Main description:

Living through the Covid-19 global pandemic has changed the way that we experience our lives, the way that we relate to one-another, and the way that we engage with the world. Focusing contextually on the initial lockdowns of the pandemic in 2020, this book proposes that art-based research has a central, illuminative role to play in our understanding of unfolding crises.

The changes brought on by the global event may not be readily accessible or expressible through traditional academic research. Art-based research offers the opportunity to explore, document, and reflect on the emerging and often ineffable qualities of transformed lives by drawing on emotional, bodily, and interactive aspects of experience. Such an approach allows for meaning-making that makes room for reflexive, interpersonal, and dialogical engagement. The contributions aim to capture and explore lived experiences of the pandemic, as well as begin a discussion about how meaning-making is changing through and beyond the pandemic. This book further explores how the nature and practice of art-based research in itself has been challenged and transformed.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in art education, art psychotherapy, consumer research, visual studies, cultural studies, and sociology.

Contents:

Introduction

Usva Seregina and Astrid Van den Bossche

PART 1: CONNECTION

1. Wandering with Wonder: From Social Practices to Artistic Practices and Back

Luciana Walther and Carlos Eduardo Felix da Costa

2. Drawing the Group: A Visual Exploration of a Therapeutic Space Online

Helen Omand

3. Collaging Covid Holidays: Using Collage as a Communal Method for Reflection and Research

Usva Seregina and Aurelie Broeckerhoff

4. Performing Forgiveness in the Age of Covid-19: Creating a Hybrid Space for Dialogue and Peacebuilding

Rana Aytug, Tom Gorman, Elly Harrowell and Victoria Thoms

PART 2: CHANGE

5. Living Aesthetics in a (Post)Pandemic World
Laurie A. Meamber

6. Encounters of Nothingness: Dilemmas of the Uncanny Self

Stephen O'Sullivan

7. Hollowed Out: Creative Coding and the Pandemic Urban Imaginary

Astrid Van den Bossche

8. "Can You Hear Me Now?" Listening and Living in Disruptive (Post)Pandemic Soundworlds

Matthias Bode

PART 3: CONFRONTATION

9. Poetic Reflection (PR): Voices in Pandemic Period
Hilary Downey

10. Faces of Self-Isolation

Usva Seregina

11. Everyone's a Photographer: Reflections on Photography as Creative Expression through Lockdown

Ekant Veer

12. "Public School Teachers, You All Completely Disgust Me!": How My Fake Trump Fought the Revolt of the Elites in Pandemic-Era Ann Arbor

Rebekah Modrak

Afterword

Astrid Van den Bossche and Usva Seregina