A/r/tography as a Pedagogical Strategy: Entering Somewhere in the Middle of Becoming Artist

Abstract

AbstractA/r/tography is often considered to be an arts and education practice‐based research methodology, but this author explores a/r/tography as a pedagogical strategy that has informed the author's artistic practice and pedagogical experiments. The author tracks his own journey of entering into an a/r/trographic world and where that entering has positioned him as an artist and educator and then moves on to speculate a possible arts education as his a/r/tography contorts into conceptual doings. Walking is used as a concept, as a process or method to generate more concepts, and as an art form with pedagogical potential within several undergraduate and one graduate course at the author's university. The author also investigates alongside or in concert with the courses he gives. The author equates artistic concepts, like walking, with theoretical and philosophical arguments, assertions and propositions. Artistic processes are equated with methods and methodological concerns, even though these systems of inquiry and knowing may be idiosyncratic in artistic inquiry. And finally, an art form can be understood in research terms as a type of research product or creation, that can be an event, performance, or a continuation of these as write ups or presentations, that are shared with the general or a particular public.