During this presentation I will describe a collective research project with teachers in which I participate as the main researcher. The focus of the presentation will be to show the methodological experiences we had, particularly in relation to the production of collective art-based narrative testimonios (through collage and text). I will also examine some data produced through these methods and explore some theoretical/methodological concepts that we argue might be relevant for art-based and social justice oriented educational research.

The main objective of the project was to examine experiences and affective repertoires of teachers in relation to practices and interactions with materials and school spaces, both the relations that reproduce exclusions (racist, sexist, ableist, adultist, etc.) and those that challenge homogeneity by creating new literacies to imagine fairer educational relationships. This topic was explicitly presented to the teachers from a posthuman perspective in which we focused on registering experiences of relational becomings between subjects and school materials and spaces. The methodological process to produce this data was also designed to make participants of the laboratory notice the relational production of narrative data and the agency of the materials we used.

The laboratory aimed to; characterize and analyze research production processes in this participatory collective self-study through art-based narratives/testimonios, analyze teachers’ experiences in relation to school materials and spaces that reproduce sexist, racist, homophobic, classist, ageist, etc. exclusions, analyze the production of spatial and material literacies in the teachers’ narratives, and analyze the process of production of individual and collective subjectivities in relation to the experiences as teachers in this participatory and collaborative research space.

Educational researchers from different theoretical perspectives have argued that school spaces, materialities and its affective force need to be assessed and examined in relation to the production of subjectivities, exclusions, and lines of flight (Schmidt, 2015; Wolfe, 2017; Youdell & Armstrong, 2011). This collective laboratory proposes to do this through art-based narrative/testimonios research connecting this field of study with qualitative studies in education which explore exclusion in schools through the narrative experiences of teachers (Conrado Murillo & Henao Cardona, 2020; Slovin, 2020).

I modeled this research project on other experiences which explore educational issues through narrative and/or art-based methods from a posthuman and new materialisms perspective (Aberasturi-Apraiz et al., 2020; Sancho Gil & Hernández-Hernández, 2020). I also entangled this literature with studies that have explored human experience from a Latin American testimonial and feminist perspective (Mocholí & González, 2019; Rivas Flores et al., 2020). Through these theoretical and methodological hybridizations, I aimed to develop a nomadic science approach (Braidotti, 2018) through this project. As the posthumanist feminist theorist Rosi Braidotti argues, a project that seeks to destabilize hegemonic relations and becomings in school has to start from a self-exploration of the experiences of those involved and the production of counter-narratives that dispute the apparent "neutrality" of the hegemonic logic. Braidotti proposes carrying out self-studies guided by the following questions: “(…) what kind of subjects are we becoming? What is happening to us? What kind of subject are we being constructed as, being in the process of constructing ourselves, in a field of deterritorializing forces?” (Braidotti, 2018, p. 181). This collective project explored these questions in relation to the production of exclusions and resistance through intra-actions with materials and spaces in schools and our research team.

In this project, data was produced through two different methods, testimonial narratives writing, and collage based testimonial narratives. Testimonies are accounts of experiences related to sociopolitical context. Testimonies can be defined as collectively telling and listening to stories related to some structural oppression to create change centered on the marginalized (Delagado Bernal, Burciaga & Carmona, 2012, p.364). Those affected are who name the oppression and position themselves as conscious survivors. Testimonies represent the voices of many who have experienced similar struggles and are intended to be heard or read collectively (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga & Carmona, 2012). It has the objective of raising awareness and motivating listeners to fight against injustice. Testimonies can provide essential information about how marginalized people assess their position and the social structures that affect them. Art-based research questions traditional methodologies that seek to make reality “speak”, and uses artistic media to provoke phenomena and experiences (Hernández, 2008, p. 87). As Cahnmann-Taylor & Siegesmund (2008) argues, each research methodology is a way of seeing and not seeing (p.4), and arts-based research is dedicated to engaging with the “geographies of human experience that were hidden under layers of objectivism and question what can be researched” (Hernández, 2008, p. 89). Arts-based research also addresses human experience as embodied. It helps research storytelling as a whole-body process in which theorizing and reconstruction of memories is mediated not only by the mind but also affects and the body (Hernández, 2008, p.110). Authors argue that the arts help in the processes of reinterpretation of remembered experiences and the lived context of people in a transformative way (Hernández, 2008, p.111). These methods were operationalized in two different activities in which all the members of the laboratory participated: (1) Individual work: the members of the project answered questions in written format and through collage format. In total, each participant produced three written texts and two collage based narratives. As the main researcher I also performed these tasks. (2) Collective work: the participants of the laboratory regularly meet 14 times. During these meetings we discussed relevant bibliography, participated in art techniques workshops, wrote together, collaged together, shared our narratives, and commented each other’s work. These meetings were recorder and transcribed, and all the shared artwork -both written and collage based was photographed and saved.

In our laboratory we have found three theoretical/methodological concepts that can be productive in the field of art-based educational research. One is the concept of becoming. This means “a non-essentialistic understanding of subjects as in process and connected up to networks of human and nonhuman elements, yet simultaneously situated and accountable.” (Braidotti, 2018, p.179). We focused on becomings related to matter both in our stories and the process of data production. This allowed us to identify possibilities of more just relations even in times of reterritorialization forces. Second, the concept of agency of matter and its temporality (Hickey-Moody, 2020). Art-based research allowed us to explore how "(...) matter is consistently embodied and embedded within other matter through intra-actions, (…) never static (...) [and] (…) in the process of becoming rather than pre-existing." (Leonard, 2020, p.4). We examined the agency and temporality of matter and spaces in the production of our subjectivities and vice versa both in the past and the time of the project. We explored traditionally hegemonic spaces in schools and collage materials like magazine. We found that actively noticing these agencies allowed us to create new cartographies of the conditions of bondage and possible lines of flight. Third, the concept of vulnerability. The exercise of vulnerability does not mean that "anything personal goes" but that "(…) the exposure of the self who is also a spectator has to take us somewhere we couldn't otherwise get." (Behar, 1997, p.14). This relates to Braidotti’s argument of about the relevance of human subjectivity and counternarratives even in posthuman times in the field of education. It allows to produce nomadic science both rooted in empirical data and social justice issues. In this presentation I argue that these theoretical/methodological concepts are relevant to produce art-based research in education with a social justice orientation.

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