Home
Scholarly Works
A/r/tography as Practice-Based Research 1
Chapter

A/r/tography as Practice-Based Research 1

Abstract

This chapter introduces several essential features of a/r/tography within practice-based research. A/r/tography is informed by feminist, post-structuralist, hermeneutic, and postmodern approaches to knowing. Building on the work of action researchers understanding their work as a living practice, a/r/tography enacts and embodies the practices of artists, researchers, educators, and learners as a form of living inquiry. In doing so, a/r/tographers facilitate the conditions for creating new ways of knowing and being through inquiry-laden practices, and as a result, often create communities of practice. The research conditions for a/r/tographic practice reside in several notions of relationality such as relational inquiry, relational aesthetics, and relational learning. Complementing the research conditions are conceptual practices referred to as renderings. In this instance, concepts rather than research methods are used to engage a/r/tographers with their inquiries. The chapter identifies several possible renderings: contiguity, living inquiry, metaphor/metonymy, openings, reverberations, and excess. These may act as guides for inquiry and lead to new insights and offer opportunities to engage in deep encounters within the relational conditions. In summary, a/r/tography resides in the in-between spaces of intercorporeality, relationality, and process, and insists on the artform and text being integral to the whole process. One does not speak for the other, rather, both are needed as forms of relational inquiry.

Authors

Irwin RL; Springgay S

Book title

Arts-Based Research in Education

Pagination

pp. 174-188

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Publication Date

November 28, 2025

DOI

10.4324/9781003412892-18

Labels

View published work (Non-McMaster Users)

Contact the Experts team