phd WORKSHOP

Entangling research, creation and ecologies with Jo Scott

Jo Scott, ‘Creative Field Work in Forest Plantations: Seeking Resonance in Precarious Landscapes.’

SYLLABUS

These workshops explore the capacities of artistic practices as research methods to interrogate, explore and more deeply understand the places we inhabit and their ecologies. These types of place-based artistic research methods are characterised as ‘creative field work’, with critical attention offered to the extractivist and colonial origins of ethnographic field work. Through our creative work and thinking together, we will address what new creative field work methods we need to feelingly explore where we are now and how these kinds of localised knowings might contribute to wider questions and challenges such as the climate and biodiversity crises. The workshops are designed to be active, creative and discursive, and to help participants explore the capacities of their artistic practices as research methods, paying attention to the new knowings that such practices offer about places and their ecologies.

Course goals:

The goals of the workshops are to: • Creatively explore the capacities of participants’ artistic practices as place-based research methods or creative field work • Create, share and respond to each other’s creative field work • Use this sharing to open discussions as to what creative field work is and how we can use it as a way of exploring and interrogating places and ecologies • Address and explore artistic research methodologies, particularly what kinds of knowings creative research methods produce and the value of these

Detailed content:

Workshop Part 1 (120 min)

Artistic Research and ‘creative field work’ Introduction (15 mins)

• Reiteration of my practice, sharing examples of the ‘creative field work’ I have been doing in Portuguese forest plantations

• Introducing the focus of the workshops for participants to engage with an exploration/interrogation of the textures and ecologies of the place where they are through the tools of their artistic research, or ‘praxis’ Field work and its discontents – discussion (20 mins)

• We will follow with an open discussion to unpack the notion of field work, paying particular attention to its extractivist and colonial origins in ethnography Prompts for exploring felt relations with where you are (10 mins)

• Offering of simple prompts and questions for exploring felt relations with where participants are, using sound, voice, text, image capture etc.

Break (15 mins)

Sharing of responses (15 mins)

Theoretical interweaving (25 mins)

Following this, I will lay out some ways of thinking and conceptual frameworks for approaching artistic research exploring the ecologies of a place.

Exploring places and ecologies through artistic research (20 mins)

We will then move on to considering participants’ creative practices as research tools in these places – how can a creative process interrogate and investigate the ecologies of a place? Participants will be asked to formulate a mini-inquiry about where they are and think about how their artistic practices can respond to that inquiry.

Workshop Part 2 (90 min):

Sharing and reflecting on creative field work Sharing/activating creative field work practices (60 mins)

Sharing and responding to each other’s field notes, recordings and creative outputs Reflections on what was created and discovered through the making and sharing of practices (30 mins)

• Space for reflecting on findings from the mini-inquiries. What were practices able to reveal and interrogate about places and their ecologies?

Workshop Part 3 (90 mins):

Entangling with ecologies, decolonising climate discourse New forms of creative field work – co-creation (30 mins)

Based on the methods that the participants used to pursue their mini-inquiries, we will work together to formulate ideas for new kinds of creative field work methods, through which we could work reciprocally, respectfully and playfully with the ecologies of a place, through creative means. Creative Field Work in a climate crisis – presentation and discussion (40 mins)

In the final part of the workshop series, I will offer some thoughts as to how these affectively entangled ecological practices meet the climate and biodiversity crises, before opening a discussion.

Concluding thoughts (20 mins)

• Sharing of reflections as to how these approaches meet the participants’ current inquiries

• Space for questions

REFERENCES

(Click on the following links to download PDF documents for each reference.)