This is a personal inquiry into what I am coming to know of using arts based methods as research. I am recognising the qualities of relational presence, the value of embodied experiencing and multimodal art making and how they support this emergent inquiry. This year’s work has seen me generate a large amount of data, which I now need to reduce by identifying resonant key aspects. From there I can isolate a single thread of interest and draw out an access point. A sense of overwhelm looms as to how I might best begin funneling this mass of content into an accessible starting point.

Gordon, R. (2018) speaks to this;

“Multiplicity and proliferation 

Are heavy

Words to digest

How many birds

Is too many

Birds in the nest?” (p.203) 

This resonates directly to my experience, reflexively I respond;

How many hands 

would one person need 

to hold

everything 

there is, to be held?

More than two,

I would say

Once both hands were full

could I carry new knowings

in my mouth?,

between my teeth.

I would not dare speak a word 

for fear of them coming loose

So now I ask

“how to hold more”

I check my body

for possible storage solutions

rearrange organs to fit

I’ve heard you can live 

with just one kidney,

one lung

Seems I’m full

Peering,

over teetering stacks of data 

this multiplicity of conceptual possibilities 

sees me trip my own traps

misplace my space

and lose 

once thought important pieces 

under rubble 

Now I wonder 

how to hold less

If letting go of this weight 

will make me so light

that I expand into trust  

that maybe

it could hold me. 

A fundamental part of this data management process is the decision making; being in control of what to include and what to exclude is a privilege that will shape the outcome of my personal meaning making. Choice is a freedom underpinned by personal power; with that comes responsibility. Ongoingly I am identifying and naming my values as part of this process, today I will say that I value creativity, quality of presence, connection (to self and to others) through deep embodied listening and patience.

Allowing myself a few moments of stillness, I close my eyes and the heat of my eyes softens, a kind of clarity arrives and there is a felt sense of connection to my body and a trust that I have the capacity to hold what is important in this content. Bracketing out distractions I can use this meditative reflection as a way in, that I might use the stillness to distill this bubbling pot down to the oil, to the essence of that which I seek. Stillness is my access point, now I will enter into a co-inquiry with my companion, and we will learn alongside each other.

Stillness To Shedding 

We begin with a few minutes shared quietly in stillness, two bodies breathing in mutual vulnerability, this feels like self care, a good place to start an inquiry. My senses wake and I notice the birds outside my studio, I feel my heart rate slowing and I am aware of the muscles in my back as they hold my bones here in place. 

With eyes closed, I see vivid image arrives. A woman is standing wearing a big white paper dress, layers of papery ruffles covered in words, as she struggles to read the notes on her oversized dress she moves awkwardly. I identify with her, in that moment I am her, and I want to take the dress off. We open our eyes and I tell my co-inquirer about this vision, standing up from my seat I begin enacting removal of the dress by brushing my arms, I explain how I feel the need to get the dress off of my body “I am shedding” I explain, my co-inquirer nods. I feel held and understood, it is safe to proceed with this action. My movements expand into flicking, tapping and wiping, I move up and down my body as this rhythmic and repetitive action awakens my skin. My co-inquirer joins me by mirroring my actions, watching her I feel heard, the work of shedding is being shared, I am encouraged by this and my story is being validated. My critical mind interrupts the process, questioning what this is all about and letting me know that I probably look unusual. I become aware of how this thought travels through my body, 

translating itself to a physical sensation and influencing my movements directly. Slowing down, I notice I am loosing the joy I was experiencing amidst the flow of an embodied action. This is a direct response to my critical self talk. Consciously I choose to bracket out these unhelpful thoughts and I soften into my breath, reconnecting with the pace of the movement.          

I am reminded of my experiences in butoh where we use the possible body or available body as one that remains open and receptive to internal or external messaging and stimulus. Entering embodiment through repetition and engagement in rhythmic movement to reach an automated trance-like state of responsive embodied presence.

The Scroll/Data Processing

After a clustering session of keywords, I decide to attend specifically to a cluster titled Patterns In Action, furthering the inquiry by forming a multimodal response. I take a big old carbon scroll that has sat unused in my studio for years, I ask my son to loan his calligraphy pen I begin documenting what has come up so far.

The scroll soon becomes a regular part of my data processing method and a creative practise, physically dominating the studio workspace for weeks. Permanently rolled out across the floor; I work everyday scribing from my knees and elbows from a little mat alongside the paper, sometimes for hours. I am interacting physically with this content creation; a different approach to sitting at my desk typing text onto a screen. 

Hand writing requires a different quality of attention, working at a slower pace yet feeling more productive, more focussed and less distracted. Drawing from and responding to journals and readings I am recording observations as I experience them. This has become a way of processing what I am coming to know. Through mapping, clustering, reducing and expanding, the scroll becomes the core process of this inquiry. Each mark I make is permanent, a shape formed by my hand, an extension of my body connecting and communicating something with another body.

Moments of presence see the letters as symbols of sounds, sounds that aspire to be words, and words representing ideas. The writing down is like an unfolding, by printing with my hands the messaging runs through me and out to land here on the scroll, sometimes using language sometimes not. There are unexpected clots, blobs and scratches. I play with these variations and the more I pay attention, the more I can choose what kind of marks I want to make.

Like any regular practise I begin to notice details; how I hold the pen, how far I dip into the ink pot and how much the little well at the end of the nib can hold. I pay attention to the first point of interaction between the tip of the nib and the paper, how I angle it and place it making that initial mark on the page. At this stage I am playing, I have little control, and how the ink lands is largely unpredictable. 

As the metal nib draws across the paper it carries a sound and is made at a pace. When my stream of thought flows in tune along with the ink flow, we pair up to achieve a smooth rhythmic pattern, there is a sense of cohesive unity between merging bodies. Old ink supplies see inconsistency in the fluid qualities, easily becoming gluggy as it oxidises making the application less controlled, the nib clogging creates marks and sounds that are sporadic, the visual corresponds to the sound. There is an exciting dynamic energy in the lack of control, the unexpected nature of the material suggests a primitive way of communicating, a sense of urgency about the message. Nisha Sajnani states that: 

Improvisation, with its emphasis on risk, responsiveness and relationship, is at the heart of the artistic process and of arts-based research. Researchers who draw upon artistic practise as a medium of knowledge creation and representation require and often rely upon skills that are central to improvisation, such as an openness to uncertainty, an attunement to difference and the aesthetic intelligence necessary to track significance. (Sajnani, N, 2012, p.79)

 The tip of the nib makes a little tapping sound as it hits the bottom of the ink pot, creating a beat to which I move, pushing and dragging ink across the paper. My brain and hands are in sync, this rhythm drives me along, we are moving forward. The size of the paper, the speed at which my thoughts are generated and the rate at which I scribe work together to influence my experience.

I am learning to work with these materials and adapt to their inherent ways. Surrounded by the paper I am immersed in the work, I can see, feel and move it along with my body as it stretches out around me. Pausing when I have come to a point of extending the scroll, like an automatic human machine I pull one end gently and push the roll away to reveal more paper. Laid out before me a cleared path awaits, behind me sits the path I took to arrive here.. 

There is a sense of awareness of where I exist physically in between what has been and what is yet to come, I am able to see both sides clearly at the crossroads of my future and my past, the known and the unknown. 

We move along the floor negotiating the space together. By attending to the paper’s needs, keeping it neatly rolled and clipped it creates a dutiful sense of order.

I find myself indulging in the curious fantasy of being a tenth century scribe, all the things I would hear -personal messages, declarations of love, laws, news of births and deaths. I would be responsible for recording all of society’s announcements, prophecies and secrets.

Writing on the scroll daily has given me purpose, although I am writing words with inherent meaning these shapes are more than the words they represent. This pen is a tool unto itself, it comes with a history, techniques and possibilities. The line can be delicate and suggestive or it can be weighted with confidence, the line is responsive to my condition. I drift in and out of language, an interruption to the conceptual construction, replacing language with marks that speak simultaneously to both knowing and that not yet known. 

By working this scroll from a stream of consciousness I am steadying my thoughts, by giving them a physical form to hold onto I am shaping ideas in an attempt at articulation and connection, I am making the invisible visible. 

I am giving myself permission to learn, trusting that I don’t need to know everything, and accepting that I am in an emergent place of possibility, becoming aware of my capacities.

Asking myself when and how do I thrive? And listening for the answer. Naming my values, setting my boundaries and knowing what pushes me outside of my window of tolerance? There is a sense of satisfaction that comes with knowing when something needs to change, having the means to change it and then witnessing the shift. This is the mutation or the disruption that fosters change. “Without deviation from the norm progress is not possible“ (Zappa.F, 1971)

I have moved from the point of stillness, through sensory overload to a sort of mapping and shaping of content, these points are markers along the path of inquiry. Now I come to interact with the scroll as if it is another body to be met. The marks that cover this paper describe ideas, they are the stimulus speaking to itself about itself and I will adorn myself with them. Arts based research does more than describe and question things, it is active, somatic, performative and is about the doing. Returning to the poem I wrote in response to the weight of data and considering where it sits now, in my body and in this inquiry, the words held new meaning within this emergent shifted context. 

Intersubjectively I respond again, documenting a performative response with a short video.

To embody an idea is to call power to it, to honour it and offer it a life, through my choices, my action, my body. Like Rata said ‘‘Tasting arts based research and auto ethnography means tasting with my whole body, tasting with my home, my world with the sensitive sled of my flesh” Gordon,R. (2018)