Exhibition catalog
Mapping A/r/tography: Primary and Secondary Students as A/r/tographic Co-Researchers
2019
Metrics
37 Record Views
Abstract
Students from Arcadia College and the Silkwood School joined Southern Cross University researchers and visited the Gondwana Rainforest at Natural Arch to walk and map the site through drawing, photography and video. They then spent several studio days creating further mappings and artworks, co-analyzing and co-creating further data from the original maps. This exhibition showcases a selection of this work. The Australian site component of the project has a Visual Arts Education and Environmental Education focus. Engaging the method of a/r/tography and building on first people’s Indigenous connection to walking the land as ‘songlines’ ‘strings’ or ‘Dreaming tracks,’ ancient passages, pathways, and how these routes are enacted as cartographies of the landscape, the inquiry on the Australian site engaged a rich cartography of place, culture, history and identity. The sites of the Gondwana Rainforests in South East Queensland are the most extensive subtropical rainforests in the world. This ancient world heritage site arouses transnational and intra-national storytelling about human-land relations and the complex connections between identity and space for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians through the lens of homelands and languages.Specifically, the students investigated the site through a complex and entangled process of socio-historical-cultural cartographies. These cartographies have at their centre, an attention to sensorial, embodied experience with the site. We engaged in a deep mapping of connections and experience through the languages of science, Art and sociology. The researchers collaboratively walked the sites cyclically over time, mapping the encounters and experiences through photography, video, drawing, and visual journaling as a sustainable living inquiry. From this a/r/tographic fieldwork, the researchers analysed the information they gathered a/r/tographically, reflectively and diffractively. Through this process, the researchers created artful expressions and languages in paint, video, audio, poetry and photography that ensured a further layer of a/r/tographic renderings and analyses. Through the transnational partnerships we evaluated the inquiry with and in relation to the international networks, opening readings of the respective sites. As a consequence of this work, a curriculum for both Visual Arts Education and Environmental Education students will be developed, that focuses on embodied methods of a/r/tography and walkography to inform pedagogy.
Details
- Title
- Mapping A/r/tography: Primary and Secondary Students as A/r/tographic Co-Researchers
- Creators
- Alexandra Lasczik - Southern Cross UniversityAmy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles - Southern Cross UniversityKatie Hotko - Southern Cross University
- Publisher
- Kirra Hill Community Centre Gallery
- Identifiers
- 991012870599202368
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Education; School of Education
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Exhibition catalog