Questions of Praxis: Blind Running

Author(s):

Alison Neilson(presenting / submitting)Andrea Inocêncio Rita São Marcos

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

29. Research on Arts Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

29 SES 02 A, Arts-based Research: Challenges and transformation

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-22

15:15-16:45

Room:

W2.06

Chair:

Lara Soares

Contribution

In this interactive session, we will engage the audience in an exploration of the power which maintains norms of academic knowledge in our practices often in contradiction to our professed theories and epistemologies. Using the example of a visual essay, “Blind running: 25 pictures per page”, which we co-authored with 7 others, we will explore the challenges of using art as a way of knowing as well as other disruptions to taking a well-lit path.

My mind races in the darkness:

Tell me what it means…tell me… tell me… tell me

“Shut up” my feet cry, “you have had centuries of opportunity to make use of words, palavras, mots… centuries of text authority – text which condemned you to be enslaved, which classified your hunger as lesser than his, than hers; your children, your wings, your waters, your dreams… expendable.”

Hmm, sigh (breath), ah, now room to remember the passion of words leading to this place of searching for understandings, to make space for all sensory perceptions, reasons, intuitions, inspirations and wisdoms. Words that call me to live and be just.

What if we try to work together through the living things and experiences which our words describe? Whose language and authority would determine the meaning of an image I see? What is the meaning of the scent of a lemon thrown between you and I?

You are angry. I am confused.

What is the scent/sense of the lemon thrown?

Bright fragrance sparkles in my nose, knowing the nonsense – Sisyphus losing grip of isms as he reaches the top, now pushing postcolonialism and intersectionality. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest?

The words that run, run, run…

away from leaving languages and cultures behind, missing the life shared when you dance with you, the love seen, the hunger felt, the perceptions perceived.

Let´s try putting on a blindfold and stop looking for words... just for a moment… It is disorienting not knowing where are the dangers. Yet perhaps also exhilarating to run with a new freedom, one full of risks. Will you have my back?

Method

This was a collective wild and uncontrolled exploration of embodied imagining. It is the exploitation of sensitive thought and symbolic thinking, understanding phenomena and the revealing of hidden forces behind a society of the spectacle (Debord 2000 [1970]). In trying to create a moment of a reborn university of learning which supports such holism, we followed Cherry (2005) who introduces the idea of juicy opportunities to trust the koan, and be vulnerable to looking stupid and feeling inadequate.

Expected Outcomes

The form of “text” as image, photo or other creative outcome can challenge, and help to “hear the world and to make sure that it can speak back … to render the world problematic by elaborating questions” (Thrift, 2008, p. 18). This short work is based on exploring a performative turning moment in social sciences (Roberts, 2008), with the body as communicative in everyday activities, how we relate with others as part of the research or audience and provide evocations of memory. While we do not see our work as a mistake, we acknowledge the risk, but also the necessity of publicly performing mistakes, as Patti Smith (2016) recently discovered when she sang at the for the Nobel Prize Awards ceremony and learned of the importance of her “error” as transformative to the audience. The truer nature of her duty transcended short-sighted understanding of excellence; achievements recognized as the highest in excellence were built on struggle and multiple mistakes and failures.

References

Cavanagh, C. (2006). The strawberry tasted so good: The Trickster practices of activist art in Deborah Barndt (ed.)Wild fire: Art as activism. Toronto: Sumach Press. Cherry, N. L. (2005). Preparing for practice in the age of complexity. Higher Education Research & Development, 24(4), 309–320. Debord, G. (2000 [1970]). Society of the spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red. Lewis, T. E., & Kahn, R. (2010). Education out of bounds: Reimagining cultural studies for a posthuman age. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Roberts, B. (2008). Performative social science: A consideration of skills, purpose and context. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 9(2), art 58.TI4Nzg4OAS2 Smith, P. (2016). How does it feel. New Yorker Magazine, online edition December 14, 2016 http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/patti-smith-on-singing-at-bob-dylans-nobel-prize-ceremony?mbid=nl_TNY+Template+-+With+Photo+%28118%29&CNDID=46721304&spMailingID=10052739&spUserID=MTcyNjEzODI3OTQ3S0&spJobID=1061287888&spReportId=MTA2M Thrift, N. (2008). Non-representational theory. Space, politics affect. London & New York: Routledge.

Author Information

Alison Neilson (presenting / submitting)

University of Coimbra, Portugal

Andrea Inocêncio

independent artist, Portugal

Rita São Marcos