Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal
This exploratory article addresses our experiences as artist-researchers engaged with “Trading Ro... more This exploratory article addresses our experiences as artist-researchers engaged with “Trading Routes: Grease Trails, Oil Futures,” a research-creation project supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. “Trading Routes” focuses on the intersecting geographies of Indigenous fish grease trails and the proposed Alberta-British Columbia oil pipeline. These converging routes are shedding light on the present entanglement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural heritage, ecological perspectives, and resource extraction. Through artistic scholarship, material production, historical and cultural understanding, we seek to better account for the ways in which an environmental social justice perspective can be crafted into arts-based research. We write from a point of reflection, where we assess, evaluate, disentangle, and unclad some of the learning that has come to us through the research-creation and presentation of contemporary weaving. We suggest th...
SSHRC Imagining Canada's Future Initiative, Knowledge Synthesis Grants: Energy and Natural Resources, 2016
The hybrid category of research-creation engages the issues of energy transition and impasse thro... more The hybrid category of research-creation engages the issues of energy transition and impasse through the integration of intellectual and artistic practices. Although SSHRC and other agencies have a vested interest in research-creation projects, our investigation has revealed a dearth of such projects dealing with energy transition. Nevertheless, the material that does exist reveals a narrative and aesthetic conflict about how energy production and petroculture are represented. While energy corporations and others resistant to energy transition depict energy as an abstract element of the economy, proponents of research-creation projects provide strong counteraesthetics and narratives. Examples of research-creation in photography, film, literature, and collectivist art press the issue of energy transition by presenting current energy production as harmful and alienating. Curation of research-creation projects dealing with energy has become a site of connection for a range of artistic practices. These projects represent some of the earliest critiques of petroculture and facilitate future, wide-ranging discussions of energy transition and impasse. Just as "energy humanities" is emerging as a unique category of investigation between and across ecology, environmentalism, and activism, "energy research-creation" provides a framework to integrate academic and artistic practices surrounding energy transition. Researchcreation may currently be a significant gap in our knowledge about energy transition, but it is also a site of great potential to increase the visibility of the cultural discourse around energy.
A collective project of the Petrocultures Research Group. My contribution is under "The Arts, Hum... more A collective project of the Petrocultures Research Group. My contribution is under "The Arts, Humanities, and Energy (or, What Can Art tell us about Oil?)."
The paper will focus on the project Catch + Release: Mapping Stories of Cultural and Geographic T... more The paper will focus on the project Catch + Release: Mapping Stories of Cultural and Geographic Transition (2009-2013), a SSHRC supported collaborative research and creation project involving artists, art educators and designers, and the related exhibition created for the Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historical Site in Steveston, British Columbia, Canada. The Catch + Release project exhibition explores issues around the demise of the fishing industry and the changing coastal conditions on the west coast of British Columbia from a contemporary and interdisciplinary artistic perspective. Situated in a heritage museum context, this artistic research project is at the crossings of multiple disciplines such as art, pedagogy and museology. Drawing from site-specific art practices and the ways artists engage with the museum as site, this paper examines how this artist/museum partnership expands the traditional ways in which non-art museums display, present and provide pedagogical exper...
A recent a/r/tographic community-based research project called Richgate involves a public pedagog... more A recent a/r/tographic community-based research project called Richgate involves a public pedagogy that addresses the lived experience of eight families 1 in the City of Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. "Richgate" is a Chinese translation for the name of the city of Richmond. e eight participating families have migrated to Canada at various times in history, from China, Estonia, Japan, South Africa, Western Europe, and India. e four-year SSHRC 2 funded project consisted of a/r/tographers 3 working with inter-generational families through interviews, collaboratively designed works of art, and public exhibitions focusing on issues of identity and belonging. e a/r/tographic process generated new combinations and patterns as well as di erent alternatives and connections for ways in which publics co-exist.
The installation Breathe/Live/Speak utilizes oceanic data to generate an organic distribution of ... more The installation Breathe/Live/Speak utilizes oceanic data to generate an organic distribution of screen elements. This paper describes the installation as part of the Catch and Release research/creation project. We introduce our approach of Found Data, derived from artistic practices of Found Object and Readymade, as an alternative to the widely used Perlin Noise for generating natural looking shapes. The approach is demonstrated in detail, and some examples are presented. We outline how these are implemented in the installation, and conclude by arguing for the relevance of this method in a time of increasingly available data.
using Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia as a basis for appreciating the rich opportunities the mu... more using Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia as a basis for appreciating the rich opportunities the multiple voices of researchers and partüipants plesent, we posit that embodied heteroglossic spaces enhance the iollaborative a/r/ tographic research project entitled 'The city of Richgate' . working with visual, narrative, and performative forms of enquiry, contiguously aid. separately, researchers and participants become a community of inqiirers eigaged in embodiedheteroglossic spaces that exist simultan oisty uniinter-coriorea[y within the qualities of a variety of artistic languages and the vqriati.on of these qualities as found in particular moments of ümà and, space. Recognizing the inter-corporeal nqture of our work extend.s Bakhtin,s notion into a multimodql (perhaps multilingual) conte?ct and offers lenses for engaging in collaborative research design and analysis.
Skip to Main Content. Wiley Online Library will be disrupted on 25 August from 13:00-15:00 BST (0... more Skip to Main Content. Wiley Online Library will be disrupted on 25 August from 13:00-15:00 BST (08:00-10:00 EDT) for essential maintenance. ...
In this paper the authors examine a/r/tographical collaboration in a communityengaged research st... more In this paper the authors examine a/r/tographical collaboration in a communityengaged research study investigating immigrant understandings of home and place. The study, The City of Richgate, involves a complex collaboration between community members, community organizations, educational institutions, and a research team comprising artist-educators. The study crosses border zones of cultural, ethnic, geographic, institutional, public, private, and disciplinary boundaries, reflecting the ever-changing character of postmodern reality. In this paper the authors reflect critically and theoretically on the lived experience of radical relatedness found within the complex collaboration, particularly within the International Journal of Qualitative Methods 2010, 10(1) 87 a/r/tographic research team. This offers a qualitative methodology of radical collaboration applicable to many fields of inquiry in the academy, art world, and community.
A/r/tography is a form of practice-based research steeped in the arts and education. Alongside ot... more A/r/tography is a form of practice-based research steeped in the arts and education. Alongside other arts based, arts informed and aesthetically defined methodologies, a/r/tography is one of many emerging forms of inquiry that refer to the arts as a way of re-searching the world to enhance understanding. Yet, it goes even further by recognizing the educative potential of teaching and learning as acts of inquiry. Together, the arts and education complement, resist, and echo one another through rhizomatic relations of living inquiry. In this paper, we demonstrate rhizomatic relations in an ongoing project entitled 'The City of Richgate' where meanings are constructed within ongoing a/r/tographic inquiries described as collective artistic and educational praxis. Rhizomatic relations do not seek conclusions and therefore, neither will this account. Instead, we explore a/r/tographical situations as methodological spaces for furthering living inquiry.
After Oil explores the social, cultural, and political changes needed to make possible a full-sca... more After Oil explores the social, cultural, and political changes needed to make possible a full-scale transition from fossil fuels to new forms of energy. Written collectively by participants in the first After Oil School, After Oil explains why the adoption of renewable, ecologically sustainable energy sources is only the first step of energy transition.
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(or, What Can Art tell us about Oil?)."
Books by Ruth Beer