‘Rhizome’

-poem on leaves is “TO THINK…” by Robert Creely (from Black Mountain Poems: An Anthology)

“It is an interstitial space, open and vulnerable where meanings and understandings are interrogated and ruptured.”

(Coleman, 2017)

A brief overview of A/r/tography in my words…

A/r/tography is an educational research methodology that makes it possible to access, explore and analyse the intangible aspects of the human experience, the spaces in between. It is a living inquiry as that’s what humans are; living, evolving, everchanging in and through every moment and experience. The facts, figures and exactness of data from other research methodologies leaves these subleties out. A/r/tography is based on tenants, not rigid rules, rather concepts to consider as the inquiry and exploration evolves. It is qualitative not quantitive, rhizomatic, not left to right. Just as life, the human experience and nature is not left to right. Left to right is not natural, although it has been ingrained in so many of us to feel that way. It is society imposed and so are the many aspects of education that need to change. A/r/tographic research is aimed to disrupt, make change, question and challenge these ideologies. A/r/tography will make it possible to progress into the next paradigm of education.

‘Disrupt’

song - (Anarchy, by Various Artists, 2022)

(Artist) (Researcher) (teacher) [writer]

I wish that I could transform this section of the digital space into a spider’s web in the process of creation. The spider threading, weaving and flying into, through and between the renderings, pausing longer at some and bypassing others, depending on the silky masterpiece it is creating. They all make up the luminosity of its web at some point, but the spider uses only those that resonate with this particular creation. It is not forced or bound by any of them.

Intro…

The following page is a rhizomatic exploration of what it means to be an A/r/tographer. This exploration is made up of reflections, artworks and photographs created by me and snippets of literature from A/r/tographers and artists that all combine to form the meaning that makes up my definition of A/r/tography. I have chosen this format as I feel it is impossible to define A/r/tography from left-to-right only, just as it is impossible to conduct A/r/tographic research in this way. The human experience is not left to right, it is an intricate entaglement of emotion, cognition, sensory experience and meaning.

Contiguity

(Tenant 1)

‘The / Spaces / in / Between’

Metaphor/Metonymy

(Tenant 4)

“A/r/tographers are living their practice, representing their understandings, and questioning their positions, as they integrate knowing, doing and making through aesthetic experiences that convey meaning rather than facts.“

(Silverman, 2000, as cited by Irwin, 2017, p.29)

“Those living in the borderlands of a/r/t recognise the vitality of living in an in-between space. They recognise that art, research and teaching are not done, but lived.”

(Irwin, 2017, p.29)

The Tenants

(or renderings)

Living Inquiry

(Tenant 2)

Openings

(Tenant 3)

“Through metaphors and metonymic relationships, we make things sensible—that is, accessible to the senses.”

(Springaay et al., 2005, p. 906)

Reverberations

(Tenant 5)

“Excess deals with the monstrous, the leftover, and the unseen or the magnificent and sublime. Excess is generative; it is an activity that produces new and different ways of viewing the world and the philosophical nature of being.”

(Lasczik et al., 2022, p. 3)

Excess

(Tenant 6)

“These holes are not empty spaces needing to be filled. They are located in space and time, allowing artist/researcher/teachers to move within the research text, penetrate deeply, and shift the boundaries of perspective…

…Threading together the exchange between A/r/tographer and viewer/reader, the image/text becomes an active space, echoing and reverberating in communion.”

(Springaay et al., 2005, p. 906)

‘The Space Between the Ground and the Clouds’

“Reverberations also excite possible slippages of meaning, where the act of returning is not mirrored but a performance where each reverberation resists and pushes forward toward new understandings.”

(Springaay et al., 2005, p. 907)

“Reverberations draws attention to the resonances, aftershocks, and echoes that shift meaning, resonating through the art making/ researching/ teaching.”

(Springaay et al., 2005, as cited by Lasczik et al., 2022, p. 3)

“Excess is created when control and regulation disappear and we grapple with what lies outside the acceptable.”

(Springaay & Irwin, 2008, p. 174 as cited by Lasczik et al., 2022, p. 3).

(Yilmazli et al., 2022, p. 367)

Accessing the intangible and ineffable via metaphor

(Irwin, 2017, p. 36)

(Irwin, 2004, p.31, as cited in Chung, 2021, p. 185)

all images/artworks on this website are my own