Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on my experience moving from the role of researcher to the role of artist and how that shift helped me recognize the importance of vulnerability in academic scholarship. This paper draws from my experience turning my research on family narrative into a bookmaking project.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will reflect on my experience moving from the role of researcher to the role of artist, and it will explore how that shift helped me recognize the importance of vulnerability in both academic scholarship and art practice. I will draw from my experience turning my research on family narrative into a bookmaking project, titled Three Mean Cows: Oral Narrative as Structural Form. Three Mean Cows is based on a personal experience narrative told by my mother, and it uses bookmaking as a way to explore narrative structure.

To maintain academic authority, researchers and students often assert a distance between their personal and academic selves, and academic discourse often hides the messy, vulnerable, process of honing one's craft as a writer and researcher. Three Mean Cows drew upon family narrative research, which by necessity entangled the personal and the academic; meanwhile, the experience of presenting my research in an art form outside my primary area of training, left me feeling quite vulnerable. This paper aims to open up a conversation about what it is like to embrace the intimate and vulnerable dimensions of academic research and art practice, and it will explore why that choice can often feel in conflict with our professional, academic selves. This paper will also explore what it is like to take ethnographic material and present it in vastly different forms for different audiences.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper it is explored how art-making within the study of folkloristic drawings reveals features about folklore, material things and borders. It is demonstrated also how art-making can help recognising presumptions, functions as self-reflection and stimulates discussions about concepts.

Paper long abstract:

The paper discusses the influence of art-making within the study of material things and borders from the viewpoint of folkloristic drawings. Drawing is emphasised following Ingold (2007) and other drawing-related approaches (see Korolainen 2017; 2014; Ramos 2015; Ingold 2011; Taussig 2011). The research question is what characteristics drawings can reveal about the relations between material things, folklore, and borders?

The research material - located at the Finnish Literature Society archive - is limited to early 20th century responses and submitted drawings, which concern folklore and material objects. The methods of multimodal analysis is utilised for analysing the pictures and the texts simultaneously. Moreover, the project includes art-making i.e. comic drawing.

It is argued, firstly, that art-making can help recognising presumptions in research. For example, drawings constitute one "unspoken dimension" within the former folklore research and collecting in Finland, because these drawings are only rarely explained. Thus, the questions arise: how to interpret the drawings? More generally, how to describe cultural traditions? With respect to this, art-making serves also as a means of self-reflection here.

Secondly, the paper demonstrates how art-making offers "tracks" for approaching (immaterial) folklore, as well borders, when especially a conceptualization and depiction of these issues are emphasised. Thus, art-making here is not about illustrating the research topic, the materials, or the project. Instead, it pairs with methodological issues, while simultaneously; its objective is also to create an independent fictive comic album that addresses border experiences. Consequently, art-making adventurously stimulates discussions about concepts, theoretical and ethical issues.

Paper short abstract:

What the ethnographers do? They draw! Between fieldwork and home we find the sketchbook. Kind of documentation, memorization and sensual excursions. It's easy, with the pencil, stylo plume or with the collage of local newspapers scraps. Let's sketch!

Paper long abstract:

What the ethnographers do? They draw!

Between fieldwork and home we find the sketchbook. Kind of documentation, memorization and sensual excursions. It's easy, with the pencil, stylo plume or with the collage of local newspapers scraps.

Jahuni Pallasma said that between the relation eye - hand - mind we can find deepness of our experiences. This triangle is drawing.

Sometimes someone say: drawing is for children or for professional artist. Why? Because sometimes the adults have problem with imagination. Drawing this is just a form of visual art. Drawing this is a way of thinking, working and life philosophy. Drawing take us from visual perspective to sensual dimension.

In this paper I propose critical analyse of few pages from my fieldwork sketchbooks and one exercise for you at home.

Paper short abstract:

In my paper I explore creative autobioethnography and how it merges ethnographic methodologies with creative non-fiction. My analysis of the novel Cabañuelas asks: How does it integrates ethnographic methodologies? What happens in fiction when lived experiences join formal ethnographic research?

Paper long abstract:

I draw upon the theories of ethnographic research and Chicana feminist studies to explore the creative process as it evolves from gathering stories and analyzing cultural expressions to the finished creative work. Gloria Anzaldúa urges that we create our own theories to analyze our heretofore marginalized work, to excavate the unique cultural production across boundaries, and to shape new ways of thinking about academic works. Specifically, I will use my own work as a researcher and the process I used in writing Cabañuelas, a text that is rooted in fieldwork conducted in Spain and Texas. I explore creative autobioethnography and how it merges ethnographic methodologies with creative non-fiction. The key questions I raise are: How does field work make its way into a creative narrative? What are some concerns for the development of narrative? How does creative autobioethnography integrate ethnographic methodologies? Does a different methodology emerge when formal ethnographic research is coupled with lived experiences?

Paper short abstract:

This paper incorporates theories of bricolage and the autoethnographic reflections of a writer-turned-folklorist to complicate the distinction often drawn between abstract and experiential forms of knowledge, especially as it relates to the production of creative and academic work.

Paper long abstract:

As folklorists and artists, we often explore how knowledge is acquired, challenged, and brought to bear across a variety of genres. How do everyday experiences shape our understanding of social action and creative power? How do learned conceptual systems inform our approaches to artistic expression? How do we interrogate questions of identity through creative and critical experimentation? My autoethnographic paper considers these questions from the perspective of a writer-turned-folklorist. I trace my path from a rural, agricultural region of the United States through my interdisciplinary work within academic institutions as a writer and scholar. I pay particular attention to my family's storytelling traditions even as I track my development as a creative writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Drawing on theories of bricolage introduced by Claude Lévi-Strauss, I seek to complicate the distinction between structured and unstructured approaches to knowledge using my work as a case study. I investigate four primary lines of inquiry: (1) the effects of bricolage-thinking on my creative methodology, (2) how the discipline of creative writing shapes my approach to folklore and ethnology, (3) the tension I explore between experiential and abstract knowledge, and (4) the ways in which knowledge systems overlap across my work. I analyze examples from my creative and academic writing to demonstrate how empirical and institutional forces have shaped my encounters with various forms of knowledge, from the abstract to the ethnographic. I invite further conversation from panelists regarding their own paths to knowledge in light of their varied artistic practices.

Paper short abstract:

I will discuss the experience of working with community and university partners to devise theatre/performance that explores issues of migration and placemaking in the Hilltop neighborhood of Columbus OH. I want to explore the limits and possibilities for advancing a social justice agenda.

Paper long abstract:

From 2016-2018, a multidisciplinary faculty/student group worked with five community groups in the economically distressed Hilltop neighborhood of Columbus Ohio to devise creative performances that explored migration and placemaking themes. Culminating in a Spring 2018 performance that was by, for, and in the community, the project showcased five creative pieces. Although participating groups had not worked together prior to the culminating event and were divided by age and language, the event offered a rare opportunity for shared engagement. As the first stage of a multi-year project, the university coordinating team judged it a success. Personally, participating for an entire semester in movement sessions with the Seniors group at the YMCA allowed me to explore my own creativity. It became a weekly obligation that I prioritized and enjoyed as a welcome relief from my hectic academic routine. As our connection with community participants was being forged through co-participation, mining the nostalgia of older residents as material for our final piece made sense as a safe and familiar move. However, I subsequently learned from our one African-American participant, Annette Jefferson, that neighborhood discord around issues of race and representation is increasing in the Hilltop. This dis-sonance between what one can practically do with a group of novice performers and the social justice claims that devised theatre proponents make for their work deserves additional reflection and creative action as we move to the next phase of the project. I offer this point of dissonance as a provocation for discussion and collective thinking.

Paper short abstract:

An inquiry into how artistic practice can enhance academic research practices and vice versa; and how each can serve as means to transform a stagnant world.

Paper long abstract:

My work as a musician and a feminist activist led me to explore the topic of music, technology and gender, through the experiences of female musicians who use technology in their music making (including myself). Through ethnographic methods, my informants and I took a close look at how the creative process unfolds at the conjunction of music and technology, and how

gendered preconceptions residing in technological objects can influence the process.

Building from theories of material culture, phenomenology and affect, it became apparent how deep-rooted dualist thinking, such as mechanic vs. organic and logical vs. aesthetic, influence people's views and experiences of technology. Gendered preconceptions can be traced back to the very same dualist thinking (male vs. female), which, in addition to the prevailing gender imbalance, greatly affects the way research participants experienced the fields of music and technology.

Using technology to creative ends bridges the gap between what is commonly understood as opposites. Technology is not inherently masculine, but it takes time to change the ideas that adhere to it. During such a transformation, a somewhat paradoxical and confusing reality can unfold.

In this paper, I intend to shed some light on how the research project has enhanced my own endeavors, both as a musician and a feminist activist within the field of music and youth empowerment. My threefold identity mentioned in the title is essentially a cycle where each continuously feeds into, and transforms, the other.

Paper short abstract:

This talk considers methods and ethics at the intersections of documentary arts, oral history & public folklore practice in the context of a multi-modal folklife/arts project on organic farming -- with an eye to how arts-inflected forms and exhibition venues can catalyze urgent public conversations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper/talk discuss intersections of documentary arts, oral history and public folklore practice in the context of my work with the Growing Right Project -- a multi-modal public folklife, oral history and arts project tracking histories of organic farming in Ohio. Growing Right has found public support through both arts and humanities funding agencies, and has, since the beginning, sought to push back on 'expected' modes of public folklife output (pull-up banners, museum-like text) to seek more powerful ways and non-traditional venues to catalyze community conversation about the urgencies of environmental and agricultural harm in Ohio, U.S.A.; and the legacies of local organizing to build a more regenerative ecological agriculture. Drawing from new directions in experimental ethnography, experimental film, sound studies and oral history "research-creation," I will discuss key ways that my joint "documentary arts"/public folklore work have clarified both a hybrid praxis and a new ethics for my community-collaborative work -- in ways that uniquely reflect the ecological theme of the Growing Right Project, and seem resonant for the field of folklore studies at large, as we take up and seek to build work in solidarity with communities fighting for justice and planetary survival.

Paper short abstract:

What can be gained through engagement with the correlations between ethnographic and artistic methods of creation? This anthropologist examines compared processes of collection, replication, and communication through experiences of engagement with local artists in Homer, Alaska.

Paper long abstract:

Ethnographers are encouraged to understand their interlocutors as theorists in their own right, as experts in their own lives; I hope to explore how approaches to art-as-theory and theory-as-art may benefit ethnographic method. This paper draws on preliminary research for my broader dissertation in cultural anthropology on co-produced epistemologies of environmental change in Kachemak Bay, Alaska. The location of my research, my hometown of Homer, Alaska, is known for its high per-capita of artists, sometimes attributed to the "cosmic vibrations" and beauty of the place. Specifically, this paper will draw on my engagement with local textile artist and printmaker Mandy Bernard; I was inspired by her January 2017 show Patterns of Place, created during a monthlong residency at the Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer, Alaska (https://www.mandybernard.com/installation). Bernard's focus on natural patterns and engagement with senses of place through her art mirrors my own interest in the role of landscape in human lives. Exchanges with Bernard have solidified comparisons of each others' processes: collection, replication, creation, and the constant tensions of embodied creativity against necessary explanation, communication, and self-promotion. This paper seeks to explore the corollaries between artmaking and ethnography as forms of anthropological knowledge production, as well as the productivity of exchanges between artists and ethnographers.