In Between Familiar-Unfamiliar: Research Travel as Arts-Based Research

Artists, researchers and teachers often find their work positioned in-between the familiar and the unfamiliar. The arts linger in-between such familiar-unfamiliar events, objects and places, unfolding new understandings and potentialities by making the familiar strange and the unknown familiar. Through a collaborative arts-based educational research project conducted in Japan, we address the following question: How can artistic practices lend to pedagogical possibilities when we attend to new things in familiar ways, and when we situate familiar things in new ways? Through a combination of a/r/tography and walking method, we engage in a series of walks, conversations and creative practices that explore layers of relationality through research travel. Walking as an arts-based research practice emphasizes the physicality of our nature as an embodied being grounded in movement; “walking is not just what a body does; it is what a body is” (Ingold & Vergunst, 2008, p. 1). Working together from different perspectives troubles a binary understanding of the insider-outsider relationship, focusing instead on the “-“ as a site of a hyphenated positionality. The walking sessions form a relational correspondence with each other that reveal rhythms of our walks, relationships and experiences while we attune ourselves to ways of lingering in-between familiar and unfamiliar places. Through the embodied and metaphorical walking in-between the familiar-unfamiliar, we consider the pedagogical implications of research travel as site of collaborative arts-based inquiry and what further questions they may raise

A/r/tography Attempted to Include Diverse Values: Through “Narrative by three pictures project in Hiroshima”

The five participants in this study walked through Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and its neighborhood and created a narrative based on three photographs using the A/r/tography method. They emphasized the images and thoughts evoked by the walk―encountering people, things, and events̶and autonomously developed themes, purposes, expression media, and description methods. Each participant selected and discussed an arbitrary context from among the multilayered awareness and inherent themes. This study proposed the use of photography as a medium for inquiry in art classes.本研究は，JSPS科研費JP18K13160，JP18H01010，JP18H01007及びSSHRC (890-2017-0006) の助成を受けて実施・公表されました

Never-ending Journey: Living in-between simultaneous realities

This supporting paper provides the chronological background development in relation to my studio practice, as an international student, an Iranian female artist, a newcomer to Canada, a dreamer, and a traveller, who is experiencing living in two cultures simultaneously. This paper contains reflective statements, critical statements, and a visual and written narrative about my journey of living in between places, moments, multiple identity constructions, and mixed language identities. In this paper, I have a thematic approach to each exhibition I installed throughout my two-year MFA program at the Department of Art at University of Calgary. I am a traveller who starts her story by narrating her personal perspective on the spatial changes in her life, displacement of identities and places, and her second language identity as a result of migration. In my research creation process, I constantly raise questions such as: How can I picture the sentiment of wavering between two simultaneous realities? How can I express the consequences of being ‘present’ in two separate cultures at once? How can I embody the swings in multiple added layers and fragments of my identity and their relation to place? And how can I address the notion of searching for the perception of belonging, while I am undergoing living and being in-between? My endeavour is to contextualize and articulate my creative research in a cohesive and clear way. I ask my reader to walk with me in every phase of this effort and experience part of my journey