BAAT Conference |Workshop| ABR+A: The arts of making sense by Deborah Green

Deborah Green's Workshop Rationale :

Arts-Based Research through Autoethnography (ABR+A) makes sense of art therapy by inviting heart+head+body+soul+context+theory into creative conversations.
I story-tell ABR+A journeys as we use playful ABR+Aesque processes to explore pre-journey jitters+joysm, traverse topographic highs+lows, and gaze back upon emergent map/s visible only at journey s end. In this proposed training workshop, I lean into arts-based processes and cast myself as a weaver of stories, a montage assembler (Yardley. 2008), stitching together storied accounts of ABR+A that contain both factual and fictional re-craftings (Leavy, 2013) alongside artworks and photographic images.
Following this, participants will be invited to use creative and playful ABR+A processes to express and explore their own lived experiences of research.

My experience: 

When I first entered the workshop room to start setting up (I was an assistant volunteer, part of the BAAT Staff team), I noticed that there was a pleasant and earthy scent in the room. 
Indeed the facilitator, Deborah, had placed branches, herbs, leaves and rocks on the material table to be used.
It took me back to my house in Sifnos, a Greek island here my grandma has spent a lot of  time cultivating the garden with aromatic herbs.

When the session started, after a brief presentation on what ABR+A is and how she approaches research she guided us through a meditative and reflecting process.The thinking "journey" revolved about knowledge. We were asked to keep 'knowledge as a concept in mind" while picking up the materials that had an effect and made sense to us on that specific moment and time

I immediately went for the branches and the thread. Thread is a material that I admire its properties and therapeutic connotations.

It is  there to connect, to fill the gaps, to bind cues together and to create a continuous flow and narrative between words, meanings and metaphors.

As I was repeatedly wrapping the branch with the thread I accidentally started wrapping it around my hand too, binding everything together!

When I came to that realisation it struck me! 

It wasn't per se a poetic way of representing knowledge.. 

It was my destructive relationship with it!

I was overanalysing, over-wrapping  and almost creating an inescapable knot similar to the swaddling process on babies when they are little. 

I was enclosing myself and making sure that this “knowledge” was entrapping me..

Gradually many more images emerged into my conscious mind

The destruction of the tactile, experiential element of knowledge with the quantitative methods, facts numbers and probabilities being the protagonists in our thought processes.

a) I had lost control of my material -the thread-.

Instead of it being my tool on this exploratory game and being organically co-working alongside my body, it was now restricting my hand movements.

b) I gradually was turning my hand-object sculpture into a weapon. 

It was pointy and hostile and I felt like could only harm with it at this point. 

It made me think of the chiasm and the fine line between progressive and destructive knowledge.

Hasn't history already proven again and again how knowledge in the wrong hands is transformed from a tool to a weapon?

At this point we were encouraged to form a reflective  'conversation' with our objects to see if it can lead us any further.

This is the monologue that I came up with :

"Why do you have to be so angry?
Knowing does not give you the power.
Why keep the knowledge to yourself?  
Knowing is a way of connecting

And what if someone challenges your knowledge ?! 
What if you get rejected for your views?!

What is better?
To be bound with them in an gordian knot?
To not be able to escape from it and the only way of making use of it is via violence?

Gift it, share it, be brave to expose yourself through it."

Whilst being deep into my thoughts I caught in the corner of my eye another participant who was similarly using branches and thread.

What a different approach!

She seemed so relaxed, connected with the process of creating.

My first impression was that she was so caring and motherly towards her object.

An instant need to give her my art piece came over me.

I wanted to give it to her. She might choose to take care of it, treat it like she does with her own.

I walked towards her and without saying a word to her, placed it gently next to her.

I went back to my seat and started observing the people around me.

Surprisingly they were many using thread as a medium...
On the ceiling lamps, wall hooks, legs, arms!

There were giggles everywhere! 

I directed my gaze to the new owner of "my knowledge". Indeed she had incorporated my piece into hers providing a foster nest for it to be safe.  

 

 How heart warming!

In the sharing | reflective cycle we were asked to present with a bodily movement our experience.

I immediately went in from of her and made a kinesis resembling of giving.

On her turn she came an gave me an affectionate, strong hug.

It was an amazing exchange of energy, emotions and affection.

When the workshop ended everyone left and I was there to clear the space.

The process of containing and controlling the mess was liberating.

It was a powerful workshop in which I was encountered with my prejudice, fears and views on knowledge, power and collective awareness.

If you are interested in following her work:
https://www.whitecliffe.ac.nz/whitecliffe/staff/deborah-green/

The conference's 3 day agenda:
https://www.baat.org/Assets/Docs/International%20conference/Updated%20programs/3%20Day%20Agenda%20(1).pdf