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Veronica Garcia Lazo: Radicalizing methodology through a/r/tography and collage

This presentation considers the possibilities of radicalizing methodology through a/r/tography. As an arts-based research methodology, a/r/tography offers a theoretical framework that enables to trespass the boundaries between the fields of art, research and education by performing a liminal and dialogical position. Liminality refers to a relational approach that aims to problematize the disciplinary borders of different realms by making ongoing interconnections between them. Bringing divergent domains together is key to disarticulate hierarchical forms of knowledge and producing emergent ways of seeing. Drawing on Deleuze’s and Guattari’s concept of the ‘rhizome’, a/r/tography seeks to trouble hierarchical and fixed forms of knowing through the idea of becoming, an ongoing state of transformation that challenges the margins between theory and practice, and the identities of the artist, researcher and teacher. By altering conventional relationships and disciplinary boundaries, a/r/tography opens research to a land of possibilities and unpredictable relations. This presentation reports on a research that used a/r/tography to explore critical thinking in Aotearoa New Zealand secondary school visual arts education. The educational context of the research was framed by bicultural policies – European and Māori – that underpin a critical setting for considering dialogical forces at play. Through images, I will introduce the disrupting and relational possibilities of engaging with an arts-based methodology from the collection of data to the creation of a series of collages for evoking the findings. Collage enabled me to evoke intersubjective encounters with participants and to perform a relational aesthetics through fragmentations and juxtapositions. These images sought to establish poetic associations and question unifying discourses. The radical purchase of collage lies in its capacity for interrupting linear discursive practices and evoking different ways of seeing. Through this presentation I hope to inspire other researchers to explore arts-based methodologies and reimagine the possibilities of educational research.

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