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I begin this chapter introducing my ‘assembling’ of a methodology, which I then outline through sections around art praxis approaches and my affect heuristic linked to new materialist and situated knowledge thinking and described in my autoethnographic voice.
I outline my crip/neurodivergent position and my bodymind as an imbricated site for/of research. That I utilise structures and scaffolds to support this ‘tricky’ place of working with language/text in this terrain, which is all a gathering together. I then ask the reader to join me on this onwards journey.
Key to this investigation is affect theory, and how we affectively respond to our sonic environments. Exploring affect, not as a ‘thing, but an aspect of every event’ (Massumi, 2002), and ‘microshocks’ as the triggers of moments of affective response, necessitates the using of a multimodal, multifaceted approaches to facilitate the gathering and drawing of elements together to make ‘spaces’ of new understanding and experiencing. I am not considering this as a critique of others activities, it is an ‘entanglement of mater and meaning’ and am looking for the ‘diffraction patterns that make the entanglement visible’ (Barad in Dolphijn, van der Tuin, 2012). This enquiry is situated (in this bodyminds) feminist New Materialism[1], in which the hypersensitivities of neurodivergence have ‘use’ (Armed) as does approaching things from a different angle. My research process situated in my investigational art making and is positioned where ‘the creative artefact is considered the embodiment of the new knowledge (Skains, 2018, p. 85), and if ‘a measure of the value of research is seen to be the capacity to create new knowledge and understanding that is individually and culturally transformative, then criteria need to move beyond probability and plausibility to possibility’ (Sullivan, 2010, p. 95/96) so this must be a speculative space.
The multimodal, multifaceted methods used include: ‘Scaffolds’ to support all the working and to hold spaces open for ‘affect’. Art praxis and the creation of new art works, reflection on the processes and the works and informal discussion. Qualitative and dialectical approaches, exploring philosophical and theoretical texts, art works and discussion linking with practice in part through a ‘holding in mind’ of thoughts/ideas’ as I ‘work’. I use autobiographical/autoethnological textual writing, through free writing and journalling notes to communicate/explicate thinking.
Through iterative reflective processes of working, thinking, making, reading, doing, approaches are modified and develop, and ‘elements’ found that are parts of the building up of a new approach to making that holds potentials for an embodied encounter with affecting atmospheres, new understanding and knowledges that inform what comes next.
[1] ‘situated knowledges’ and new materialism(s) described as – ‘playing a pivotal role in foregrounding a feminist politics of difference’ (Hinton, 2014) - ‘new materialist feminisms have built on the linguistic turn which focused exclusively on discursive practices at the expense of the material world, developing an ‘embedded and embodied’ (Braidotti 2002, 2) material-discursive philosophy of difference and being in the world. (Bozalek, and Zembylas, 2016 P 194) - and ‘common characteristics of new materialists include the rejection of representationalism, humanism, and the intrinsic distinction of subjectivity and knowledge.’ (Gamble, Hanan, and Nail. 2019)
Art, Praxis:
At its core this is enquiry undertaking through my ‘doing’. Methods have developed from those of my longstanding practice, including the ‘gathering’ of materials and a reflective embodied process of working with those in the creation of artworks, these are also now utilised in my wider research and my drawing together of texts to explicate thinking and developing/ed knowledges. As "Methodologies in artistic research are necessarily emergent and subject to repeated adjustment, rather than remaining fixed throughout the process of enquiry" (Barrett / Bolt, 2007, p. 6) these have been constantly developing, this has been/is an organic, responsive iterative process of thinking/making/reading/discussion, the resulting exhibited art works and talks and papers, generating informal discussions, more considered reflection, and an emerging ‘multi-method strategy’ of ‘practice raising questions that can then be investigated through research, which in turn impact on practice’ (Gray/Malins, 2004, p.1).
This research is a ‘journey’ exploring the sonic environments I ‘live’ within, affecting sensing of/through those, and entangled and embodied ways to communicate/share an/my experiencing of these places/spaces within the installations/art works I form. My own “immersive interaction carrying over into reflection and speculation towards new understandings – reinforces the intimate relationship between doing and knowing, action and reflection, practice and theory.” (Gray and Delday 2011 p.4) expanding my knowledge, aiding in answering my questions and what I can contribute to this field.
Structures and scaffolds:
From the start of this research, I have been considering approaches for working with the ‘tricky’ things that are affect and sound, as well as working with the textual requirements for explicating research ideas (as this bodymind). Thinking about the sorts of ‘supports’ I might utilise, ‘structures’, invisible, but there in my mind’s eye, scaffolding to hold open a space.
Scaffolded pedagogical approaches can be described as ‘supportive elements added to a program’, ‘to provide a temporary framework in the form of support for learners’ and as depend on “identifying the area that is just beyond but not too far beyond students” (Garfield and Holland 2012). My ‘scaffolding’[1] is more an approach to working with the ‘tricky’ theory, materials and aims that I am, particularly in the context of this bodymind[2]. I am thinking of Scaffolding[3] as a term relating to temporary supporting structures, I explore scaffolds in more detail[4], relating these with Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘Smooth and Striated’ (2004), and considering ‘structures’ that can hold spaces for my activities as well as for shifts in how something can be. There are visual/drawn methods in diagrams[5] that have been appearing as ‘structures’ for spaces, for times for works sonic, visual and textual, and for research catalogue pages backgrounds, with some appearing in the conclusion chapter ‘gathering closer’.
This ‘scaffolding’ has included; setting parameters for gathering, planning work as ‘experiments’, mapping elements from a gathering space to a showing space to give an initial outline form[6] and to shift the specialities in sound, transliterating processes I have long used for ‘gathering’ and editing video/sound into approaches for theoretical research and writing, using ‘commonplace’ structures for writing, as I am using ‘right now’[7]… The scaffolding supports ways of working in line with the ‘care’ needed for the nature of the theoretical areas and materials, a holding open of a space for things to ‘occur’, not constricting the ‘affect’ out of ‘stuff’ and supporting the ‘affect heuristic’/embodied processes. An exploring of structures and affect to find a symbiosis that ‘allows’ the praxis to take place, without compressing the affecting qualities out of the resulting ‘work’.
[1] while there may be some similarities between scaffoldings ‘educational’ use and mine, I am not only thinking about skills or understanding development, but at all of what I am undertaking, and less about supporting the route across a ‘gap’ between what is ‘known’ and what can be ‘learned’.
[2] The need to work within the ‘crip time’(Kafer, 2013) I can, and that I am severally dyslexic and AuVAST.
[3] Scaffolding: a temporary structure on the outside of a building, used…while building (or) repairing. (OED 2003)
[4] Particularly through an early conference paper as part of Early Tests & Experiments and the practice chapters Dyffryn and Coventry
[5] Sullivan’s diagrams in Art practice as research; Inquiry in the visual arts (2010) Sage – are very informative, but mine are a much loser ‘holding of a space’ and rough positioning of elements in the growing ‘mosaic’ of the work.
[6] Visiting the Louise Bourgeois show, Nature Studies, Compton Verney, July – October 2024. I was struck by the description of her use of music paper to draw on, the curator suggesting that this was a way to not start work on an empty page, this to me is a scaffold for making and doing.
[7] (headings, subheadings, word counts, kanban systems of planning etc…)
Crip/Neurodivergent ‘me’:
My self-identifying/describing as crip[1]/neurodivergent[2], has developed across this research, in part possibly because a heuristic methodology[3] necessitates the looking at and understanding more about oneself. A growing embracing of who/how I am, drawing on a neuro-positive understanding of my usefulness and social model approaches to disability. As it became clearer how ‘situated’ in this ‘bodymind’ and its experiencing all ‘this’ research would be, it became clear that I needed to directly speak to this.
My ‘embracing’, includes recognising the neurodiversity paradigm[4], and that there is no validity in the notion of a ‘normal’ brain or person, “Once we’ve thrown away the concept of “normal,” neurotypicals are just members of a majority – not healthier or more “right” than the rest of us, just more common”[5].(Walker 2013/2021) And knowing that the pathologizing of neurodivergence and physical impairment through a medicalised/deficit model ‘disables’ us, holds power and ‘the masters tools’ (Walker 2013/2021)[6]. I aim to be part of a ‘joining with others and of 'troubling’[7] the 'premises of the logic of deficit’ (Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, et al 2023).
The medical models describing of ‘our’ situation to ‘us’, can inform, if the context is shifted from describing the neurodivergent as ‘higher distractibility by irrelevant stimuli’, that their ‘sensory input(s) may not be properly regulated’, (e.g., being flooded by sensory events), and ‘the inability to suppress irrelevant noises e.g., footsteps in the background while doing another task) (Schulze, et al 2020, p. 9, 27,29) and looked at through a different lens, yes, I am flooded by sensory inputs, I cannot not notice[8].
I live in a constantly ‘aware’ state; dancing light, shifting sounds, how the environment around me is changing, the ‘atmosphere’, how other ‘bodies’ seem to be. Movement and breath, shifting leaves in a breeze, the sounds of dust on a street in the summer. Changes in colour, temperature, light. Sounds of my pencil, the keyboard, my feet on the floor, my eyes moving, my blood flowing…. all with the fluctuating hum of the city, the ‘stuff’ that is just sort of there all the time. I get a ‘frisson’[9] from this ‘stuff’, this links me, makes me very attuned to the world around me, cognisant of small things, moments, and I have a desire and a need to explore it, to share that being ‘in it’. I am embracing my VAST[10] experiencing, that my experiential knowings from the world around me are of ‘use’[11], and intrinsic to this research.
[1] having intersectional ND and physical conditions, I live with pain and fatigue, so function within my own ‘criptime’ (Kafer: 2013) which informs what I can do when.
[2] The term “neurodiversity” coined by Judy Singer, an Australian sociologist in 1998, recognising that everyone's brain, like their fingerprints, develops in a unique way.
[3] Heuristic research contains an implicit challenge, the importance of embracing the inevitability of being changed by the enquiry, continuing a process of personal growth which reflects my deep commitment to explore new territory within myself, pg 3Djuraskovic, I., & Arthur, N. (2010). Heuristic Inquiry: A Personal Journey of Acculturation and Identity Reconstruction. The Qualitative Report, 15(6), 1569-1593. Retrieved from https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol15/iss6/12
[4] Walker 2013 says, Here’s how I’d articulate the fundamental principles of the neurodiversity paradigm: Neurodiversity – the diversity among minds – is a natural, healthy, and valuable form of human diversity. There is no “normal” or “right” style of human mind, any more than there is one “normal” or “right” ethnicity, gender, or culture. The social dynamics that manifest regarding neurodiversity are similar to the social dynamics that manifest in regard to other forms of human diversity (e.g., diversity of race, culture, gender, or sexual orientation). These dynamics include the dynamics of social power relations – the dynamics of social in equality, privilege, and oppression – as well as the dynamics by which diversity, when embraced, acts as a source of creative potential within a group or society.
[5] “And Autistics are a minority group, no more intrinsically “disordered” than any ethnic minority.” (Walker 2013)
[6] “Of all the master’s tools (i.e., the dynamics, language, and conceptual frameworks that create and maintain social inequities), the most powerful and insidious is the concept of “normal people.” - from Audry Lorde ‘The masters tools will never dismantle the masters house’
[7] relating this to "staying with the troubles' (Harroway, 2016),
[8] And wonder if these ‘skills’ of noticing, the sensing something shifting, has been and is of benefit to people and society, and that through our current ‘neuro-normative’ attitudes we might lose or miss some of these other ‘tools’.
[9] I mention at another point ‘the feeling of big thumbs’, one of my bodily indicators of exciting/interesting/intriguing/perturbing (and many other things), I also get shivers, sometimes over my skin, sometimes through my whole body, there are other bodily indicators, the list is long and fluctuating, but these are the most common currently.
[10] VAST - https://www.additudemag.com/attention-deficit-disorder-vast/ (accessed 12 November 22) a neuropositive approach – variable attention stimulus trait.
[11] I think of my ‘use’ in the context of Ahmed, 2019
Affect heuristic:
A heuristic[1] approach is apposite when ‘looking for’ affect, it could be said that the ‘nose’ I am following is the one attached to affective responses, an ‘affect heuristic’[2] perhaps. That ‘Heuristic research differs considerably from other methodologies in that it views the researcher as a participant.’ (Djuraskovic / Arthur, 2010, p.1572) allows for a subjective approach, recognising that ‘subjective action is necessary to make use of eventual creativity and produce change, this action is only secondary to the pre-conscious event of bodily-emotive affect in which creative force resides’. (Richter 2023, p.134) ·Additionally, as we don’t have the ‘language’ to ask or answer some questions around affect/experience, (picked up at many points through thesis, including Language/text: later in this chapter) it is difficult to quantify the “affectivness” of works for ‘viewers’[3], adding to the rational for this as heuristic enquiry, in which I am involved as ‘subject’ as well as researcher.
[1] Clark Moustakas: Heuristic Research: 1990. ‘the root meaning of heuristic comes from the Greek word heuriskein, meaning to discover or find. It refers to an approach of internal search through which one discovers the nature and meaning of experience and develops methods and process for further investigation and analysis.
[2] In behavioural science ‘affect heuristic’ is used to describe a ‘quick’ way of making decisions (which is often seen as biased and has other shortcomings) based on an immediate response of if something seems ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Outlined in articles such as https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221705003577?via%3Dihub I am not using ‘affect heuristic’ in this way – but instead to describe a ‘following’ of my ‘nose’ attached to felt/sensed response in a situation
[3] Viewed / viewer – problematic terms, in part because of the seeing nature of the term also because it feels like a separating from the work, but they are understood terms and so I will use them here and consider their future use.
Language/text:
Both affect and sound have a difficult relationship to language/text, often described through what makes the sound or how the affect makes you ‘feel’ (see writing affect in field survey and section in Coventry) Other practice researchers describe similar experiences, ‘The terminology of trying to describe in words elements of the creative process has also necessitated an expansion in describing creativity. Experience has shown us how radically different the creative process can be for everyone, generating frustration in communicating’ … (Batey, 2023. P10). I often find ‘academic’ texts do not correlate with my experiencing of the researching, I was gathering were lots and lots of ‘elements’, but was struggling to work out ways to bring them together, as Cascella describes, ‘over many years I had collected a number of thoughts and materials, but the large knot that I couldn’t untangle was “how” to write.’(interview between Cascella and Biserna, 2013)
When thinking how to ‘write’ about sound and affect I have considered the structures and strategies used in Ordinary Affects (Stewart, 2007) and the Hundreds, (Stewart, Berlant 2019). [1] In the of writing of Ordinary Affects I feel a freedom, that I link with my experience of freewriting[2] which has ‘opened up’ how I approach writing, using sound/ imagery from my practice[3], a word or phrase I keep coming back to, as a starting point, giving myself a duration to write in, then returning to the text produced to edit and work with it (in iterative cycles). The structures from ‘the hundreds’ written in groupings of hundreds informing my approach to breaking texts down into ‘chunks’ with wordcounts, that are then movable, (intrinsically linked to all the other) self-contained ‘elements’ I can work with to construct the’ picture/mosaic’
Exploring these ‘complications’ opens possibilities of how one can work with, what at first can seem irreducible materials and processes; through this emerges methods of working with and sharing, but there is no straightforward route or answer. I am using multiple approaches; looking at practice thesis examples including Haley Newmans asking questions of ‘herself’ and Elizabeth Prices narrative approaches, described through the rolling of masking tape, gave me some ways in; I am looking to share my own sensed felt experiencing, tying the reader as closely as posable to my experience, ‘sitting with me’ in the process, interspersing first person narrative with gathered ‘stuff’ of theory, using simple diagramming and time (wordcount) based approaches, from my approach to editing sound/imagery, I began to get some things together, the Research Catalogue helps brings together the different ‘registers’ of the elements , supporting my communicating the research undertaken, my understanding of it and my new knowings, that I will make a mosaic that holds things enough, for make it make ‘sense’ to another.
[1] Outlined briefly in Lit review
[2] Attending workshops aimed specifically at ND participants, part of research of – linst… As I am AuDHD/VAST, things also need to trigger my ‘interest’, ‘Cutting our own keys’ describes using ‘more liberating ‘approaches of 'free writing', 'sensory experience', allowing the person to 'travel' within the theme, (while being ‘mindful of going off on a tangent, not having a linear narrative, a lack of clarity’ (pg:1240) and when revisited, interspersing them with other writing, and refined, the result of the process was still a linear 'coherent' text (their words). This seems like a starting point for an approach, a rough for a key I can make more my own.
[3] Used at many point – but particularly evident in The Dyffryn Book chapter.
New materialism:
As well as looking inward to sensed experiencing and knowings, I must also look outward and explore my relationships to spaces, situations and all (bodies) active within them. I am the ‘maker’ of the works, recognising that the ‘materials’ are ones I gather, I am not ‘abstracting’ them, and am using them to represent what they are, and that the spaces I construct the works within and what/who moves through them, all ‘add’ to the things I make –bring something of ‘themselves’ into my works.
New materialism shifts how we consider the ‘stuff’ of the world around us, ‘Deleuze first turned to Spinoza and Leibniz because’ they ‘thought that all of nature was defined primarily by an immanent vital power or force.’ (Gamble /Hanan /Nail 2019, p.119) I include in an idea of ‘nature’ everything around us, it all brings change to everything else it meets, none of us, and nothing at all, exists in isolation, we are always being affected and affecting everything else we meet and interact with in whatever small way. This can be seen as particularly pertinent to the ‘making’ of affecting/embodied art works, ‘(Braidotti’s) creative event is not produced by the reason or will of a human subject but rather originates in the affective creativity of post-human relations.’ (Richter 2023, p.135) I think that art works only begin to ‘live’ when they are experienced by/with other bodies, an aim is to make ‘things’/art works that ‘hold’ a potential for another body to experience an affecting embodied response, to which they will bring previous experiencing and bodily knowings, in spaces ‘who’s’ activity and form will also inform what occurs.
To explore my objectives, I need to utilise methods and approaches that support and inform my gathering and working of/with affecting atmospheres/microelements, New Materialism recognises the unguarded, porous approach that I as a embodied researcher must try and hold ‘open’, as ‘the capacity to detect the presence of impersonal affect requires that one is caught up in it. One needs, at least for a while, to suspend suspicion and adopt a more open-ended comportment. If we think we all ready know what is out there, we will almost surely miss much of it.’ (Bennett 2010 preface xv)
Bodymind:
I use the term bodymind, described by Margaret Price as ‘the imbrication (not just the combination) of the entities usually called “body” and “mind,”’ (Price, 2015 .p3) and citing Garland-Thomson (Misfits: a feminist materialist disability concept, 2011) who explores bodymind as a materialist feminist concept that directs attention to “the co-constituting relationship between the flesh and environment” and as ‘a materialist feminist DS[1] concept‘.
The holism informs my ‘considering’ of my dis/difabled self and my engagement and responses to the world around me, I do not know if my ‘frisson’ begins with the thought, or the experiencing of, a breeze, but I know it ripples through, touching every part of me. Considering this with my ‘affect heuristic’ approach, and the move away from the duality of mind and body of The Affective Turn, I build a ‘picture’ of ‘my bodymind’, as an imbricated site of felt/sensed/affective responses that I inhabit as this embodied researcher.
This research is not about ‘being disabled’; but as a following fleeting/tangential things, a nebulous gathering of ‘stuff’, the work I make having filaments and elements which all slip and shift and change in every moment… in its ‘methods’ there is a reliance on the ‘use’ of my feminist (queer) crip (Kafer 2013) experiencing of the ‘stuff’ of the world around me and this sensing bodymind as an environment of/for ‘situated knowledge’.
Situated knowledge:
My methods are subjective, embodied[1] and in part situated in my knowing learned through my experience and long-term artistic practice. These inform all my undertakings, and are affected and developed by everything I do and experience. My ‘situated difference’ (Haraway 1988, p.593) is particular to me, and a given point in time, this is the basis on which we interact, understand and experience everyday, ‘The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and originality is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another’ (Haraway 1988, p.586) So even though my approach is subjective, situated and embodied, it is not isolated or unconnected it is porous, leaky and entangled. If ‘knowledge production happens as a combined effort of creators, technology, mediators, artistic works, contexts and recipients – permeable and material art worlds.’ And ‘Knowledge is, therefore, best understood as an embodied, tacit and contextual phenomenon, varied and subjective: a verb rather than a noun.’ (Sutherland/Acord 2007, p.126)Then these methods; working with/through my embodied response, following my ‘affect heuristic’, speculatively seeing where things take me, these are approaches that correlate with exploring and seeking affecting dimensions of everyday sonic environments, with the aim to construct artworks with the potential for an embodied experience in another body – and for being able to reflect and draw out moments of new knowings from the praxis and works made.
[1] ‘Hearing’ itself is an embodied activity – and so our relationship with sound is always that, a decoding of signal through our bodymind.
Gathering together:
Contemplating why ‘gathering’ seemed so much better a description than ‘taking’, I found my way to ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’ (Ursula K Le Guinn, 2019) and have been thinking of ways to work that are not reductive or oppositional, the materials gathered, I use as ‘themselves’, I am not abstracting them but using them to represent what they are and where they are from (still woven in with what made them ‘appear’), a wrangling[1] of ideas and ‘stuff’‘, choosing’ what to use, and constructing with them through my own sensed experiencing (and in relation to the ‘space’ they will go into), so they can still be (quietly) dynamic and shifting, it is a process of addition, brining things together, making new moments of encounter and experience.
What has developed is a multimodal[2] multifaceted methodology, a ‘gathering’ together of a spectrum of approaches and elements, correlating in my practice to ‘microelements’[3] of the gathered sound which can be built into something that includes many ‘angles of view’ concurrently, giving me a way to better construct something more of the nature of sound and affect, shifting and overlapping, things moving to the fore and back, more ‘far more than by formed and perceived things. It is a space of affects’ (Deleuze, and Guattari, 2004 p. 479), all the research, including ‘theory’ writing requires the same potentials to be active and shifting. I will not be ‘using the masters tools’ (Walker 2013/2021) but ‘Cutting my (our) own keys’[4]. (Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, et al. 2023) and building a ‘tool kit’ for the research (and this bodymind[5] )
Rethinking and reworking is a process of ‘affirmation of other practices, activities and works.’ (O’Sullivan, Deleuze, 163), I want my outcomes to additive and positive inputs, as Barad says ‘In my opinion, critique is over-rated, over-emphasized, and over-utilized, to the detriment of feminism.[6] I believe this research requires a generative, supportive approach, one open to the ‘sensing’ and ’seeing’ of what might be possibly, supported by the New Materialist approach, which shifts us from a ‘dualist structures by allowing for the conceptualization of the travelling of the fluxes of nature and culture, matter and mind, and opening up active theory formation’. (Dolphijn & van der Tuin, 2012)
[1] Thinking of wrangling not as a long and protracted dispute, but as a ‘rounding up’ – bringing together in a temporary grouping.
[2] In the article “what is multimodality’ Jeff Bezemer suggests that ‘Three interconnected theoretical assumptions underpin multimodality.’ To paraphrase, multimodality assumes that: communication always draws on a multiplicity of modes all that contribute to meaning: that resources are shaped overtime to become meaning making resources that articulate the (social, individual/affective) meaning depending on the requirements of different communities: and that people orchestrate meaning through their selection and configuration of modes. https://mode.ioe.ac.uk/2012/02/16/what-is-multimodality/
[3] drawing from Deleuze and Guattari’s microperceptions, and Massumi’s microshocks – outlined in later chapters.
[4] not making neurodivergent experiences made to fit (neuronormative) but as Bertisdotter Rasqvist et al. say (P 1239 ) - a (friendly) listening to and acknowledging differences... and... communicate (ing -mine) across neurotypes differently.
[5] It is often suggested that using a range of ‘learning styles’ and approaches can support neurodivergent learning, but there are also concerns with suggestions that any ‘learning styles’ might work in set ways for a diverse ‘group’, and what works for me today might not tomorrow.
[6] “Matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers” Interview with Karen Barad (Dolphijn & van der Tuin, 2012 p 49)
Autoethnography:
As research methods I am utilising include ‘listening’ to my own experiencing, through gathering of materials, making of artworks and reflecting on these and the doing/thinking processes, I have/am written/ing this in my voice. I have made notes through the processes, these have been used in the development of the texts, initially around the practice work that has developed into the central practice chapters, but increasingly, using prompts and free writing approaches to get together texts around ‘what I was thinking’, these have been worked with and developed, (see later section in this chapter on ‘text’) but my writing is principally autoethnographic/autobiographical, it is describing my experiencing and through this my linking of theories with what is understood through my practices.
Both embodied approaches and autoethnography can be seen as primary research, my ‘writing’ has several functions in the research process; a way of recoding actions, thoughts, of developing approaches to sharing the research (in other ways that ‘exhibitions’), the writing has become ‘as a method, (autoethnography is) both process and product’ (Ellis, et al. p27). In this I am an ‘insider’, exploring what I ‘make’, developing thinking about the links with theoretical concerns, engaging in informal discussion and feedback, reflexively considering all these elements. As with all of this/my research, my ‘thinking’ is not fixed, but shifting and changing,[1]reality is neither fixed nor entirely external but is created by, and moves with, the changing perceptions and beliefs (Duncan, 2004. Pg 30). These methods all feed into the developing ‘picture’ andbrining into focus posable points of new knowing.
[1] ‘An important assumption held by autoethnographers and qualitative researchers in general is that reality is neither fixed nor entirely external but is created by, and moves with, the changing perceptions and beliefs of the viewer. (Duncan, M. (2004). Pg 30)