of A/r/tography as a Theory and a Research Methodology

Abstract

1. Objectives and Purpose:

This panel presentation invites attendees to critically engage with and consider the research methodology and theoretical approach known as a/r/tography. The objectives and purposes of the third panellist are to explain the nexus of performative pedagogy and a/r/tography through investigating the boundaries between spectator and performer in different learning spaces.

2. Perspectives or theoretical frameworks: This work proposes that there are interstitial spaces and understandings among the relationship between witness, performer, and encounter. Within this constructed improvisational movement, the performer and audience engage in the immediacy of unfolding moments, seeking intimacy and reciprocity. It is here that they begin to uncover the ways in which collective voice and individual voice are activated. This gives power to both the audience and the performer in knowing that a third space of meaning-making can and is provoked by every performance event.

3. Modes of inquiry: The third panellist will investigate the blurred boundaries between spectator and performer in cultivating dynamic and playful learning spaces, which in turn cultivates porosity between teacher and learner. This is what she terms performative pedagogy. There is no detached observer in performative inquiry and pedagogy. As in a/r/tography, researcher and participants together realize through creative action and interaction an ever-spiralling circle of understanding (Irwin & Springgay, 2008).

4. Data sources: Generating data from a current research project called The Listening Lab, University of Regina, this presentation will site examples of an active interplay of creative impulse and authentic interpretation with performers, dramaturges and audience as meaning making surfaces through immediacy, presence and creative criticality. This ‘container’ invites a shift of thinking and doing levelling the ground of all participants by dismantling the edifice from which we judge a ‘successful’ work of art.

5. Substantiated conclusions: This work advances performative inquiry, whereby research participant(s) realize-recognize journey/landscapes through performance and then map-in-action the landmarks of learning recognized through discussion, reflection, remembering, writing, re-imagining.

6. Scholarly Significance: The Listening Lab serves as an exemplar of how a/r/tography is being used in Performative Pedagogy. The resulting participatory arena invites creative impulse and fuels meaning and impact.

Author

• Kathryn Ann Ricketts, University of Regina