Artful Bodymind: Enlivening Transformative Research
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Artful Bodymind: Enlivening transformative research methodologies By Miche Fabre Lewin PhD October 2019 Artful Bodymind: Enlivening transformative research methodologies By Miche Fabre Lewin October 2019 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the University’s requirements for the Degree of Master of Philosophy Synopsis I am. Who am I? Where am I? How do I know who I am? How do I know where I am? How do I know what to be, what to do, how to act? How do I know my ‘I’? The body and its lived experience have been actively subjugated as a knowing subject within Western research cultures. The epistemicide of the body’s multiple intelligences is in tandem with our severance from an extensive relationship with food as well as highlighting the disconnection from the art of ritual as part of life’s dynamic forms and processes. My thesis is a response to calls for artful, holistic and embodied research that encompasses personal and collective liberation for social and ecological justice. I situate my research within performative and transformative research methodologies which, in their embrace of a relational approach to knowing, respect the serendipitous, the intuitive, the unknown and the emergent. I innovate the concept of the artful bodymind as a remembering of the senses and multiple intelligences of the interconnected body and mind. My artful bodymind evolves with and through my biography and life encounters, my ritual arts practice and my research inquiries, all within a continuous exchange with people, matter and habitats of place. The field of my Performative Action Research took place within an Artist Research Residency in South Africa entitled Living Cultures: kitchen culture meets agriculture. Based on my proposal, the research design was co-evolved with the Sustainability Institute, Lynedoch and the University of Stellenbosch. Within this Residency I devised Ritual Workshops that make visible the living food cycle within conditions which foster a sympoietic sensibility and offer the experience of participatory consciousness through skills-sharing with artisan, culinary and regenerative food- growing practices. As an exploration of the artful bodymind within a contemporary ritual form, my Practice-as-Research reconnects and reintegrates art and ritual for naturalcultural living. My contribution to knowledge is a Sympoietic Ritual Methodology that creates the conditions for the artful bodymind to experience participatory consciousness. These convivial encounters with food cultures through the artful bodymind are the ground for cultivating an ethics of care in the everyday. i" "" DEDICATION To my mother Cecile Madeleine Fabre and my father Gerald Reg Lewin. You gave me life, laughter, love and liberation. Sadly, you will not be holding these pages in your Earthly hands. ii" "" ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Acknowledgements My heartfelt gratitude goes to my Director of Studies Professor Michel Pimbert and my supervisor Dr Patricia Gaya. Deep appreciations to Dr Rika Preiser my advisor from Stellenbosch University, South Africa, who joined my supervisory team along the way. With me throughout the journey Dr Chris Seeley has been my supervisor, at first from her home Folly Cottage and subsequently her guidance came from the other side. Beyond words is my honouring and respect of the artful collaboration between myself and Dr Flora Gathorne-Hardy, who was my Thinking-Listening partner throughout my research. Deep thanks to my Viva examiners, David Haley and Chiara Tornaghi whose profound questions and responses gave me a meta-supervision to cohere its final form. Most profound is the recognition that all of you who participated in Living Cultures Artist Research Residency at the Sustainability Institute co-created this thesis with me. It is through your feeling and thinking and experiencing that the research has value and meaning. All together, you have, with your artful bodyminds, your histories, mysteries, geographies and generosities contributed to making this inspirational research journey one of a rare, loving adventure. With thanks to all the food artisans, chefs and growers, in accompaniment with my hands-on practitioners who assisted to keep my bodymind artful and enlivened. Appreciations to the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) support team, including: Benjamin Cook, Carole Fox, Dr Iain McKinnon, Layla Riches, Liz Woodard, Moya Kneafsey, Mina Thompson and Irene Sotiropoulou. For my Tribe heartfelt thanks for inspiring and supporting me in the sympoietic dance: Alicia Carey, Angelina Gibbs, Angus McIntosh, Aron Mabunda, Bernard Jarman, Bronwyn Lace, Caer Smyth, Caroline Wiseman, Charl Pienaar, Charlotte von Bulow, Chris Mattos, Clare Patey, Clive Adams, Dan Gretton, Daphne Lambert, David Baldry, Diana Jeater, Dolf Mootham, Donald Parenzee, Ebenaezer Appies, Eduardo Shimahara, Elfreida Pschorn-Strauss, Eric Swarts, Fergus Anderson, Fiona Dunbar, Fritz Schoon, Gathorne Cranbrook, Geoff Mead, Gwen Meyer, Helen van Zyl, James Marriott, Jane Rendell, Jane Trowell, Jarlyne Joel, Jeremy Barty, Jeremy Naydler, Jeremy Taylor, Jess Shulschenk, Jill Adams, Jim Read, John van Breda, Jojo Mehta, Julia Wright, Julian Henriques, Kitty D’Costa, Laura Godfrey Isaacs, Layla Lace iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Neustetter, Kelvin Joel, Ledelle Moe, Liesel Haasbroek, Luke Metlerkamp, Mark Swilling, Marcus Neustetter, Mariota Enthoven, Megan Lindow, Mikal Lambert, Miranda Tufnell, Nick Allan, Nick Lunch, Neil Graham, Nick Saltmarsh, Polly Higgins, Raz-Lee Hector, Riaan van Zyl, Sarah Whatley, Saskia von Diest, Shelley Sacks, Sue Spaid, Tessa Little, Theo Oldjohn and Warwick Fox. Thanks to EcoDry Research and Knowledge Exchange Programme for funding. Photographic acknowledgments to Eva van Niekerk for photograph of FieldTable. All other images are credited to Miche Fabre Lewin and Flora Gathorne-Hardy. Gratitude to the Genius Loci UK The Abbey, Sutton Courtney; Create Centre, Bristol; The Five Valleys; Studio OPS; Folly Cottage; No. 84, Lilburn; Hawkwood; Rock Cottage; The Painswick; Star Anise; Alde Cottage; Shingle Street; Darsham Nursery Café; Wentworth Hotel; Brudenall Hotel; White Lion Hotel; Unruly Pig; Timberyard; River Thames, London. Netherlands Sittard Sweden Ytterjarna Denmark Thrymshoj South Africa Garden Cottage Spier Farm; Nature’s Valley; Bainskloof; Sustainability Institute; Millwood Cottage. iv ORIENTATION ORIENTATION Challenge of our times I write this thesis during a time when artificial intelligence and the electronic ecosystem lure us with technological promises for better lifestyles and faster futures free from the flaws and failings of the human body. This technological sophistication is starkly silhouetting against our disconnection from our environment. This is evidenced in the degradation of our planetary habitat, multiple oppressions, human poverty, damaged soils, denatured food, polluted air, poisoned waters, dis-eased bodies and the accelerating loss of species. Research home My academic home is within the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) at Coventry University. CAWR’s research in the natural and social sciences actively develops alternatives to industrial food and farming. Within a humanities, arts and transdisciplinary culture CAWR is committed to democratic co-production of knowledge with diverse groups of people. For my doctoral research, South Africa serendipitously became the setting for the primary fieldwork. During 2016 and 2017 Stellenbosch University and the Sustainability Institute in Lynedoch Valley, near Stellenbosch were the habitats of my research. My doctorate is the first Practice-as- Research PhD within CAWR. The practice and art of sympoeitic living In our industrialised communities, we have divided our minds from our bodies, nature from culture, and art from science. This thesis is a remembering of a participatory consciousness and the interconnected co-making of our human selves within the sentience of other-than-human worlds. Rta, the Sanskrit origin of the word ‘art’ and ‘ritual’ translates as the dynamic flow of movement from which all arises. Similarly, ‘sympoiesis’ is the biological concept defining the cooperative, interlinking and dynamic behaviours of ecosystems (Dempster 2000). My Performative Action Research with an ecological food practice unfolds through the processes and forms of art and ritual as restoration of this participatory and sympoietic worldmaking. v ORIENTATION Artful bodymind I conceive the concept of the ‘artful bodymind’ to embrace art as a practice in living, where the ‘artful’ is a tuning into the senses and multiple intelligences of the interconnected body and mind. I inhabit this imaginary of the ‘artful bodymind’ in recognition that my beingness unfolds within an interdependent and participatory ecology of life. The artful bodymind is in a sympoietic dance between the psyche, the somatic body, the archetypal imagination and the other-than-human world. My artful bodymind is my divining instrument for being-with and knowing the world. Transformative and performative research My Practice-as-Research thesis situates itself within performative and transformative research paradigms, where awareness and experience of selfhood and the lived inquiry of the researcher are integral to cultivating an ecological consciousness that is socially engaged. It is research that contributes to transformative cultures as a liberatory, embodied and poetic practice which enhances human flourishing and respects the other-than-human realms. In South Africa my Performative