As a fine fine-arts PhD student in Turtle Island (aka Canada), undertaking a research-creation doctoral project, i am in a particular situation.
Bridging—weaving—doing-making—thinking-with.
Allowed, encouraged, and funded to engage interdisciplinarily.
Allowed, encouraged, and funded to engage artistically with my topic of study.
And to study, in Sealy and Harney's (2018) á la Fred Moten sense:
With others.
Together.
Groundingly.
And to find my methods. To articulate the ways in which knowledge is accessed/created/disseminated.
Listening to jazz, walking through alleyways. Endlessly walking, observing. Endlessly walking, questioning. Endlessly walking, interviewing, digging archives, analyzing documents, attending protests, recording sounds, writing poetry, and reading, reading, reading. A slow-cooking method.
And to slowly realize where i am thinking from (and who i'm thinking with): a theoretical place where words like queer, feminist, situated, Anthropocene, palimpsest, change, resilience, (de)colonial, gentrification, place, smart, and identity—among many—echo throughout.
A theoretical place where dogs, cyborgs, and mushrooms have transcended the conceptual to become my friends, and hope-fully:
companions.
A place where critical theory takes me, as Jane Randell beautifully states, to "an elsewhere, from which to reflect upon myself, and a place from which to image new elsewheres" (2002, no page number).
1. This header references the work of Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing.
—Rendell, Jane. "Travelling the distance/Encountering others." Open Editions, 2002. 43-54.
