Reconfiguring my mother’s gesture: A journey of unlearning and embodied practice
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School of Arts, Design and Architecture |
Master's thesis
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Date
2020
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Master’s Programme in Nordic Visual Studies and Art Education (NoVA)
Language
en
Pages
92
Series
Abstract
In the field of art and art education, transformative practices have developed within the discourse of critical pedagogy and contemporary socially engaged art. This master thesis is about my personal journey of unlearning practice with my mother. My aspiration to unlearn dominant views and taken-for-granted knowledge leads me to examine myself and my mother closely. As it raises the question of the subject position of mother, I explore topics of freedom, empowerment, resistance, and unlearning through critical artistic practices based on the theoretical and philosophical framework of critical pedagogy and Rosi Braidotti’s notion of nomadic subjects. In grounding this research in practice, I organised collaborative art workshops as a site for reconfiguring the image of mother where my mother participated as a co-researcher. Within the multiple relations between daughter and mother, facilitator and participant, and teacher and student, we focused on rethinking the subject position of mother and practice of criticality. Under the methodological umbrella of arts-based research and autoethnography, our personal experiences, artworks, creative process, conversations, and reflections are the main ingredients to formulate the research knowledge. This journey of the study is a personal practice of changing the stories we inhabit through artistic embodied activities. It is an act of revealing and reestablishing stories of mother embedded in our bodies. The study aims to articulate pedagogical aspects of (un)learning in/through critical artistic practices and to explore the philosophical ground of my own (un)learning habits. To address this aim, the research questions include 1) What happens when a South Korean mother and daughter together explore the subject position of ‘mother’ through critical artistic practices? and 2) What type of (un)learning happens when these critical practices are interpreted/engaged through everyday performativity?. Finally, these research questions are answered in five themes: What does it mean to say ‘my mother’s voice?’, (Un)learning in/through encounters with the not-known, (Un)learning in/through collective performativity, (Un)learning in/through dialogue, and Becoming (m)other. These are formulated by analysing and interpreting specific moments I found during the workshops. These results address the way I pursue my act of becoming (m)other through which I identify stories of transformation of my mother’s gesture.Description
Supervisor
Brinck, JaanaThesis advisor
Tavin, KevinBrinck, Jaana
Keywords
unlearning, becoming, critical pedagogy, nomadic subject, embodied practice, arts-based research, autoethnography, art education