Re-envisioning Approaches
Asynchronous Session
La Comunidad Responde / Community Response: A Participatory Media Lab at the Intersection of Research and Art View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chloe Smolarski, Tasha Darbes
La Comunidad Responde/ Community Response is a participatory media lab pilot program at the intersection of research and the media arts, which blends Critical Media Literacy, Oral History, and Participatory Action Research (PAR). Latino immigrant students were trained as oral historians, media makers, and artists to co-investigate and creatively respond to issues of loss, isolation and precarity in and outside their school experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the methods of participatory oral history students conducted oral histories with-in their community. Students then used a grounded theory approach to use the themes that emerged in the oral histories to create short, poetic videos which serve as both artistic forms of expression and data visualizations. We focus on two outcomes of this project: (1) the oral history collection, which functions as an unfinished living history told from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders from the community and (2) the curriculum, or iterative process of combining participatory oral history with media art making in order to historize lived experience, nurture the creativity, and develop agency of young people. We discuss the tensions produced by situating the production of creative expression and knowledge generated by research as dialogic partners in a process of inquiry. Examples of student work and curricular activities highlight the productivity of these interdisciplinary practices.
Reflecting on an Urban Art Collection to Stimulate Research Thinking View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Linda Robson
Folkestone, Kent, has the largest urban outdoor exhibition of contemporary art in the United Kingdom. This permanent exhibition shows the work of 47 contemporary artists whose work is displayed throughout the town, with many pieces having been created for the specific site in which they are located. This paper provides a tour of and commentary on several of the artworks within the collection at Folkestone and how they supported the author’s reflective thinking during her doctoral research studies. It considers the artists stated intentions of each work discussed, alongside the author’s personal reflections and interpretations, together with linkages to her research into experiences of part-time undergraduates at a distance learning university.
Making Visible the Invisible: How Combining Autoethnography with Visual Art Practice Unearthed More than I Imagined View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Suzanne Crowley
This paper is based on an article to be published in the 2022 Summer edition of Arts Research International (ARi). The subject matter arose out of my PhD study Entanglement Matters where I combined autoethnographic accounting with visual arts practice. In the PhD study I set out to explore geometry through visual art practice for ways to contribute to interdisciplinary knowledge, with geometry acting as a bridge between art and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Visual arts practices favours non-linear exploration in research, whilst autoethnography offers self-reflection. I discovered that writing an autoethnographic account for an artwork has the potential to generate a wealth of data, some of which is visible, some of which is not. The invisible data becomes available only when the artist speaks to/writes about the artwork. If some content/context of a visual artwork is only visible through background information provided by the art maker, this discovery troubles another issue concerning our notions of what a good visual artwork is. Finally, I test this article’s autoethnographic authenticity against Adam’s four characteristics of autoethnography.
Featured The Anti-Colonial Conservatory: Arts Pedagogies and Activism View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Christopher J. Smith
Models of the North American university music program emerge from an inherited pedagogical philosophy which emphasizes canonic works, heroized individuals, and hierarchized assessment. These result in a hegemonic system by which valuations of context, history, and meaning are in turn contaminated. Interrogating the university music program’s hierarchical structures—including those which govern ensembles—is a necessary step toward their dismantling. Explicitly anti-colonial strategies might help to change this injustice. Recognizing that vernacular arts’ procedural expectations are at odds with the neoliberal university’s incrementalized metrics of progress and assessment, curricular design might, by “trusting a tradition”— and its indigenous pedagogies—develop a shared, anti-hierarchical terrain. We need an ensemble vision which breaks down dichotomies between “legitimate” versus “illegitimate” instruments, genres, and experiential practices. Enhancing inclusion for previously silenced voices, we would begin by seeking to dismantle canons: not just their specific content, but the very idea that command of a “canon of great works” is itself a necessary ideal. We would instead empower and evaluate artists’ command of processes, and recast our assessment tools to prioritize musicians’ capacity to operate within diverse and shifting situations. We need an aesthetic of skill which seeks a “situational virtuosity,” whose artistry lies, not in technical facility or the chimera of Eurocentric “expression,” but in adaptability, command of technical processes, communicative sensitivity, and a willingness to serve specific situations and communities rather than received canons. Drawing upon existing models in Finland, the UK, Ireland, and Argentina, this essay maps a way forward.
Technology Specialists: Deadpan Delivery to Engaging Eloquence View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Judith Babnich
Technical specialists often make ideas and concepts too intellectual for lay audiences. They tend not to be able to express their thoughts in a simple coherent way. Individuals will continue to find difficult advancing through, for example, the corporate ranks without possessing communication skills that are not only informative, but engaging as well. This study explores how tutoring these specialists with basic theatre delivery techniques may significantly improve a deadpan delivery to one that is,if not eloquent, certainly more engaging.
