Site/Sight/Insight: Becoming a Socioecological Learner Through Collaborative Artmaking Practices

Abstract

This chapter explores collaborative arts practices as critical and creative vehicles for assembling a figure of the socioecological learner. We focus on developing the sensorial and affective dimensions of learning through aesthetic engagements with place, drawing on Deleuzian concepts of the "larval subject", "carte", and "rhizome". In doing so, we also forge connections with contemporary life sciences that reveal the permeability and plasticity of learning processes through dynamic interactions within developmental eco-systems. These conceptual and empirical resources inform our posthumanist methodological approach to collaborative arts practices, which we describe in terms of a c/a/r/tography. Through the collaborative production of "site/sight-specific" images and poetic texts, we seek to produce a generative and visually critical exposé, which locates the emergence of the socioecological learner within a "biosocial ecology of sensation". This opens up a field of potentials for sensing, thinking, feeling, and learning through collective aesthetic engagements with more than human worlds. OrientationIn this chapter, we seek to explore and share site/sight-specific collaborative artmaking as a collective medium for socioecological learning. There are many ways to see and to know, and thus the term site/sight alludes to an assemblage of place, milieu and 'seeing', in ways that transcend the privileging of the visual. Whilst the visual nature of this chapter is acknowledged, sight and seeing may also be philosophically positioned, as we have also accomplished herein. In doing so, we engage a methodology of c/a/r/tography, which enables us to draw together approaches from a/r/tography, Deleuzoguattarian mapping, and affective and sensational pedagogies (Ellsworth & Kruse, 2010;Massumi, 2002). This chapter also draws on recent findings from the fields of biology and ecology, which highlight the role of affect and sensation in modulating learning processes through dynamic interactions within developmental eco-systems (Frost, 2016;Protevi, 2013). Inspired by postgenomic conceptions of ecological milieus in which epigenetic material is inherited and exchanged across species (Meloni, 2015), we draw on recent developments in biosocial research to trouble persistent notions of the learner as a bounded individual subject (de Freitas, 2018). By thinking and working through posthumanist concepts, images and poetics, we aim to render a figure of the socioecological learner as a "larval subject" that emerges through affective and sensorial engagements with the more

Propositional A/r/tography: An Analytical Protocol

“…The lines of flight and becomings described in this article draw from significant scholarly work with and through a/r/ tography, collaborative artmaking, and critical walking and mapping practices in process with Whiteheadian speculative philosophy and propositional thinking with enabling constraints. Most relevant to this article is the lineage of thinking and practicing around c/a/r/tography (Lasczik Cutcher, 2018;Lasczik Cutcher & Irwin, 2017Rousell et al, 2020), peripatetic inquiry (Lasczik Cutcher & Irwin, 2018), and walkography (Lasczik Cutcher, 2017;Lasczik et al, 2020). These approaches coalesce in the work of our project, entitled Walking A/r/tography.…”

“…The discussion to follow will therefore examine the genealogy of thought and practice that has led the authors to the design of an analytical protocol that conceptualizes Whiteheadian propositional thinking (Whitehead, 1978), aligned with the renderings of a/r/tography (Springgay et al, 2005). The protocol, much like the "larval subject" (Deleuze, 1994;Rousell, et al, 2020), emerged from this genealogy, peaking in the data creation practices and fieldwork of one of our most recent projects. Mapping A/r/tography: Transnational storytelling across historical and cultural routes of significance 1 is an international project with sites in Canada, The United States, Spain, Japan, China, and Australia, and is led by seminal a/r/tography scholar, Rita L. Irwin from The University of British Columbia.…”

“…Framed on the Australian site as the Walking A/r/tography project, the inquiry mapped ancient routes of significance in the world heritage listed Gondwana Rainforest site in Southeast Queensland, Australia, in a participatory study with children and young people. The project explored critical, c/a/r/tographic mapping practices (Lasczik & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2022;Lasczik Cutcher & Irwin, 2017; underpinned by the theoretical positioning of Whiteheadian propositional thinking and doing (Whitehead, 1978), enabling constraints (Manning & Massumi, 2014) and Deleuzian concepts of the rhizome, the carte, affect, and sensation (Deleuze, 1994;Rousell, et al, 2020). As a result of the c/a/r/tographic fieldwork, an abundant body of visual, literary, ecological, and sonic artworks was produced by the children and young people on site and later in the art studio of each participating school 2 over the course of 12 weeks.…”

“…The slash is a forward slash, to signify the moving forward of equally coexisting ideas (Irwin, 2003). These identities are not siloed; rather the interstitial and liminal spaces in and between them, and more recently between the human and more-than-human (Rousell et al, 2020) are also implicated. A/r/tography also dwells with the contiguities of the art and the graphy, between art and text (Springgay et al, 2005).…”

“…Given that much of our work is participatory in nature with children and young people, we have found it extraordinarily generative to engage enabling constraints to provoke creative thinking, exploration, and experimentation. By delimiting aspects such as the site/s for fieldwork and studio work, materials and tools, analytical positions, design elements, and tasks through limited choices, creativity and creative experimentation has flourished into highly processual, sequenced socioecological learnings (Rousell et al, 2020).…”