“We are all becoming”: Exploring the Design of Improvisational Activity within Researcher-Artist Collaborations and Zine Making

Lindsay Lindberg, Shivani Davé, Ananda Marin, Brenda Lopez & Trinity Collins

Artistic identities develop across time, through conversation, and within creative practices. Throughout a co-design project with five improvisational jazz artists, including co-design conversations and performances, artists drew on identity-relevant experiences to reflect on their distinct and developing roles as individuals and ensemble members. We focus on how storywork (Archibald, 2008) shapes artists’ and researchers’ participation in improvised modes of creative activity including art making, music making, and analytic processes. 

We understand identity as one’s sense of self and the roles they embody in relation to others. From this perspective identities are always in a process of becoming, as individuals participate in and explore the roles that are available to them within communities of practice (Nasir & Cooks, 2009). Learning alongside collaborators, we also understand identity as connected to the creation of an expressive multi-modal language that is rooted in experiences and places. This participatory design research project (Bang & Marin, 2016) draws on interpretive methodologies (Erickson, 1986) and interaction analysis traditions (Jordan & Henderson, 1995). Modes of inquiry included co-design sessions, live performance, photography, conversational dinners with artists and audiences, studio visits, driving interviews and venue mapping, and one recording session. Our analysis draws on 15 co-design conversations during which the artists discuss their artistic practices in relation to one another and their ancestors. We identified instances of second stories (Sacks, 1992), in which participants share stories in response to one another’s practice-linked experiences. We focus on how co-designers’ storied observations of each other’s artistic practices shape co-participation within the ensemble – in other words, their learning and identity processes.

Through storying, artists explored the multiple ways they understood their individual practices in relation to this particular collective and other groups they have performed with. In addition, they reflected on how their creative work extends beyond their individual lives. As these artists shared stories they also highlighted their own understandings of each other's roles within ensembles. During one conversation, a co-designer discussed how L’s roles as both a painter and harmonium player shaped the performance space, citing a 15-year collaboration where L played the harmonium and displayed her paintings on stage. Another co-designer described how L’s paintings influenced audience members' reception of the music. L also narrated her perceptions of how textiles, a form passed down in many families, are often viewed as separate from high-end art forms. She described an evolving relationship with textiles and positioned them as a teacher that influenced her painting process and how she came to express rhythm and movement with her art. While discussing possibilities for an upcoming performance, one of the percussionists invited L to expand the modalities of expression within the group and shift between actively painting and playing the harmonium - something she had not done on stage before this project. The artists understood painting while performing as an invitation to reimagine what is knowable about “jazz” and what belongs in performances.

The process of becoming in relation to cultural materials (e.g., textiles, sarapes, quilts, drums, etc.) is paramount to the project as a whole, both for the artists and the researchers. In addition to the artists’ taking on new roles within the ensemble, as a research team, we used arts-based tools (collage, zine making, rotoscoping) to account for the perspectives of collaborators. For example, the word “becoming” was repeatedly sung into the performance space by Z, a vocalist, fabric artist, and the other woman in the group. As researchers, this repetition inspired us to use photographs from the concert in a fabric collage. Another form of asynchronous collaboration between researchers and artists was the process of making analytic zines. After listening to the co-design meetings, researchers jotted notes about salient or emotionally resonant stories from the recording. These phrases were then used to create an 8-page mini-Zine for each of the 15 co-design meetings. For example, L described how being in relation with textiles and the symbols embedded within them can provide a moral framework for reconnecting to familial and collective experiences. Z connected L’s reflections on symbols within textiles to the triangular patterns used in quilts to communicate to enslaved Africans seeking freedom through the Underground Railroad. Reflecting on this conversation, researchers created Zines to explore, extend, and connect to the histories of relations discussed during co-design sessions. These Zines represent themes, stories, and experiences that were salient to us as researchers and storylisteners. We also understand the Zines as a representation of how practice-linked identities develop and evolve within relationships and over time. 

Using creative processes to further reflect upon the artists’ approach to storying and sense-making became a practice of identity development for researchers. Collaborations that create conditions for storying histories of relations and enacting creative practices provide opportunities for artists and researchers to see new possibilities in their practice and conceptions of self.

References 

Archibald, J. A. (2008). Indigenous storywork: Educating the heart, mind, body, and spirit. UBC press.

Bang, M., & Vossoughi, S. (2016). Participatory design research and educational justice:

Studying learning and relations within social change making.

Erickson, F. (1986). Qualitative methods in research on teaching. In M. Wittrock (Ed.),

Handbook of research on teaching (pp. 119–161). New York, NY: Macmillan.

Jordan, B., & Henderson, A. (1995). Interaction analysis: Foundations and practice. The journal 

of the learning sciences, 4(1), 39-103.

​​Nasir, N. I. S., & Cooks, J. (2009). Becoming a hurdler: How learning settings afford identities. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 40(1), 41-61.

Sacks, H., & Jefferson, G. (1995). Lectures on conversation (Vol. 1, pp. 289-331). Oxford: Blackwell.