A/r/Tography

A/r/tography is a form of practice-based research that is steeped in the practices of artists, researchers, and educators. Using the understanding of currere (curriculum as verb instead of a noun) as a basis for this work, the practices are viewed as active, contextually situated, and creative while recognizing that subjectivity transforms objectivity. This entry describes a/r/tography as a research methodology and as a process of currere that leads to deep learning.

A/r/tography as a research methodology is reflective, reflexive, recursive, and responsive. Bringing the arts and graphy (writing text) together, a/r/tography also performs itself by persisting in using forward slashes to represent folds between the broadly conceived identities of artist, researcher, and teacher (educator/learner). These folds are contiguous representations of identities colliding, merging, and separating as the dynamics of a situation are revealed. Although action research has a long and extensive history in education, there is less of a history in the art world. Having said this, artistic processes are reminiscent of action research enacted as living inquiry. Beginning as an action research approach, a/r/t-ography pursues ongoing engagements through living inquirythat is, continuously asking questions, enacting interventions, revising questions, and analyzing collected data, in repeated cycles. While practicing their art forms and their pedagogy, a/r/tographers are committed to knowledge creation that is rhizomatic in nature, complex in its entirety, and enhanced with aesthetic understandings. The creative practices of dancers, musicians, performers, visual artists, and other artists becomes a basis for engaging and critiquing what is learned or created. Rather than seeking to answer an initial set of research questions, a/r/t-ographers allow research questions to evolve as they simultaneously and continuously theorize what they are learning. A/r/tographers are committed to investigating that which is taken for granted while examining that which appears obvious. Pursuing these practices allows for a disposition of openness, creativity, and critical reflection. It is also based on the premise that a/r/tographers do not separate theory, practice, and making, preferring to use all three ways of knowing in complementary or even contradictory ways.

Like arts-based educational research, a/r/tography is concerned with possibilities rather than probabilities. Therefore, understanding how to create the conditions for investigating or examining practices is essential. A/r/tography employs all forms of qualitative research data collection (interviews, observations, document collection, field diaries, etc.), yet it also involves the processes of artistic engagement (creating art forms in response or collaboration, or as evocation or provocation). Using data from a range of vantage points, knowledge is created in a never-ending state of becoming. Thus, a/r/tographers are committed to their living inquiry in and through time, regardless of the current research questions.

Theoretically, a/r/tography involves individuals working in a community of inquiry. Here, four commitments to a/r/tographic communities have been described. The commitments describe an a/r/tographic community of practice as a community of inquirers working as artists, researchers, and pedagogues committed to personal engagement within a community of belonging that troubles and addresses difference. Listing the commitments embedded in this statement, we see four commitments: (1) a commitment to a way of being in the world; (2) a commitment to inquiry; (3) a commitment to negotiating personal engagement within a community of belonging; and (4) a commitment to creating practices that trouble and address difference.

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