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

Authors

  • Ken Morimoto The University of British Columbia
  • Marzieh Mosavarzadeh The University of British Columbia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-4467.40532

Keywords:

a/r/tography, arts-based educational research, walking method, research travel

Abstract

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.

Author Biographies

Ken Morimoto, The University of British Columbia

Ken Morimoto is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia. His research interests include a/r/tography, arts education, and phenomenology.

Marzieh Mosavarzadeh, The University of British Columbia

Marzieh Mosavarzadeh is a Ph.D. student of Art Education at the University of British Columbia. As an artist, researcher, and teacher, she explores walking practice as an art of inquiry, an aesthetic experience, and as a way of being in and inhabiting the world.

Downloads

Published

27-06-2020

How to Cite

Morimoto, K., & Mosavarzadeh, M. (2020). In Between Familiar-Unfamiliar: Research Travel as Arts-Based Research. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 18(1), 33–34. https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-4467.40532

Issue

Section

Curricular and Pedagogical Provocations