Session 15

Design and arts-based research has received much attention in the last years as it has extended research possibilities to more intuitive and material-centered epistemology. It is also able to disrupt the foundations of hegemonic forms of knowledge production, resulting in a more inclusive, intersubjective and social construction. Inherently, it is cross-disciplinary and ground-based in such a way that it encourages citizen science as a solving problem strategy, as well as visual literacy as a way to examine and analyze space. For this session, we propose to address methodological dilemmas such as cross-disciplinary communication and relation-building, deconstruction of worldviews, the role of uncertainty in the implementation of participatory and action research methods centered on the process and not necessarily the outcome. Some formats of qualitative based research methods to explore are participatory mapping, installations, books and other multi-format products. We welcome all types of experimental papers and case studies, as well as theoretical and methodological perspectives that approach any of these dilemmas.

ABSTRACTS

1.Art and Design Based-Research, Cross-Disciplinary Approaches for Material Knowledge Production

Ilana Boltvinik  (Mexico)

Nora Morales  (Mexico)

Design and arts-based research has received much attention in the last years as it has extended research possibilities to more intuitive and material-centered epistemology. It is also able to disrupt the foundations of hegemonic forms of knowledge production, resulting in a more inclusive, intersubjective and social construction. Inherently, it is cross-disciplinary and ground-based in such a way that it encourages citizen science as a solving problem strategy, as well as visual literacy as a way to examine and analyze space. For this session, we propose to address methodological dilemmas such as cross-disciplinary communication and relation-building, deconstruction of worldviews, the role of uncertainty in the implementation of participatory and action research methods centered on the process and not necessarily the outcome. Some formats of qualitative based research methods to explore are participatory mapping, installations, books and other multi-format products. We welcome all types of experimental papers and case studies, as well as theoretical and methodological perspectives that approach any of these dilemmas.

2.Mapping urban imaginaries. Place and belonging in Windhoek

Stephanie Roland  (RMIT, Australia)

Namibia’s capital, Windhoek, underwent decades of forceful re-organisation and social engineering, embodying political ideologies of racial segregation in the cities’ spatial structure, urban planning, policies, and regulatory bodies. The continuous displacement of non-white populations within the settlement was a tactic deliberately used to unhome and control; exclusion from, and destruction of, meaningful places were tools to undermine any sense of belonging non-white residents felt to the city. While this practice began under German colonial rule, it was systematised and officially racialised under apartheid, under the neutral guise of modernist town planning. Much of this legacy remains embedded not only in the city’s urban landscape, but in the way that this is conceived and reproduced. This paper examines Windhoek residents’ notions of place and belonging, using the embodied ‘multi-sensuality’ of space to understand space as both materially and socially constructed. The paper presents a research methodology combining mental maps, sketches, visual, verbal, and spatially analytical methods, designed to draw out urban imaginaries and elicit rich descriptions of spatial perceptions. It explores mapping as an approach that can lend itself to a personal and imaginary appropriation of place, a polymorphous engagement with urban space that might reveal multiple truths and challenge colonially inherited normative principles and imaginaries of the city. Windhoek’s residents are mostly not native English speakers, and they have a variety of cultural and linguistic affiliations, levels of formal education, and social backgrounds that can inhibit articulation of perceptions. The methodology attempts to deal with the challenges around eliciting spatial perceptions in order to gain a better understanding of the everyday experiences of ordinary Windhoek residents.

3.Mapping Urban Borders: A methodological approach from an “interdesign” perspective to the landscape units in metropolitan cities. The case of Buenos Aires and its agglomeration in Argentina

Mitchell de Sousa (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Nicolás Groppa  (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Analía Fernández  (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Guillermo Tella  (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Susana Toroski  (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Historically, cities, especially those that are still thriving today, have developed on the natural elements that have been their economic engine. In some cases, cities exhaust their initial productive cycles and move on to others that end up relegating the first ones. These in turn cease to be the main environment, the landscape of the productive model, and become urban edges. Other urban edges are formed through infrastructures that precisely seek to connect certain points of the city to a given population but end up excluding others. In the enclosures where the edges physically limit urban spaces, intricate territories are found with diverse identities but with complexities that limit them to those and other spaces. The objective of this work, which has an interdisciplinary research team within the design careers of the University of Buenos Aires, is to present the progress of our research in perceptual mapping methodologies for the analysis of urban edges by studying what we call landscape units in order to detect territories at smaller scales for the generation of planning units, and thus analyze the connections that exist between them, to enhance the possibilities of urban interventions in small areas of the territory without interfering with the whole network of the city. In the course of the last two UBACYT projects, one completed and the other in progress, we have worked on crafting the methodology of analysis, case studies, and intervention proposals. The methodology consists of the analysis of the landscape units in the territory, followed by an ethnographic and semi-structured approach with the actors living in the territory. Perceptual maps, inspired by Kevin Lynch’s model, but with original variables that contrast with our object of research, are made to identify these urban spaces.

4.The art of Kent Monkman and the fluidity of difference: A methodological proposition

Renate Dohmen  (Open University, UK)

Discussions about pluriversal epistemologies and questions of methodology are central to the decolonial project and address the fraught relationship between research, the academy and indigenous knowledges. Centuries of oppression, and exploitative, monocultural and arrogant notions of knowledge production have belittled indigenous peoples, turning them into objects of study while extracting and appropriating their knowledges for monetary and other gain. Decolonial approaches seek to break this pattern and proclaim a new dynamic that references indigenous epistemologies as a source and sign of greater inclusiveness. Yet as tomes are written, careers are built, book series are inaugurated and professorships at top-ranking American universities are created, and while undoubtedly important insights have been gained, one can but wonder what has changed as the decolonial turn has become a new attribution de rigeur. This leads to the further, and as I would like to argue, centrally important question concerning the extent to which the modus operandi of the decolonial project and the manner of its referencing of indigeneity echoes the colonial logic of extractivism, despite purported aims and best intentions. Or, asked differently, can there be a decolonial logic of difference without a shift in method? In response to this question I would like to suggest that arts-based methodologies have an important contribution to make to the decolonisation of the decolonial project. More specifically, I want to propose that the work of the Cree artist Kent Monkman defies the pervasive grooves of a coloniality of method, and not only deconstructs worldviews but generates new ones by means of a creative re-envisioning and acts of re-existence. His work offers, as will be explored, a fluid, third-way between the binaries that constitute coloniality to which, as I propose, the project of decoloniality can but remain tethered unless it is unmoored from its prevalent methodological habitus; a possibility that I argue is opened up in Monkman’s work.

5.Alternatives in the creation of art within an academic perspective: smoke as an in-between space

Darío Meléndez  (University of Veracruz, Mexico)

Yosi Anaya  (University of Veracruz, Mexico)

Sergio Domínguez  (University of Veracruz, Mexico)

Xavier Cózar  (University of Veracruz, Mexico)

Our academic working group is comprised of four members in different art disciplines. How to synthesize a project between graphic design, printmaking, drawing and textiles? We have opted for a hybrid territory, which we denominate Alternatives in Art, where each one of us can express his own contribution. While this can be a fertile ground for reinvention, it nonetheless has its limitations as each one is tied to his own discipline and often may not push those boundaries to combine with divergent proposals. This presentation explores the nuances of collective work in order to carry out a collaborative project in which the boundaries of the various disciplines are crossed on the basis of a common axis: the ephemeral materiality of smoke. We will approach individual and collective pieces based on fumage, a procedure little explored in contemporary art due to its ephemeral qualities, but which precisely places tension on the relations between objectuality and its absence, as it fixes an image based on a very subtle material that can hardly be stabilized. It is precisely in this intermediate state, material and symbolic, that we seek to situate in such a fragile matter. With the aim of broadening the original practices and ideas of the authors, this paper presents four collective pieces in which each of the participants takes on the work of another colleague as his own. Through erasures and rewritings, a situated and intersubjective swallowing and absorption is carried out. The concept of ephemeral materiality is thus assumed as an axis based on how it functions in the work of the collaborators.

6.A more inclusive art market by mistake, the social relevance of fluid art to global art material market

Pablo Angel Lugo  (Glocal Art markets Consultants Ltd, United Kingdom)

The hashtags #Fluidart, #fluidartwork #fluidartist are together more than 4.6 million posts on Instagram, the top ten videos on YouTube add more than 108.5 million views all those videos were upload in the last year, the oldest video tutorial on YouTube is from 2017. In the past five years we can see a big rise on the social media about the artistic technic known as fluid art. Technically this is a very easy way to paint, the use of colours and densities is the basic thing to understand. Practically this represents a lot of effort, practice and money to get the proper skills to manage and understand the accident that represent this practice. Moreover, the relevance of this practice is that it represents a new way to paint, it is specially practical and it gets a low room for mistakes, that has brought a lot of people to this practice, and you can see the different levels of practice and skills of the artists. This is exactly the reason why is very popular these days. The changes into the markets that this practice has bring is huge, the development of new materials by different art material suppliers, has been taken by the most competitive artistic brands, and the profits are raising every year. That is one reason about how companies are investing in some research and taking information from artists to improve and develop new products. This is quite important because this “amateur” markets looks to be bigger that the fine arts market. We will present some data to support this statement.