Vulnerable Spaces of Coproduction: Confronting Predefined Categories through Arts Interventions

Abstract

<jats:p>Collaboration between researchers and artists is often held as particularly promising to enhance cross-cultural understanding. In this article, two researchers and an artist reflect on the potentials, as well as the pitfalls, of art-based interventions in integration of migrants. Through the performing arts youth project Here I Am, we discuss coproduction methodologies. We emphasize the discomfort in confronting the stereotypes inherent in our perspectives and categories. Exploring how various encounters among the researchers, artist, and participants in the performing arts project challenge the prevailing perspectives, we argue that art interventions have the potential to bring knowledge production beyond predefined categories and explanations. This requires moving beyond our comfort zones and entering vulnerable spaces of improvisation, where new understanding and “grammars” can be coproduced. This article shows how the reflections of such spaces alter the research project and the aims of the art intervention, including our understanding of integration.</jats:p>

Everyday Hospitality and Politics

“…Art-and culture-based initiatives are seen to hold a special potential for cross-cultural exchange and understanding (Askins & Pain 2011;Aure, Førde & Liabø 2020). Arts and culture, such as theatre, music and dance, offer spaces for interaction where pre-established categories can be put aside.…”

“…We take turns to play each of the two characters. This improvisational switching of roles, typical of these activities, encourages the destabilization of prevailing lines of division (Aure, Førde & Liabø 2020).…”

Living With Difference – Interventions for Just Cities

“…The articles learn from and engage in such initiatives and report the results of these studies, to generate new knowledge. This approach requires a constant questioning of concepts and theories (Aure, Førde & Liabø 2020) and forces the research teams to 'stay with the trouble' (Harraway 1988) and the messy spaces (Law 2004) and uncertainties new initiatives and new approaches may include. Analysing such 'micro-politics' of social interaction based on bottom-up initiatives, on the backdrop of public policy and planning, points to new directions and practices through grassroots bridging (Harris & Young 2009).…”

In the groove and in the moment: epistemology and ethics in ethnography with Sudanese musician revolutionaries

“…According to proponents, they offer access to experiential and emotional knowledges which conventional approaches cannot supply (Degarrod, 2013; Loaiza, 2016; Mullett, 2008; Vacchelli, 2018). Others argue that they level power imbalances between the researcher and research populations and can even actively empower participants (Aure et al, 2020; Ugolotti, 2020; Vacchelli, 2018; Furman et al, 2019; Mullett, 2008). Critics, on the other hand, note that collaborative creative methods have a reputation for producing ‘unethical, sloppy and self-indulgent’ research (Kara, 2015: 33).…”

“…This study borrowed methods from performance-based ethnomusicology (Baily, 2008; Feld, 1984; Fuhr, 2011; Small, 1998; Turino, 2008) and sound-based participatory research (Aure et al, 2020; Cambria, 2018; Ugolotti, 2020). Research materials included music-making hardware; a guitar, two microphones and stands, a mixing desk, monitor speakers and headphones.…”