Island making: planning artistic collaboration

Abstract

A knowledge exchange programme exploring the role of art in relation to the planning context of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, this paper explores the role of artistic knowledge in making landscape. During 2013, 25 artistic workshops were developed in collaboration with residents and planning officials, resulting in an exhibition of works produced. From a pragmatist perspective this paper draws on ethnographic accounts of the realisation of the exhibition to reveal artistic knowledge exchange as 'relational knowing'. The contribution of the paper is to recommend we account for artistic work as an ingredient of landscape planning. Although specifically drawing on fieldwork in Holy Island the experiential nature of this article makes a novel contribution across the field of rural planning.

Researching Rural Housing: With an Artist in Residence

“…As for Dewey ‘developing knowledge of the world and acting in the world are all part of the same process of learning and discovering through experience’ (Healey , p. 280). From here we reject a ‘spectator view of knowledge’, and make a commitment to the notion of the body as ‘living organism’ – acting in the world (Crawshaw , p. 6). By doing so, we become aware of our body with and in the landscape.…”

“…As Tim Ingold suggests, art can be understood as a mode of inquiry, reawakening our senses 'to allow knowledge to grow from the inside in the unfolding of life ' (2013, p. 8). Inspired by Ingold and building from our previous work (Crawshaw and Gkartzios 2016;Crawshaw 2018Crawshaw , 2019 this article draws on experimental fieldwork developed with the artist in residence, Sander Van Raemdonck, who positions his practice within the inquiry process.…”

Artist-led building: farming organic knowing

“…As organic, we are not separate -from the fields, buildings, animals and so on around us. Indeed Ingold's paper is informed by Dewey's principle of the continuity of experience; and although his reference to Dewey is puzzlingly unusual in anthropology (Ingold, 2016, 25) his work has returned to art studies (as promoted by the curator Mary Jane Jacob 2019; see also Crawshaw 2018); and also sustains a prominent role in feminist scholarship. Here his interest in bodies is reawakened by new materialism which refutes the linguistic by moving us towards 'corporeality, ontological immanence and affect' (Fischer, 2018, 83).…”

“…From an organic ontology farmers 'must join with the way of plants; [and similarly] hunters and herdsmen with the ways of animals; [and] artisans with the ways of their materials' (Ingold, 2016, 22). To date, my own contribution to the corpus of literature concerned with art studies' relationship with new materialism Gkartzios 2016, 2018;Crawshaw 2018) is shaped by pronounced appreciation of the heritage of John Dewey's experiential aesthetics: where the art experience transacts the body's border -altering 'outer' physical materials (such as paint, plaster and plastic) and our 'inner' materials (such as memories and emotions) (1934,15). As an artist-led practice I take opportunity to consider the way Kultivator contributes to worlding knowledge, beyond making artworks.…”

“…This artist-led literature is dominated by artists reflecting on their own practice; with some contributions from historians and museology scholars. To explore the opportunity of an organic study I prioritised progressing my body-mind connection (as developed during previous fieldwork, see Crawshaw, 2018); which works to avoid hierarchy between what Dewey refers to as 'had' and 'known' knowledge. Indicated by the arrival sequence which opens this paper, the piece positions the subjective body as a way of getting to know the work of Kultivator as shaped by the heritage of Dewey's materialism.…”