PhD Project

‘The Child, The Unpredictable Landscape and the Artist’

A Doctoral Research Project In Landscape and Sustainability.

Institute of Culture Studies, University of South East Norway

funded by The Doctoral Programme at The university of South East Norway

Background and Research Question

“What kind of unique risks and affordances might be offered by experimental, performative activities undertaken in expansive, unpredictable landscapes which create agency for transformation and revelation in cultural and environmental values?”

This is a curious, open minded and creative enquiry delving into a dialogue between places, landscapes and ‘architectures’. Researching the in-between in disciplines of education, visual and performing arts, architecture and cultural studies.  The aim of my research is to contribute to interdisciplinary work between art education, art critical practice, play theory, architecture and action for sustainability.

Methodology

My proposal, at this early stage, is that the research will be divided between a qualitative, multiple case study approach and a practice-led research approach through participatory action research as a performative ‘social sculptor’.  The purpose of this is to work both as a researcher perceiving from the outside, probably using normative textual observation and theoretical analysis of symbolic interaction and in parallel researching as a performative artist, who senses through doing and making, using an embodied practice-led, arts-based research, through phenomenology. Intentionally these two methodology strands will sit in parallel and form their own cyclical discourse of the 'unpredictable landscape', of 'in between' and of ways of understanding and of knowing.

Theory

Using open ended processes, grounded in curiosity, the research will encompass theoretical explorations of social and spatial justice, play, cultural sustainability, landscape and more than human. I plan to explore an interpretative approach using abductive (explanatory inference) strategies within a relativist ontology.