Echoes of a C/a/r/tography: mapping the practicum experience of pre-service visual arts teachers in the 'Visual Echoes Project'

This paper describes a collaborative arts-based research project entitled ‘Visual Echoes’ that explored the practicum experiences of pre-service Visual Arts teachers. Developing from the methodology of a/r/tography, this inquiry employed visual mapping as an approach to performing (rather than representing) the interrelationships between art, teaching and research. The preservice teachers drew upon their individual and collective practicum experiences to generate visual reflections, which were then translated into two large-scale paintings through a series of collaborative art practices. The interventions of the instructors allowed for a participatory process to be improvised, generating a multi-layered and authentically collaborative learning experience for all involved, together with the resolved and unresolved visual documentations. This artistic process complemented the spontaneous creation of social networks of interaction and discourse, which were both hidden and revealed in the material formations of the artefacts. In this paper, an analysis of the research process and evidence is framed through the methodology of a/r/ tography, contemporary art practices associated with cartography, and the conceptualisations of affect and the map found in the work of Deleuze and Guattari. We integrate these three theoretical and practical sources within our own methodology of c/a/r/tography, as developed over the course of the ‘Visual Echoes’ project. This approach has enabled us to map onto the transversal movements of affect and subjectivity as they have become increasingly entangled within a palimpsest of artefacts, images and texts.