Creative Practice

[AMAZON LINK BELOW TO BOOK ITSELF -- TOC and book intro in downloadable .pdf] 

"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it." --John Steinbeck Scientific research confirms what people have always known: answers, ideas, and inspiration do come to us in dreams. Harvard psychologist and world-renowned dream specialist Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., offers this rich collection of examples of how the world's most creative practitioners in art, music, film, science, literature and other fields have used the revelations of their dream life to inform their work. Dr. Barrett offers insights showing us how to encourage lucid, meaningful dreaming, and how to apply the meanings of our dreams to solving problems--from the everyday to the extraordinary. This is the stuff dreams are made of. In the visual arts, Jasper Johns couldn't find his unique artistic vision until he dreamed it in the form of a large American flag. Salvador Dali and his colleagues built the startling new genre of surrealism out of dreams. Kubla Kahn dreamed the design for his stately pleasure dome; thousands of years later, Lucy Davis, chief architect at a major firm, continues the tradition of dreaming designs into life in her extraordinary buildings. Film is a fertile avenue for dreams: "Twice I have transferred dreams to film exactly as I had dreamed them," confides director Ingmar Bergman, as have Federico Fellini, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, and John Sayles. From Mary Shelley's terrible nightmare, which became Frankenstein, to Stephen King's haunting dream as a little boy, which led to his first bestseller, countless writers have consulted the Committee. Musicians from Beethoven to Billy Joel and Paul McCartney have whistled the Committee's tunes. In science, physiologist Otto Loewi dreamed the medical experiment that earned him the Nobel Prize. In sports, Marion Jones dreamed she'd broken a world record, then brought the dream to life. Gandhi translated his dream of resistance into a movement that changed the world. Since Freud, we take it for granted that our dreams reflect our past. In The Committee of Sleep, Barrett reveals how dreams can also tell us about our future potential--and how to reach it.

O leitor, como sujeito ativo e encarnado, está também amplamente inserido na história da arte e do cinema, e dialoga com as estratégias de criação de cada arte. Os diferentes cortes, acréscimos e ajustes, tão comuns na observação das materialidades dos processos de criação, nos levaram a pensar sobre as reiteradas leituras pelas quais passam os diferentes tratamentos de roteiro; diferentes possibilidades de filmes, que antes da tela são experimentados nas páginas das diferentes versões e na imaginação da equipe. Estão entre os cineastas cuja observação das práticas alimenta esta análise Anna Muylaert, Eliane Caffé, Karim Aïnouz, Marcelo Gomes, Alê Abreu, Cao Guimarães e Leonardo Mouramateus. O estudo encontra aporte teórico e metodológico na teoria crítica dos processos de criação de Cecília Salles em diálogo com os estudos de literacia fílmica de Vítor Reia-Baptista. Buscamos, por esse caminho, propor modos de pensar o processo de criação na recepção, discutindo a figura do leitor de cinema como parte criativa do processo, com enfoque na diversidade de práticas de roteiro em que o cinema brasileiro contemporâneo é abundante em expressão. __________________________________________ The reader, as an active and embodied subject, is also inserted in the history of the art and the cinema, and dialogues with the creation strategies of each art. The different cuts, additions and adjustments, so common in observing the materialities of the creation processes, led us to think about the repeated readings through which the different screenplay treatments; different possibilities of films, which before the screen are experienced on the pages of the different versions and in the imagination of the film crew. Among the filmmakers studied in this work are Anna Muylaert, Eliane Caffé, Karim Aïnouz, Marcelo Gomes, Alê Abreu, Cao Guimarães and Leonardo Mouramateus. This study has the theoretical and methodological support of the critical theory of the creation processes of Cecília Salles in dialogue with the studies of film literacy by Vítor Reia-Baptista. In this way, we seek to propose ways of thinking about the creation process in the reception, discussing the figure of the cinema reader as a creative part of the process, focusing on the diversity of screenwriting practices in which contemporary Brazilian cinema is abundant in examples.

This paper examines uses of theatre for practice-based, collaborative, research. It brings a review of existing work and reflections on my own practice into dialogue with participatory geographies, studies of affect and geographies of bodily difference. This demonstrates in-depth and well-justified relationships between forms of practice and the spatial ways of knowing they engage; the surfacing of otherwise background conditions for critique and intervention; and relations between doing and thinking, as well as collaborating partners, that can open a field of possibilities. This is significant for the broader development and assessment of 'creative' or 'artful' collaborations in human geography, as I summarise in conclusion.

The 20th century ushered in an explosion of individual mythology, requiring every artist in the 20th and 21st century to construct a personal mythology to aid in their own artistic practice. Being a 21st composer has forced me to create an individual framework of mythologies to structure my compositional and artistic thought. In general, my own music applies a mythologization of post-war serialism and Medieval era music (primarily music of the Ars Nova). This mythological application means that instead of applying the techniques of serial organization or medieval compositional techniques, my music features a superficial “gloss” that establishes a connection between my music and this music of the past.

This article builds upon Susan Kerrigan’s model for a scale and magnitude approach to creativity (Kerrigan, Susan. 2019b. “Filmmaking as Creative Practice: Assessing Creative Magnitude and Scale.” Global Media Journal: Australian Edition 13 (1): 1–11. https://www.hca.westernsydney.edu.au/gmjau/?p=2941),by considering the addition of academic exhibition as a means to increase magnitude. Building from Kauffman and Beghetto’s model of creativity (Kaufman, James C., and Ronald A. Beghetto. 2009. “Beyond Big and Little: The Four C Model of Creativity.” Review of General Psychology 13 (1): 1–12. doi:10.1037/a0013688) this article introduces transitional limits to facilitate for creative practitioners working within the little-c and Pro-c criteria but are not yet eminent. In doing so, it problematises the idea of what constitutes professional and raises the question of how might a student or professional researcher escape the definition of little-c by increasing their magnitude? To consider this question, this article uses three primary case studies to explore how postgraduate researchers and professional academics are working at the Pro-c level, by situating them within the Four C model. Finally, considering how we can use videographic criticism as an ancillary product of research practice that can increase student and professional scholar’s creative magnitude, under the principle of forward incrementation (2009, 5).

Working in the borderlands between art and document, a poetic approach to documentary disrupts commonsense understandings of what documentary can be. However, it is frequently viewed as marginal to the main body of documentary practice for its foregrounding of aesthetic choices around form and materiality. Pushing to the extremes of what is recognisable as documentary, a poetic approach to documentary highlights the rhetorical impact of aesthetic choices within the broader field of practice. Experiential ways of knowing are emphasised so that the work is conceived of as an experience in itself rather than a replication of reality. Moving beyond realist representations of evidence, a poetic approach can make use of techniques of defamiliarisation as a strategy to renew perception and enable a reimagining of preconceived connections. In diverging from established pathways unexpected combinations can occur, allowing complex and changeful conceptions to emerge. Utilising a methodology of practice based research to produce a 28 minute single channel documentary and the close examination of pertinent creative works, this thesis argues that a critically engaged poetic approach to documentary can work to encourage thoughtful contemplation as part of an ongoing conversation in the process of knowing.

Philosophical discussions of film are divided in their treatment of the subject rhythm in film editing. Analytic philosophers tend to avoid discussion of it, while continental philosophers give it expansive consideration. This chapter aims to bridge these two traditions by analytically articulating what rhythm is, how it is shaped, and what it is for, while still respecting that it is, in both a film editor’s and an audience’s experience, a felt phenomenon. In order to do this, consideration is given both to the first-hand perspective of experienced editors and the articulations of philosophers. This synthesis of practice and theory reveals how an understanding of the editor’s embodied cognitions, affective responses, and expert actions in shaping rhythm can shed light on rhythm’s effect on audiences. The article finds that rhythm in film editing is time, energy, and movement shaped by timing, pacing, and trajectory phrasing for the purpose of creating cycles of tension and release.

A review article about Irish-based New Zealander Cathy Fitzgerald's doctoral creative practice research into an expanded ecological art practice, which she refers to as 'eco-social art practice'. This draws from review of pioneering ecological art practices and her own practice that explores new-to-Ireland continuous cover forestry. Cathy explains such practices as expanded, ethical social enquiries. She clarifies the critical position of creative activities in these practices and how such expanded durational practices are best collated and shared with audiences using blogging. Eco-social art practices are foremost open-ended question-based processes, inviting communities to explore their relationship to their places in the ecological emergency. Cathy concludes that eco-social art practices are memes for the Symbiocene - the new sustainable era that succeeds the Anthropocene. They contribute to The Great Turning on how to live well with the Earth and all its inhabitants.

This article appeared in Minding Nature, Vol. 12. No. 3 (Fall 2019), a publication of the Center for Humans and Nature (www.humansandnature.org).

ABSTRACT
This bricolage of writings is the result of a white privileged woman exploring her social conscience in a scholarly but creative way. It is a meander through the cultural abyss between black and white Australia, trying to see what I had never been shown, and unsee what I had been shown. I wonder how can I be complicit and complacent in a society that privileges me over others because of the colour of my skin?

I combine a creative practice of storytelling to question the status quo that is the dominant culture, the mercurial methodology of poetics, and the autoethnographic eye that guides a reflexive process of personal decolonisation. I bring to the research a burgeoning awareness of colonised minds, bodies, spirits and lenses and am confident my fresh eyes, curiosity and commitment to unlearn, unsee and unsettle can be deftly deployed to challenge and disrupt the prejudices and perceptions of my fellow white Australians.

This is not a problem-solving piece of research, although I am exploring the nature of a problem. The problem – which is often erroneously cast as the ‘Aboriginal Problem’ when it is a Whiteness Problem – is the core of my research. But I am not focusing just on First Nations peoples and their legacy of colonisation; rather, I examine our shared legacy, turning the gaze back on white Australia, holding up a mirror, to ask with all sincerity: Who is the problem? Where is the problem? What have we done? Why weren’t we told? Did you really just say that?

'The White Woman' is 1 of 6 chapbooks that comprise my creative practice creative writing PhD.

This chapter aims to reveal, from a cognitive perspective, what docu- mentary editing is and how it works as a creative action in filmmaking. It proposes that the editing of documentary film is a cognitive process of perceiving or imagining potential structure and rhythm in a mass of unscripted material and then shaping that material into a significant form.1 Further, in this process, editors, directors and the raw, uncut filmed material are all contributors to the generation of ideas. Shaping raw material into a coherent documentary film, this chapter will argue, is not work done solely in the brain; rather, it is the work of an “extended mind” (Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2008) and requires a complementary activation of brain, body and the “film objects” (Vertov 1984) themselves.

The article argues that we are about to enter a new period of thinking and talking about sustainable development, a discourse in which ‘culture’, ‘values’ and ‘creativity’ become the central elements. To explain this change, it presents a policy discourse analysis based on 4 different types of rationality: legal rationality, political rationality, economic/management rationality and cultural/value rationality. Subsequently, the concept of sustainable development is introduced, and it is explained why sustainable development is moving towards the fourth type of rationality. Four different characteristics/requirements of sustainable development account for this change: (1) the systemic nature of sustainable development (2) the interdisciplinary nature of sustainable development (3) Sustainable development is a change process in which emotions, senses and intuitions play a predominant role and (4) Sustainable development as a proces of creation. The article then presents art as hybrid process of inquiry/creation that meets very well the 4 characteristics/requirements of sustainable development just mentioned. Finally, the article presents the notion of society as a theatre of perpetual creative and recreative practice, as a dynamic stage of social change as a process of defreezing frozen practices and developing new ones in a circular movement of reflection, creation and confrontation. In such creative practices, artists can function well as change agents that create, touch upon peoples’ emotions and think outside of the box in systemic and interdisciplinary ways.

This paper conceptualises practice in the space between and beyond Art & Archaeology as a zone where disciplinary certainties and known practices are unsettled, expanded and re‐cast. We will outline our current thinking about heritage landscapes as places and temporalities for engagement in the practice of what Henk Slager calls the para‐archive. For us, landscape functions as a kind of living archive, however, following Jacques Derrida, we are sceptical of the privileged relation between archive, law and authority. Therefore, in this paper we will think through our interdisciplinary research in the context of the development of creative para‐archives, which facilitate new, affective ways of thinking and making by bringing together the previously unimagined. Responding to the challenge of the SARS‐CoV‐2 discomfort zone, we seek to surface creative practices, activate archival disruptions and expand pedagogical approaches to the articulation of uncomfortable archival landscapes. The pandemic has brought into sharp focus the need to re‐conceptualise visions of space, experiences of place and archival practices. During a virtual fieldtrip students accessed a range of materials from Scotland’s National Record of the Historic Environment. We aimed to enable the co‐design and co‐production of a virtual fieldtrip, followed by discussions about our collective conceptualisations of landscapes of discomfort. The archaeological fieldwork in the virtual realm provides a context for students to engage in desirology as a catalyst for deranging, re‐associating and re‐imagining the archive in creative ways.

This thesis explores the creative process of improvisation in music with a specific emphasis on investigating its potential for learning. The widespread practice of improvisation in music is relatively absent from education and there is an urgent need to more fully understand improvisation’s processes.

A broad body of knowledge of improvisation in music has developed within the international community of musicians whose practice is centred on improvisation and an understanding of this knowledge could become highly relevant for a variety of educational contexts.  Ten highly experienced, world leading improvisers from Europe and North America took part in semi-structured interviews and were asked the over-arching question: What is the place of improvisation in your practice? Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis was the chosen method for the enquiry.

Chapter 1 describes the background for the research into the potential of improvisation. It explains the development of thinking leading to the research project in the context of reflexivity and reflective practice. Chapter 2 describes the terms of reference and background to developments in improvisation and free improvisation in music in the Europe and North America. In Chapter 3 the practice of improvisation is discussed in relation to kinds of knowledge, creativity and pedagogy, and includes reference to pertinent literature. In Chapter 4 the qualitative research approach of Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is described together with its particular theoretical features. The improvisational practices of the participants’ lifeworld are explored by means of a hermeneutic approach within the eidetic process.

Research findings are presented in Chapters 5,6,7,8 and 9 through analysis and interpretations of the super-ordinate themes of free improvisation. The first half of each of these chapters develops the hermeneutic idiographic and interpretation of the analysis. The second half of each chapter further contextualises the themes through discussion that includes reference to, and discussion of literature from different disciplines. In Chapter 5, ‘Describing the free improvisation phenomenon,’ the socio-musical context of improvisation is explored, and the way this relates to inclusive education is discussed. The practice of improvisation as composition and the improviser as composer are also discussed. Free improvisation was found to form connections to the theme of environment in a number of ways and the agency of free improvisation is explored in relation to the concept of being-in-the-world. Free improvisation’s relationship with language and specifically metaphor is also explored. In Chapter 6, ‘Free improvisation and learning,’ formal and non-formal learning, and academic practices are discussed. The special significance of ‘live’ performance for learning is described. Participation in free improvisation is interpreted as providing an opportunity for autonomous creative expression, within a democratised educational setting. The role of the teacher in improvisation is explored and free improvisation is seen to form clear connections to understandings of knowledge and theories of teaching and learning. In Chapter 7, ‘Process,’ the process of improvisation is identified as contributing towards self-determination. Willingness to risk and trust are seen as enabling of the process of free improvisation. The improvisation process is described as interdisciplinary and, moreover, as a human capability. Processes found in nature and in improvisation are also compared and discussed. Chapter 8, ‘Body,’ explores embodied knowledge in free improvisation. The phenomenological precept: ‘to return to the thing itself,’ for improvisation, leads to the body as the site of free improvisation. Listening was seen as reflecting the central importance of the body for understanding improvisation. Awareness of the importance of physicality in performance is described and kinaesthetic learning in improvisation and learning by doing are explored. The unmediated form of imaginative free improvisation, creating music at the point of performance, through the body, is interpreted as an intervolving with the world. Inter-subjectivity and inter-corporeality are discussed as ways of describing the importance of group activity and ‘flesh’ in improvisation contexts. In Chapter 9, ‘Strategies,’ autodidactism is seen as an important feature in the development of free improvisation, and inter-related with group practice. The ability to develop skills for working collaboratively with others is highlighted. Interpretations of technique are discussed in the context of developing the creative practice of free improvisation. Music training and improvisation practice for the developing musician is also discussed and experiences of formal and informal education in music are interpreted in relation to developing free improvisation in which assessment is interpreted as playing a valuable role.
Chapter 10, Conclusions, provides a detailed summary of the findings and describes how the phenomenon of free improvisation takes place through the ‘unity’ of the super-ordinate and sub-themes, ‘Difference’ is also considered a significant aspect of improvisation’s particular agency in relationship to changing social contexts through its flexibility and adaptability. While the continued process of interpretive analysis has involved a separation of concepts in identifying themes, leading to a dividing within the phenomenon of free improvisation, the super-ordinate themes are also understood as simultaneous, working together: in the embodied act of free improvisation strategies, the process, and learning become realised. The creation of music without pre-determined structure exists in the act of doing, and in no other way. The co-presence of the super-ordinate themes is interpreted as centrally important to understanding creative improvisation in music: in the act of free improvisation these themes co-exist. The correlation between the overarching, super-ordinate themes becomes important for educational contexts as the act of free improvisation is understood as a process of learning.  Chapter 11 then evaluates the research project and recommendations are made.


Key words: Free improvisation, learning, body, process, strategies, Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, unity, difference.

By discussing a creative fusion of documentary and imaginary representations of social, spatial and affective memory landscapes in conflict and post-conflict contexts, the chapter considers how art exhibitions can be used both as a research approach and a collaborative research outcome in projects dealing with the past. In the iterative process, fixed narratives and material memory exhibits get complemented, reappropriated and amended by different audiences, ranging from engaged outsiders to those whose stories feature in the actual exhibition.  Based on this feedback, the authors have been encouraged to rethink the entrenched dichotomy between the scholarly and the artistic in research, teaching and debates about transitional justice and the past. Consequently, they advocate for a new open-ended approach, which pushes the boundaries between the notions of subjective and objective, ethics and aesthetics, individual and collective, local and global and past and present. By mixing photographs, text, documents, graphics, drawings, sound and video in reconstructing the fragmented realities in their exhibition, the authors call for the recognition of the resilience of ordinary people and the acknowledgment of ‘ordinariness’ and individuality of those who have posthumously been put into collective categories, mass graves and war statistics, or elevated to the abstract status of nation’s martyrs.

As a creative practice research project, this thesis sets out to write a screenplay about Suresh Biswas (1861-1905), a little-known Bengali adventurer who was a wild-life trainer and circus-performer in Europe and later became a Captain in the Brazilian army. The early biographies of Biswas, based on limited and unreliable evidence, pose a challenge to the screenwriter in terms of narrative reconstruction of his life as a biopic. While more information has become available recently, this project examines the creative and critical issues associated with researching this figure, overcoming the problem of scant evidence and positioning him within a presentist context. Drawing on Rosenstone’s conceptual model for understanding how historical knowledge manifests in fictional narratives, it investigates the nature and function of fictional inventions in biopics and the ways in which screenplays make creative use of evidence. In writing Biswas’ biopic, I use the microhistorical research method, knowledge about biopic script-drafting processes, and Bhabha’s notion of ‘vernacular cosmopolitanism’ to present Biswas as a non-Western, non-elite 19th century cosmopolitan, thereby constructing a counter- narrative to the dominant discourse of cosmopolitanism as a matter of exclusive Western, elite privilege. I argue that it is through a judicious mix of fictional invention and a diligent study of evidence that a screenwriter can get closer to the historical subject. The thesis thus initiates in practice, moves to biopic history and criticism, reverts to practice with knowledge about research and writing that not only enables me to overcome my screenwriting problem but also leaves behind a set of insights for other screenwriters working with scant biographical evidence.

Resumen
En el arte conceptual la idea o concepto prima sobre la realización material de la obra y el mismo proceso —notas, bocetos, maquetas, diálogos— al tener a menudo más importancia que el objeto terminado puede ser expuesto para mostrar el origen y desarrollo de la idea inicial. La verdadera obra de arte es la idea.
El arte conceptual es un arte crítico y corrosivo, pone énfasis en lo mental, en la ideación de las obras, relegando en importancia su realización material o sensible. Junto a este reduccionismo de lo manual, existe en las obras de arte conceptual una hipervaloración del trabajo de arte, como una actividad reflexiva, tanto mental como experiencial.
Los artistas conceptuales abogan por un decidido rechazo de los aspectos mercantiles del consumo de arte y, al mismo tiempo, muchos de ellos intentaban imbricar su actividad artística en un contexto más amplio de preocupaciones sociales, ecológicas e intelectuales, por oposición a la producción de objetos diseñados según criterios utilitaristas y funcionales al establishment cultural.
Dr. Adolfo Vásquez Rocca

The focus of this paper is on the potential challenges and opportunities that might emerge as a result of the continuing development and proliferation of so-called 3D printing technology. In particular, it is interested in looking at how society would cope if 3D printing (or some other form of comparable replicating technology) advanced to such a stage that it became possible to accurately and cheaply replicate any commodity or currency-form many times over. As many readers will no doubt be aware, these are issues that have gained increased traction in recent times, with countless articles and opinion-pieces having been printed on the so-called ‘3D printing revolution’ in the last couple of years. However, whilst the technology underpinning the latest cluster of 3D printers may be ground-breaking, the idea itself is far from new. Indeed, the concept of replicating technology actually has a fairly long intellectual history, with a number of past writers and thinkers having devoted a great deal of time to considering the effects that might result from the (potential) emergence of mass 3D printing capabilities. In this paper, the focus will be on one such text; namely, George O. Smith’s Venus Equilateral series (1942–1945). Looking both at the fictionalised replicating technologies outlined by Smith and the uses they were put to by his protagonists, this paper will offer a critical reading of Smith’s work, with a particular emphasis on his treatment of the 3D printing phenomenon. Likewise, it will also look at how Smith tried to incorporate the idea of mass replicating technology into a wider socio-economic framework, along with his attempts to produce working economic models based on this postulated mode of production. Ultimately, what it shows is that, whilst Smith’s fictionalised technologies may today seem farcically outdated, his reflections and insights on the potential social ruptures and cultural transformations that might unfold as a result of the emergence of mass replicating technology remain as pertinent and as relevant as ever.

This is the third of three introductions to the book. The first introduction is uploaded as "Theorizing Visual Studies, part one." The second was written by Kristi McGuire; this is the third, which is about the possibility that images can produce or embody arguments--that they can theorize, that they can drive arguments and not just exemplify, illustrate, or serve as memory aids. It's a promise visual studies has often made.

The IDEA 2012 Inaugural Research Exhibition An Interior Affair: a State of Becoming was a pilot to test the perceived ambiguity of the requirements provided by Australia's Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) and New Zealand's Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) for creative works to be recognised as research through exhibition. A peer-reviewed exhibition model was piloted for interior design/interior architecture in order to provide appropriate quality assurance processes for creative works (See online interactive living archive:  http://www.interiorbecomings.com/). A paper (see refernce below) outlining the model was presented at the IDEA 2012 symposium. In summary: 16 exhibitions (23 designer-researchers from United Kingdom, United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia).

Exhibition feedback:
'The exhibition proved that the physical experience of creative works [artefacts / installations] and the coming together of researchers and viewers adds an important dimension to research, its formats, their communication and exchange of ideas' (personal communication exhibition attendee).

An IDEA Working Group: EXHIBITION AS RESEARCH
Chair, A/Prof Marina Lommerse, Curtin University, Australia
Jane Lawrence, University of South Australia, Australia
Sven Mezhoud, Monash University, Australia
Stuart Foster, Massey University, New Zealand

PAPER: S.Mehzoud, J. Lawrence, S.Foster & M. Lommerse, An exhibition model to enable recognition and evaluation of creative works as research in interior design/interior architecture, IDEA Symposium Proceedings: Interior: a State of Becoming, Curtin University, Perth, p. 39, 2012.

Conspiracy thriller novels and popular conspiracy theories proliferate in response to a perceived threat to the national group, or to transnational groups such as 'the West'. The research question addressed by this PhD project is: Do social identity processes work similarly in the production and functioning of popular conspiracy

This is a book about people who have had strong emotional reactions to artworks. It tells a history of times and places when strong passions were expected, and contrasts them with the habits of the last hundred years. The book also has letters from people who have cried, and those who haven't or wouldn't.

Chapter 5 is "Crying Over Bluish Leaves." It is about my own experiences in the Frick Collection, looking at Giovanni Bellini's "Ecstasy of St. Francis." At first I had a very strong reaction to the painting, but it was diluted and finally dispersed as I read art historical accounts of the painting, and of Bellini's cultural context. Art history is pictured here as a kind of poison well, which endangers certain kinds of responses.

The book is in print and on Kindle; this is the only chapter I'm posting here. This upload lacks an illustration of Giovanni Bellini's Ecstasy of St. Francis, which is easily available in high resolution online. (Try the Google Art Project.)

Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings (New York: Routledge, 2001).

ABSTRACT
This bricolage of writings is the result of a white privileged woman exploring her social conscience in a scholarly but creative way. It is a meander through the cultural abyss between black and white Australia, trying to see what I had never been shown, and unsee what I had been shown. I wonder how can I be complicit and complacent in a society that privileges me over others because of the colour of my skin?

I combine a creative practice of storytelling to question the status quo that is the dominant culture, the mercurial methodology of poetics, and the autoethnographic eye that guides a reflexive process of personal decolonisation. I bring to the research a burgeoning awareness of colonised minds, bodies, spirits and lenses and am confident my fresh eyes, curiosity and commitment to unlearn, unsee and unsettle can be deftly deployed to challenge and disrupt the prejudices and perceptions of my fellow white Australians.

This is not a problem-solving piece of research, although I am exploring the nature of a problem. The problem – which is often erroneously cast as the ‘Aboriginal Problem’ when it is a Whiteness Problem – is the core of my research. But I am not focusing just on First Nations peoples and their legacy of colonisation; rather, I examine our shared legacy, turning the gaze back on white Australia, holding up a mirror, to ask with all sincerity: Who is the problem? Where is the problem? What have we done? Why weren’t we told? Did you really just say that?

'My Conscience is a Many Feathered Thing' is 3 of 6 chapbooks that comprise my creative practice creative writing PhD.