Nordic Journal of Art & Research

Living as an a/r/tographer – A Nordic perspective

Maybritt Jensen, Ann-Hege Lorvik Waterhouse, Ingrid Danbolt, Torill Vist — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This article introduces the second and final part of the special issue, Living as an a/r/tographer – A Nordic perspective. The editorial team present some of their reflections and discussions over three years of editorial work, before they introduce the contributions in the second half of the issue – six scientific articles and one explorative text. The Nordic authors contributing to the special issue form a vibrant chorus of voices from various professional fields in art and culture, addressing a multitude of themes that serve as diverse entry points into a/r/tographic research. The editorial team members have been interwoven with the authors, with one another, with peers, and with theories. In this introduction, the four editors, in a rhizomatic manner, highlight themes and concepts they have engaged with throughout their editorial processes. This work has unfolded both as a community (of practice) and through individual thought-dialogues. The introduction raises reflections and questions about editorial work as a collective effort, the place and value of such work within the academic framework, and ethical considerations in a/r/tographic inquiry. Additionally, it highlights key concepts and characteristics of a/r/tographic research—those that have challenged the editors and prompted them to pause to reflect once more, such as the personal, the affective, and that which creates resonance.

Photo: Ann-Hege Lorvik Waterhouse

Choreographer/researcher/teacher

Tone Pernille Østern, Camilla Reppen, Stina O’Connell, Madelaine Daneberg — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This article follows the becoming a/r/tographic of four colleagues working within the field of dance pedagogy at Stockholm University of the Arts. The four colleagues – Tone, Camilla, Stina, Madelaine - are part of a larger professional learning community of staff that together have carried out a 3-year long change project restructuring the BA program in dance pedagogy. As a result, the BA has been given an a/r/tographic approach, emphasizing the entangled positions of the artist, researcher, and teacher in dance pedagogy. Another result is the open course A/r/tography in theory and practice in higher education (7.5 ects), which was developed to qualify staff to work through a/r/tography. The four authors of this article were all involved in the first round of the open course, Tone as course teacher, and Camilla, Stina, and Madelaine as staff-students. The course is the entanglement from which they have explored the question that guides this article: How is a/r/ography being developed for the field of dance pedagogy in the context of Stockholm University of the Arts in an ongoing collaborative learning community of teachers? Their exploration is based in a diffractive methodology, thinks-with theory from a/r/tography and expanded choreography, and has resulted in three a/r/tographic expositions on Research Catalogue. The insights arrived at are discussed as: values; performative pedagogy; expanded choreography; a researching approach as choreographers/researchers/teachers; and professional development of staff in higher dance education.

Photo: Camilla Reppen

Fortellerens kroppslige erfaring [The Storyteller's bodily experience]

Ingvild Olsen Olaussen — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Through an a/r/tographic approach, this article aims to articulate bodily experiences derived from storytelling practices in Early Childhood Education and school settings, and to explore how these experiences influence and expand the understanding of teaching practices within teacher education. The article links an a/r/tographic approach to a body phenomenological perspective. This methodology acknowledges bodily and personal experiences as processes that are continuously interacting with their surroundings and the world, through the dynamics of touching and being touched. The material consists of the a/r/tographer's bodily experiences, organized from three positions related to proximity and distance: 1) Balanced, 2) Close, and 3) Distanced. Central to the discussion are reflections on the potential interactions that emerge between the storyteller and the child, and in novel ways between the teacher and the students. This approach seeks to contribute to broadening perspectives on teacher educators' practices and to enhance and nuance the interaction between teacher educators and students, proposing three possible positions for proximity and distance.

Photo: Ingvild Olsen Olaussen

Made by entangled words and wool

Samira Jamouchi — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

In this essay, I highlight a performative and rhizomatic approach to my art-based research using the phenomenon of wool felting to address entangling words and wool fibres as a material-discourse. I address drifting movements from the notion of a/r/tography as I perceive it, through echo, resonance and re-emergence in my art-based research design. This is done by querying, and caring for, the idea of identity, as I carry many of them, of various nature and various intensities. Furthermore, I decentralise the human in the art-based research methodology that I have been using in recent years in artistic, scholarly and pedagogical contexts. This text dialogues with the recent work of Stephanie Springgay (2020 and 2022), especially her work related to the concept of feltness, and more broadly research-creation (Manning, 2016).

Photo: Samira Jamouchi

En a/r/tografs tilblivelse [The becoming of an a/r/tographer]

Jørgen Moe — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Through an a/r/tographic approach, I have explored what happens when sensory and exploratory processes with clay are opened up in early childhood teacher education, and what implications this has for me as an a/r/tographer. The article is grounded in three clay events together with the a/r/tographer’s experiences, both as a professional practitioner and as a human being. With clay as the focal point, I have navigated a landscape of various perspectives related to pedagogical and creative processes: Embodied phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, 1995), agential realism (Barad, 2007), and process philosophy (Deleuze & Guattari, 2005). Although these perspectives are positioned differently in terms of scientific theory and philosophy, they all offer important insights into understanding what has taken place.

Photo: Jørgen Moe

Fagdidaktikk for lærerutdanneres undervisningsforberedende praksis [Subject didactics for teacher educators' teaching preparatory practice]

Anne Guro Schmidt Antun — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

In this article, I examine the teacher educator's preparatory practices in arts and crafts. The study is experience-based and auto-ethnographic. The practice is examined and interpreted within an a/r/tographic methodological framework. In the interpretation of the material, I use phenomenological hermeneutics and the hermeneutic circle. The research question is: What elements are operative in an a/r/totheke, and how can they be incorporated into a model for didactic (re)search? The preparatory practice is characterized by the teacher educator developing and creating an archive that I conceptually call an a/r/totheke. Artifacts are central, and the elements that are operative in the a/r/totheke are didactics, graphein, and art-making. From each of these, formative meaning, immaterial meaning, and material meaning develop. The model for didactic (re)search is process-based and contributes to expanding perspectives for meaning-making activities and formation in the subject of Art and Design, including elements of visual arts, crafts, and material-based design.

Photo: Anne Guro Schmidt Antun

Ti år med Ludt og Lillebror [Ten years with Ludt and Lillebror]

Torill Vist — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This text addresses poetic writing within the author’s own a/r/tographic practice. It explores the distinctive features characterising the author’s poetic writing over the past decade, encompassing research, teaching, and artistic work. The poetic writings processes studied are quite varied, and expressions range from song lyrics with end rhymes to loose verbal sketches employing poetic devices. The presentation unfolds in a narrative form wherein the texts are primarily examined through the lens of a/r/tographic theory and research. The poetic processes/features that stand out in particular include capturing impulses (and thereby articulating the vague); sharpening focus (and thereby accepting slow pace and high sensitivity); clearing up (while simultaneously creating patterns and meaning); and playing (thus also involving the use of humor and surprises). These aspects are discussed in relation to living as an a/r/tographer, demonstrating that poetic writing processes can be fruitful in most phases of a research project and can be linked to the artist, the researcher, as well as the educator. Furthermore, the poetic sketches affirm the interstice as well as the intertwining between the personal and the professional, and between the individual and the social—both aspects important in a/r/tography.

Photo: Torill Vist

En a/r/tograf krysser sine spor [An a/r/tographer crosses her paths]

Siri Haukenes — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This essay invites readers to engage with the intersections of art, research, and teaching. It encourages exploration of how these elements can enrich both personal and professional life. This study is based on the author’s concert lecture in 2016, featuring the music of Harald Sæverud, viewed through an a/r/tographic lens. The text spans a period of more than fifty years, beginning with the enthusiasm of a twelve-year-old for Sæverud’s music. It then moves through letter writing, personal visits, concerts, and studies of his compositions. The author reflects on these encounters. Personal stories, correspondence, audio samples, and images are intricately woven together to bridge past experiences with present insights. This approach explores the intersections between the a/r/tographer’s various roles.

A/r/tography challenges the author to investigate the dynamic interplay among these identities. It offers a reflective journey through previous engagements with Sæverud’s music and their influence on the author’s artistic and pedagogical practices. The author also embraces the concept of “living as an a/r/tographer,” emphasizing the significance of the spaces between roles and the potential for creative exploration.

The essay raises questions about arts-based research and the importance of personal experience in scholarly research. It also considers the role that stories and memories play in shaping understanding. The essay draws on traditions of autoethnography as a means of reflecting on how personal history and artistic practice contribute to a broader discourse within arts-based research.

Photo: Siri Haukenes