Embodied Dimensions of Poiesis: Explorations and Implications for Arts-Based Research

Abstract

Arts-based research is an emergent research paradigm that utilizes poiesis, or knowledge making through creating, as a core feature. Arts-based research is not a centralized or standardized paradigm but instead has multiple, fluid epistemologies and methodologies, which can pose challenges for arts-based researchers to be taken seriously in positivist-dominated academic institutions. This research engages in an arts-oriented heuristic inquiry to explore embodied experiences of analytic art making and uses gathered experiences to explore embodied support for concepts of rigor, validity, and legitimacy used in arts-based research, particularly living inquiry as a somato-poetic concept of rigor and seduction as a somato-poetic concept of validity. The method of this dissertation was structured as a triptych and divided into four data movements. Movement 1 explored the experiences of three arts-based researchers. Movement 2 utilized two experiential focus groups comprised of three participants, each consisting of an inquiry-based art-making experience and focus group discussion. Movement 3 explored the researcher’s experience of moving through this dissertation project as tracked through an art journal. The Triptych Portfolio movement combined data Movements 1, 2, and 3 as a creative synthesis of all data. The embodied openings of this research provide fine-grained descriptions of movements, gestures, and sensations of a somato-poetic sensibility the participants of this research brought to analytic art making, potentially adding depth to the concepts living inquiry and seduction. This research also provided an embodied opening onto the person of the researcher and ethical considerations.