Arts-Based Research

Leavy (2018) defines arts-based-research as “a transdisciplinary approach to knowledge building that combines the tenets of the creative arts in research contexts” (p. 4) This definition is expanded on by McNiff (2018) who tells us that “The practice of ABR involves the decision to use art as a way to respond to particular questions and issues that may involve varied disciplines, ranging from history, literary studies, philosophy, social science, management, art itself, and maybe even the natural sciences” (p. 23)

My understanding of ABR is as follows: Arts-based research is an umbrella term which describes a burgeoning research methodology in which an artist engages with a question about the human experience, the inner workings of the universe, or some other serious topic of inquiry. In seeking to answer this question, the artist draws on their individual practice to collect, analyze, make meaning from, and/or present the data set accumulated during their research. In the process, the artist researcher translates the data into a work of art. The arts-based researcher can come from, and work in, any genre or medium; they rely on an aesthetic and emotional epistemology in a hierarchical world that favors logic and hard facts — though arts-based-research is not devoid of logic and hard facts.

What follows is two examples of my work in arts-based research. The first is a verbatim theatre performance I created as an investigation of rock star and indigenous activist Buffy Sainte-Marie. This is accompanied by a proposal for an education/activism outreach plan for an equity, diversity, and inclusion workshop. It was inspired by the verbatim piece, and it incorporates the performance as a tool for creating social change focused dialogue in the business sector. The second is a description of a current project titled “Ignite Change: Impactful Storytelling Through Audio,” which I am co-designing and co-facilitating for the NYU Cross-Cutting Initiative of Inequality, the Wasserman Center, the NYU Production Lab.

MEDIA ARTIFACT: BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE

A Verbatim Performance & Education Activism Outreach Plan Submitted for MPAET-GE.2115

This example demonstrates my ability to engage with the tools and techniques of ethnodrama and to employ them in conceiving and designing a community engaged workshop for social change. Additionally, it demonstrates my reflexive practice as an artist and researcher.

In the fall of 2020, I enrolled in Professor Joe Salvatore’s class “The Ethnoactor and Verbatim Performance.” Inspired by Anna Deavere Smith’s work and her belief that “If you say a word often enough it becomes you” (Smith, 2000), students in the class learned processes of embodied dramaturgy and verbatim performance. I have come to understand the form in the following way: the ethnoactor investigates what can be learned about an individual (and often their beliefs on a particular subject) by inhabiting the vocalisms and physicality of that individual and performing them word for word and gesture for gesture in a way that often develops empathy and understanding. Our final two assignments were: 1. To select a short media artifact, develop a research question or questions, and investigate that line of inquiry through an ethnodramatic performance and a reflexive response paper. 2. To develop an arts-based outreach project that drew on our performance.

The media artifact I selected was a speech given by Buffy Sainte-Marie at the Labriola National American Indian Data Center at Arizona State University (ASU) in 2013. In the speech, Sainte-Marie stated that she attributes the abuse of indigenous folks to being a product of feudalism and capitalism and that she prefers to think of it in that way because it removes racism from the conversation (I intuit that this is important to her because white folks suddenly shut down anytime racism is mentioned). During the rehearsal and performance process, I sought to answer the following focus questions: 1. Can I come to an understanding of why an indigenous woman would seek to remove racism from a conversation that is clearly happening because of the existence of racism? 2. Can I determine the degree of truthfulness or sincerity in Buffy’s words? (Is that even possible?) 3. What is the emotional experience of speaking these words in the way that Buffy does? I wrote the following summation in my post-performance analysis:

Performing Buffy has changed, for me, the way that I think about racism and oppression in America. It has allowed me to move beyond the simple acknowledgement that racism exists and the languishing over it (which is certainly needed in the process of grief and the experience and completion of emotions) and has made me realize that the dismantling of “feudal” systems is the only thing that is going to make life better for everyone. Obviously, we must heal our pain and experience emotions as they arise, but the only way to stop the pain and continuous disenfranchisement of people of color is to eliminate the cause. Initially I was resistant to the notion that the R word, racism, was in some way hindering our ability to create change — I now find myself wondering if the word isn’t such a turn off to folks who are demonstrably in denial that they are a part of it, that it isn’t in fact stifling change. I find myself thinking about the fact that slavery in the United States was nearly eradicated until the invention of the cotton gin, the fact that Cuba almost became a US state at the time of the Civil War, but landowners opted out because of the “Emancipation Proclamation” and the effects it would have had on their plantations, and I think of numerous other instances where industry has exploited people of color and poor white folks. Racism is quite certainly a tool that serves capitalism, and it is quite certainly a massive issue in our country at this very moment, and yet I am struck by this thought that perhaps the word itself is what is driving a wedge between poor people of color and poor people who are white. I don’t have an answer, and I feel uneasy even writing that, but performing Buffy Sainte-Marie has led me to view racism in the US as a product of capitalist industry (modern feudalism), and to question if decentering the word when talking to white folks in power might present an opportunity to change their personal and corporate behaviors. (Smith, 2020)

Drawing on my work embodying Sainte-Marie, I developed and proposed a 90-minute equity, diversity, and inclusion workshop targeted towards students in the NYU Stern School of Business and the private business sector, which is outlined in the included paper “An Arts-Based Intervention for Capitalism: Healing the Hurt of Racism by Ending Worker Exploitation.”

I offer the following materials as evidence of my ability to engage with the tools and techniques of ethnodrama, to employ them in conceiving and designing a community engaged workshop for social change, and to demonstrate my reflexive practice as an artist and researcher: