Artographic Dispositions: Methodological Possibilities for Continuous Variations

• In Event: Gradients-in-Relation: Distance as Continuous Variations in Artography

Abstract

Objectives or purposes:

We share our experimental strategies, applying accessible and vernacular inquiry tools of walking, photography, video and collage. We prioritize doing-making-thinking in ways that lend to gradients as moments of improvisation that emerge in the between spaces, and advance a theory-practice nexus shaped by response-ability (Haraway, 2016). This approach is distinct from invocations of gradients in teacher education, described as strictly linear learning models in which knowledge is both quantifiable and qualitatively differentiated between teacher and learner (see for example, Malik, 2017).

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework:

Much as Gugutzer (2019) suggests, we become ‘trans-individual’ when we are “affected by something or somebody outside of [ourselves] in a way that enforces a reaction,” and the “felt-bodily dynamic of contraction and expansion” bridges dialogue between singularity and collaboration as artful engagements during restrictive conditions (p. 190). We embrace neo- to explore new and revived forms of living inquiry and artographic renderings, informed by the ‘betweenness and beyondness’ of artographic inquiry to-date (to borrow inspiration from Rossetto, 2015). This accounts for the absence of the well-known ‘/’ in the configuration of artography in this case. Instead, we distance and associate ourselves in keeping our distance in moments of immediacy, and we strive to embrace practice to accentuate the precariousness of artist-researcher-teacher encounters during the pandemic.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry:

Choosing to forego the forward slashes in artography emphasizes our commitment to ‘bodies without borders’ and to opening up to a close study of gradients. In this way, we are compelled by concepts of distance, distances and distancing with compositions grounded in socio-materiality that connects matter with contemporary arts research and mattering with theoretical prospects guiding our way.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials:

Our proximity moves from pandemic isolation to artful geographies out there. In particular, we consider distance as an expression of encounters that playfully motivate our imaginaries during the pandemic. Given the vast physical geographies spanning our locations in this project – from the west coast, to the central east, and across the international border – distance is a dynamic notion, and the distinctions and differences of gradients-in-relation are central to our current artographic journeys.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view:

Our panel shares in these “joint situations,” where the “atmospheric grip” of the pandemic is something we will affectively recall long into the future (Gugutzer, 2019, p. 195). We infuse neophenomenological perspectives with artographic inquiry to bring forth the methodological rigor of sustained uncertainty, and to enhance thinking in companionship, without flattening the unexpected situations that are ‘the present.’

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work:

By unpacking the methodological potential of artography as constant variations, we are “finding one another” during the pandemic through “personal geographies, digital spaces and new intimacies” (Gallagher et al., 2020, p. 638). Our fluidity is embedded in efforts to query the identity construct of a/r/t, and to embrace the fullness of pedagogic multiplicities inspired by our localised, situated moments that extend to ‘bodies without borders.’

Author

• Rita L. Irwin, University of British Columbia