Process and Relationship

A Walking-Dialogue

Authors

  • Sandra A. Cowan University of Lethbridge
  • Mia van Leeuwen University of Lethbridge

Abstract

As an interdisciplinary duo from an academic library background and a performing arts background, we underwent a process of recording a series of dialogues about our respective research practices in and between our fields. As we conversed, we walked in separate locations while remaining connected by our phones, permitting us to explore a kinetic and spontaneous approach as a mode of inquiry. An experiment and intended provocation to demonstrate that, just as there are other ways to research, there are other ways of knowing, generating, and presenting ideas that articulate the value of alternative methods within the academy, specifically within the realm of arts-based research. Troubled by the fact that what we perform and produce as research is not easily sanctioned as “research” within the library or the academy, we discuss what it is about these arts-based methods of experimentation, creation, practice, and knowledge-seeking that we find so generative and value so highly. The main themes that we circled and returned to throughout this walking-dialogue fell into the following categories: embodiment on a local, living landscape; fragmentation, collage, and the interstices of juxtaposition; unknowing, failure and doubt; and diverse ways of knowing.

Pre-print first published online 09/29/2023

Author Biographies

Sandra A. Cowan, University of Lethbridge

Sandra Cowan is the Fine Arts librarian at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. Her research practice revolves around thinking about creative process and production within the scholarly framework, and in particular walking as a research methodology for creative work. She maintains an art practice in photography, clay, and language, and is one of the founding members of the Lethbridge Walking arts collective, based in the beautiful traditional lands of the Blackfoot Confederacy.

Mia van Leeuwen, University of Lethbridge

Mia van Leeuwen practices the body of performance to explore wide-ranging themes while playfully blurring the lines between theater, performance, ritual, and visual art. Unsettling, juxtaposing, queering, re-mixing, winking, collaborating, guiding, and making strange are actions that inform the devising of her various projects. Her object theater adaptation of Sapientia by 10th century canoness Hroswitha of Gandersheim, won the University of Alberta Frank Henderson Research Award for Medieval Women & Religion, as well as two Montreal English Theatre Awards (produced by Scapegoat Carnivale Theatre). Mia is currenlty an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lethbridge where she teaches studio courses in performance.

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Published

2023-09-29

Issue

Vol. 4: Assemblage, Inquiry, and Common Work in Library and Information Studies

Section

Perspectives

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Sandra A. Cowan, Mia van Leeuwen

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