The experience I had in my a/r/tography course was a significant experience; in fact, the project is still in progress. I haven’t finished it yet, and the project and my movement of thoughts will continue. In this post, I will share my first and post a/r/tography experience.
My very first class as a MA student, a/r/tography course, from September to December in 2018, challenged my fixed way of knowing. Education had always tried to teach me their-already-known, whereas a/r/tograhy course suggested unlearning to discover new. Lingering in a space in-between self and others, an a/r/tographer relates to the not-yet-discovered while writing and creating artwork (Springgay, Irwin, & Kind, 2008). In terms of walking and mapping, photo-walk came to my mind immediately. Thinking photography as an encounter, I began to ponder, “How do I really come to know something I have not yet known?” As I work with young children, I am always curious how they come to know or how I can create a space where they come to know something without being taught.
During this project, I walked around random places with my camera to capture emotions that emerge from the walking experience. My first few photo-walks happened in darkness such as in the woods or a park at night. The first thing I noticed was how my emotions moved quickly as I was doing something unusual. Taking photos in dark places was a struggle, and yet the act of unusual slowly became my usual. Instead of making subtle movement by continuing the photo-walk in the dark to search for my own fresh meaning on what it means to ‘get used to my unusual’, I made an obvious movement by changing locations. One of the curiosities was to know how my emotions decay. Being influenced by British artist, Andy Goldworthy, who works with a concept of temporality in his art, I was curious to know how my emotions decay or change over time. Now thinking back, I could have learned this without changing the location, and yet that was something I had not yet known until I began to read Getting Lost by Patti Lather almost towards the end of the course.
According to Lather (2007), repetitions offer two different meanings: repeating to fix or get better and repeating to know from the unknown. I kept walking even after the course as still thinking ‘how do I come to know something I have not yet known?’ The ten-minute walk between my home and work became my research time to search for not-yet. For the first few weeks, I struggled again. Honestly, I felt that I did not notice much. I was lost in the ac of walking. My emotions stayed the same as repeatedly seeing the same things until experiencing a snowy day. Walking on the snow was not my first time, however, paying attention to what the action might mean to me was fresh as the white velvet. Repeatedly walking through the deep snow while taking photos during those snowy days, I struggled to find my ‘usual way’. Repeating unusual way was slowly changing to new usual way. Instead of fixing a way of walking by teaching myself how to be better, I repeated the walk to know from not-yet known. I walked in the snow, and the snow walked back as if I asked to snow, and snow talked back. Feeling excited, I repeated to walk on the white fluffy carpet. The carpet slowly transform its form. As my new usual way became my another usual way, my emotions began to decay in-between the photograph and my body as the snow melting away. Knowing is temporal as thoughts, forms, and time change. Step, step, step....my walking as knowing still continues.
