art; Creativity; immobility; methodology; practice-led research; Demography; Geography, Planning and Development; Sociology and Political Science
Abstract :
[en] Creative practices have made a standing contribution to mobilities research. We write this article as a collective of 25 scholars and practitioners to make a provocation: to further position creative mobilities research as a fundamental contribution and component in this field. The article explores how creative forms of research—whether in the form of artworks, exhibitions, performances, collaborations, and more—has been a foundational part of shaping the new mobilities paradigm, and continues to influence its methodological, epistemological, and ontological concerns. We tour through the interwoven history of art and mobilities research, outlining five central contributions that creativity brings. Through short vignettes of each author’s creative practice, we discuss how creativity has been key to the evolution and emergence of how mobilities research has expanded to global audiences of scholars, practitioners, and communities. The article concludes by highlighting the potency of the arts for lively and transdisciplinary pathways for future mobilities research in the uncertainties that lay ahead.
Disciplines :
Human geography & demography
Author, co-author :
Barry, Kaya ; Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
Southern, Jen ; Centre for Mobilities Research, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom
Baxter, Tess ; Artist and Independent Scholar, Ulverston, United Kingdom
Blondin, Suzy ; Haute Ecole Pédagogique de Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
Booker, Clare; Independent Artist, Leeds City College, Leeds, United Kingdom
Bowstead, Janet ; Royal Holloway, University of London, London, United Kingdom
Butler, Carly; Independent Artist, Canada
Dillon, Rod ; Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom
Ferguson, Nick ; Kingston School of Art, Kingston upon Thames, United Kingdom
Filipska, Gudrun; Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom
Hieslmair, Michael; Tracing Spaces, Vienna, Austria
HUNT, Lucy ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) > Department of Education and Social Work (DESW) > Teaching and Learning ; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Ianchenko, Aleksandra; Tallinn University, Åbo Akademi University, Tallinn, Estonia
Johnson, Pia ; RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
Keane, Jondi ; Artist and Independent Scholar, Melbourne, Australia
Koszolko, Martin K. ; The University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia
Qualmann, Clare ; University of East London, London, United Kingdom
Rumsby, Charlie ; Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom
Oliveira, Catarina Sales ; ISCTE-Instituto Universitario de Lisboa, University Institute of Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal
Schleser, Max ; Film and Animation, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Australia
Sodero, Stephanie ; Humanitarian Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
Kaya Barry receives funding from an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award [project number: DE220100394] funded by the Australian Government. Aleksandra Ianchenko’s work was done within the project “Public transport as public space in European cities: Narrating, experiencing, contesting (PUTSPACE)” is financially supported by the HERA Joint Research Programme (www.heranet.info) which is co-funded by AKA, BMBF via DLRPT, ETAg, and the European Commission through Horizon 2020.
Aceti, Lanfranco, Hana Iverson, and Mimi Sheller. 2016. “ L.A. Re.Play: Mobile Network Culture in Placemaking.” Leonardo Electronic Almanac 21 (1): 14–27.
Back, Les, and Nirmal Purwar. 2012. Live Methods, Blackwell, Oxford.
Barad, Karen. 2003. “ Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 (3): 801–831. doi: 10.1086/345321.
Barrett, Estelle. 2007. “ Introduction.” In Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, edited by Estell e Barrett and Barbara Bolt, 1–14. London: I. B. Tauris.
Barrett, Estelle, and Barbara Bolt. 2007. Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. London: I. B. Tauris.
Barry, Kaya. 2020. “ Creative Arts Practice in Mobilities.” In Handbook on Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities, edited by Monika Busher, Malene Freudendal-Pederson, and Sven Kesselring. Edward Elgar.
Barry, Kaya, and Jondi Keane. 2020. Creative Measures of the Anthropocene: Art, Mobilities and Participatory Geographies. Cham: Palgrave.
Bhabha, Jacqueline, ed. 2011. Children without a State: A Global Human Rights Challenge. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Bhattacharya, Diti, and Kaya Barry. 2021. “ On Orientations and Adjustments: An Exploration of Walking, Wandering and Wayfinding in Brisbane–Meanjin.” Australian Geographer 52 (3): 257–272. doi: 10.1080/00049182.2021.1969786.
Bourriaud, Nicolas. 2002. Relational Aesthetics: Collection Documents Sur L’art. Dijon: Les Presses Du Réel.
Buscher, Monika, Urry John, and Witchger Katian. 2011. Mobile Methods. Abingdon: Routledge.
Büscher, Monika, Mimi Sheller, and David Tyfield. 2016. “ Mobility Intersections: social Research, Social Futures.” Mobilities 11 (4): 485–497. doi: 10.1080/17450101.2016.1211818.
Büscher, Monika, Margit, Kristensen and Preben Mogensen. 2007. “Making the Future Palpable: Notes from a Major Incident Future Laboratory.” In: ISCRAM 2007 Academic Proceedings Papers, edited by Van de Walle, Bartel, Paul Burghardt, and Kees Nieuwenhuis. Delft, The Netherlands.
Büscher, Monika. 2006. “ Vision in Motion.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 38 (2): 281–299. doi: 10.1068/a37277.
Clement, Susannah, and Gordon Waitt. 2018. “ Pram Mobilities: affordances and Atmospheres That Assemble Childhood and Motherhood On-the-Move.” Children’s Geographies 16 (3): 252–265. doi: 10.1080/14733285.2018.1432849.
Costa, Rosalina Pisco, Catarina Sales Oliveira, and A Marcia Barbosa. 2020. “ Desenhando a mobilidade. A potencialidade do sketching nos estudos de mobilidade.” Forum Sociológico 36: 67–76. CESNOVA. doi: 10.4000/sociologico.9216.
Cross, Nigel. 2006. Designerly Ways of Knowing. London: Springer London.
Davis, Heather, and Etienne Turpin, eds. 2015. Art in the Anthropocene. London: Open Humanities Press.
Edensor, Tim, and Shanti Sumartojo. 2018. “ Reconfiguring Familiar Worlds With Light Projection: The Gertrude Street Projection Festival, 2017.” GeoHumanities 4 (1): 112–131. doi: 10.1080/2373566X.2018.1446760.
Edensor, Tim, ed. 2010. Geographies of Rhythm: Nature, Place, Mobilities and Bodies. Farnham: Ashgate.
Farman, Jason. 2012. Mobile Interface Theory: Embodied Space and Locative Media. New York: Routledge.
Felt, Ulrike, and Brian Wynne. 2007. Taking European Knowledge Society Seriously. Report of the Expert Group on Science and Governance to the Science, Economy and Society Directorate, Directorate-General for Research, European Commission. Luxemborg: European Commission.
Frieling, Rudolph. 2008. “ Toward Participation in Art.” In The Art of Participation 1950 to Now. New York: Thames and Hudson.
Fuller, Gilian, and Ross Harvey. 2004. Aviopolis: A Book about Airports. London: Black Dog Publishing.
Gerlach, Joe. 2013. “ Lines, Contours and Legends Coordinates for Vernacular Mapping.” Progress in Human Geography 38 (1): 22–39.
Groys, Boris. 2008. “ A Genealogy of Participatory Art.” In The Art of Participation 1950 to Now. New York: Thames and Hudson.
Hawkins, Harriet. 2019. “ Geography’s Creative (Re)Turn: Toward a Critical Framework.” Progress in Human Geography 43 (6): 963–984. doi: 10.1177/0309132518804341.
Harper, Douglas. 2012. Visual Sociology. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge.
Heddon, Deirdre, and Myers. Misha. 2017. “ The Walking Library: Mobilizing Books, Places, Readers and Reading.” Performance Research 22 (1): 32–48. doi: 10.1080/13528165.2017.1285560.
Hieslmair, Michael, and Michael Zinganel. 2018. “ Stop and Go: Investigating Nodes of Transofmration and Transition.” In Envisioning Networked Urban Mobilities: Art, Performances, Impacts, edited by Aslak Aamot Kjaerulff, Sven Kesselring, Peter Peters, and Kevin Hannam, 96–108. New York: Routledge.
Hjorth, Larisa, Adriana de Souza e Silva, and Lanson Klare, eds. 2020. The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media Art. 1st ed. New York: Routledge.
Hughes, Ainsley, and Kathy Mee. 2018. “ Journeys Unknown: Embodiment, Affect, and Living With Being ‘Lost’ and ‘Found’.” Geography Compass 12 (6): e12372. doi: 10.1111/gec3.12372.
Ingold, Tim, and Joe Lee Vergunst. 2008. Ways of Walking. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
Jensen, Ole B. 2021. “ Pandemic Disruption, Extended Bodies, and Elastic situations - Reflections on COVID-19 and Mobilities.” Mobilities 16 (1): 66–80. doi: 10.1080/17450101.2021.1867296.
Kaprow, Allan, and Jeff Kelley. 1993. Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life. Berkley: University of California Press.
Kara, Helen. 2015. Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences. Bristol: Polity Press.
Kester, Grant H. 2004. Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art. Berkeley, Calif. and London: University of California Press.
Kjaerulff, Aslak Aamot, Sven Kesselring, Peter Peters, and Kevin Hannam, eds. 2018. Envisioning Networked Urban Mobilities: Art, Performances, Impacts. New York: Routledge.
Lacy, Suzanne, ed. 1995. Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. Seattle, Washington: Bay Press.
Larsen, Jonas, and John Urry. 2011. “ Gazing and Performing.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29 (6): 1110–1125. doi: 10.1068/d21410.
Latour, Bruno. 2018. Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge: Polity.
Law, John, and, John Urry. 2004. “ Enacting the Social.” Economy and Society 33 (3): 390–410. doi: 10.1080/0308514042000225716.
Leavy, Patricia. 2015. Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice. New York: The Guilford Press.
Lorimer, Hayden. 2011. “ Walking: New Forms and Spaces for Studies of Pedestrianism.” In Geographies of Mobilities: Practices, Spaces, Subjects, edited by Tim Cresswell and Peter Merriman. Farnham: Ashgate.
Lury, Celia, and, Wakeford Nina. 2012. Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social. London. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
MacDonald, Gavin. 2014. “ Moving Bodies and the Map: relational and Absolute Conceptions of Space in GPS Based Art.” Acoustic Space 12: 167–177.
Marres, Noortje, Michael Guggenheim, and Alex Wilkie. 2018. Inventing the Social. Mattering Press.
Mekdjian, Sarah. 2015. “ Mapping Mobile Borders: Critical Cartographies of Borders Based on Migration Experiences.” In: Borderities and the Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders, 204–223. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Merriman, Peter, and Catrin Webster. 2009. “ Travel Projects: Landscape, Art, Movement.” Cultural Geographies 16 (4): 525–535. doi: 10.1177/1474474009340120.
Murray, Lesley, and Sara Upstone. 2014. Researching & Representing Mobilities: Transdisciplinary Encounters. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Myers, Misha. 2011. “ Walking Again Lively: Towards an Ambulant and Conversive Methodology of Performance and Research.” Mobilities 6 (2): 183–201. doi: 10.1080/17450101.2011.552775.
Pase, Andrea, Laura Lo Presti, Tania Rossetto, and Giada Peterle. 2021. “ Pandemic Cartographies: A Conversation on Mappings, Imaginings and Emotions.” Mobilities 16 (1): 134–153. doi: 10.1080/17450101.2020.1866319.
Peters, Peter. 2017. “ On Becoming a Parcel: Artistic Interventions as Ways of Knowing Mobile Worlds.” In Envisioning Networked Urban Mobilities: Art, Performances, Impacts, edited by Aslak Aamot Kjaerulff, Sven Kesselring, Peter Peters, and Kevin Hannam, 26–37. London and New York: Routledge.
Ramsey, Kevin. 2008. “ A Call for Agonism: GIS AND THE Politics of Collaboration.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 40 (10): 2346–2363. doi: 10.1068/a4028.
Rose, Gillian. 2014. “ On the Relation Between ‘Visual Research Methods’ and Contemporary Visual Culture.” The Sociological Review 62 (1): 24–46. doi: 10.1111/1467-954X.12109.
Rumsby, Charlie. 2020. “ Retrospective (Re)Presentation: Turning the Written Ethnographic Text into an ‘Ethno-Graphic’.” Entanglements Journal 3: 7–27. ISSN 2516–5860
Serota, Nicholas. 2018. “The Arts Have a Leading Role to Play in Tackling Climate Change.” The Guardian, November 20. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/20/arts-climate-change.
Schewel, Kerylin. 2020. “ Understanding Immobility: Moving beyond the Mobility Bias in Migration Studies.” International Migration Review 54 (2): 328–355. doi: 10.1177/0197918319831952.
Sheller, Mimi. 2014. “ The New Mobilities Paradigm for a Live Sociology.” Current Sociology 62 (6): 789–811. doi: 10.1177/0011392114533211.
Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. 2006. “ The New Mobilities Paradigm.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 38 (2): 207–226. doi: 10.1068/a37268.
Simone, Abdoumaliq, and Edgar Pieterse. 2018. New Urban Worlds: Inhabiting Dissonant Times. Cambridge: Polity.
Southern, Jen. 2012. “ Comobility: How Proximity and Distance Travel Together in Locative Media.” Canadian Journal of Communication 37 (1): 75–91. doi: 10.22230/cjc.2012v37n1a2512.
Southern, Jen, and Chris Speed. 2015. “ Sharing Occasions at a Distance: The Different Dimensions of Comobility.” In Moving Sites: Investigating Site Specific Dance Performance, edited by Victoria Hunter. Abingdon: Routledge.
Stansfield, Allison. 2018. “ A Spectrum of Experience: A Community Art Project to Build Empathy Through Identity Sharing in a Suburban High School.” Master thesis, Lesley University.
Suchman, Lucy, Randall Trigg, and Jeanette Blomberg. 2002. “ Working Artefacts: ethnomethods of the Prototype.” The British Journal of Sociology 53 (2): 163–179. 10.1080/00071310220133287.
Sullivan, Graeme. 2010. Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in Visual Arts. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: SAGE.
Sunderland, Naomi., Helen Bristed, Ori Gudes, Jennifer Boddy, and M. Da Silva. 2012. “ What Does It Feel like to Live Here? Exploring Sensory Ethnography as a Collaborative Methodology for Investigating Social Determinants of Health in Place.” Health & Place 18 (5): 1056–1067. doi: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2012.05.007.