Ann's creative responses

Ann handed me her notebook, her creativity blends the interactions of the day with a considerable depth of knowledge about art history, and her personal capabilities. Who would have thought that a full blown printing press is operational silently in the room next door?

Here are two more daily images, but do seek out and see the originals.

(glenn)

Too much happening!

We've now got to the point in the congress when there is too much happening for any of us really to have time to blog. The congress is in full swing and it has (to quote Tami Spry) definitely got swing Now its  all about choice...if you are presenting, of course, you have no choice, but at other times, you have the choice to sit in the courtyard coffee shop and chat, go to the bookshop, take a nap and/or go to a session which means you miss nine others. Sometimes these choices are hard!!

Yesterday started at 8 o'clock sharp with parallel sessions. I went to a session shared by Jonathan and Ken with Tami Spry, Larry Parker and Ron Pelias continuing with an online collaborative writing venture they've been engaged in for three years now. Things are getting a little messier in this group now which I found more interesting. It seemed as if their performance was neater than their experience which I found engaging and intriguing. I was interested in what was not said. There was much talk and writing in this session about what was possible between them, which of course left me gripped by what is impossible, not said and unsayable (preoccupations of mine generally in this kind of work I should admit... I sort of wanted them to read a bit more about other online collaborative writing groups and in particular Annie Rogers on the unsayable and Adriana Cavarero and Judith Butler on blindness in the accounts we give, but (and you gotta laugh at this) I did not clearly say so - much food for thought, and some discomfort for me in this session.

Next I was part of a panel 'review  for Laurel Richardson's book 'Last writes"

a daybook for a dying friend. Each of the panellists took a piece of the book that struck a chord in some way to read out and then ask the author about. This worked well and was well attended.
We all chose different aspects of the book, mine being pages 152-153 about (and also not abou) shoes...shoe fittings, shoe sortings and ways of relating with our shoes and their meanings as a parallel process with our ways of relating with our dying. It was a funny passage as a lot of the book is ...and what I particularly liked about the book was the  everydayness of the days spent with a dying friend.

The session seemed to work well, although perhaps lacked critical edge, which may be inevitable when the author, much liked at this conference, is present and is clear from the outset ( we know this because Carolyn Ellis asked her) that there was nothing she would change in the book, that this was the only book she COULD have written.

To be honest I didn't know what to make of that. As soon as I've 'finished' writing, I can always think of other ways of doing that writing, other wishes for the writing as an event in the world etc, even in those rare moments when I am really pleased with my work. Nonetheless its a great book and it was very interesting to hear Laurel speak of the writing of it, of the use of doubling and rhythm and musicality  in its construction. This was a really useful conversation.

As soon as this finished I had to do a high speed whiz across the campus because I was taking part in a performative writing  spotlight on Narrative, Health and Healing. Viv (Martin) and Elyse Pineau  had brought this panel together. We knew each other in this panel and had planned it as a concept, but had no sense of how it would work together as a whole, or exactly what each other was going to present on the night, so we had a great time discovering, in the moment, that our texts were in many ways interwoven in both content and form. Viv's auto-ethnographic presentation was very gently given and softly spoken and I was struck by the the relationship between the day to day and the extraordinary life and death experiences that she has endured.  I hope she writes this as a paper. My presentation was three fragments of a work in progress called ' Dying on the NHS:  a daughter's soliloquy' and although I am immediately critical, I was also pleased with 'how this went' and 'where I am going to take it'.



One of the advantages of being in this panel,was that my presentation was sandwiched between two performance studies scholars, which made me more acutely aware of my own presentation as a performance, but also excited about how much I have to learn about performance and the performative in the development and future of my own work.

Okay I'm fast running out of blogging time here, I might have to come back to this, but i spent the rest of my day, meeting with Dione Mifsud from Malta, discussing some work I am going to be doing with him there in the Autumn, going to Sue Porter and Anne Rippin's rescheduled 'heavenly and legless' performance, which deserved a bigger audience, but had been rescheduled and was therefore difficult to find (they are going to have to publish this, if only to get the feedback they wanted).

Their very creative use of their ipads as interactive visual add ons in this session nearly converted me, but for the moment I am still holding onto my money!! (if you could also write and draw on an ipad with a pen-like gadget I'd be there like a shot, but it lacks this facility).

The working day ended with Tami Spry in performance, which was superb, engaging, scholarly and musically and poetically gripping. Glenn filmed this performance, so hopefully, with Tami's permission we'll be able to show this to people later - although live performance is sometimes hard to capture. I was struck by small things...like maybe even just learning/knowing  the words of a presentation frees you up to engage with your audience so differently from traditional academia.

After Tami's performance most of us went out to supper together at the bread company, where a good time was had by all. I came along later I went to a conference banquet organised by Norman Denzin, which was fun in a different way. I spent most of the banquet swapping stories of how we got here with Suzanne Gannon, who I like more and more. I found out more about her work, what she hopes to do, the constraints imposed by the academy, etc, as she did about me. I also caught up with Patti Lather, who is coming to Bristol later this summer and worked out with her exactly what that workshop will entail, who I should invite etc.




An interesting day, lots of food for thought...increasing domination for some reason by D and G ...

Deleuze and Guattari (which was a bit dull after a while, I feel as if we're done with the D and G a bit in Europe, It is as if North America has suddenly discovered D and G and frankly I wanted a bit more variety, diversity and above all edgey political and feminist thought...
Why don't they think more actively and or with Cixous, Cavarero, Butler and Kristeva I wonder? All these women are alive ...what's the problem with them? The fact that they are women or the fact that they are alive?
Anyway, I must go, because its Saturday morning and we have our group presentation to deliver today...

Keynotes, flyposts and messing with the texts

                                                                                                 

 Today we went flyposting around the Illini union building, the central venue for the conference in the hope of encouraging people to come to our main session on Saturday and also of letting the conference know how many of us were here and what we were up to. We also had some notices about the arcio-sponsored conference on emerging approaches to research this coming September. At about eleven we whizzed around the building (there are four floors) , blue tak and sellotape akimbo, leafleting toilets, tables and noticeboards. By lunch time they had all 'disappeared'. Interesting!!  I have a few left to put out and about in the cafe tomorrow... but I somehow get the feeling that flyposting is not remotely kosher here!!! Never mind, I gather that Laurel Richardson gave our session a plug during her workshop this afternoon (and also read out my writing from her workshop last year, which I was pathetically pleased to hear about ... honestly- humans, egos and ownerships, when will I/we grow up!!)

Meanwhile, as Jonathan says (below) , the conference got underway with workshops etc. Jonathan and Ken conducted a morning workshop (there were 33 in all) and I went to Susanne Gannon's which was superb and gave me lots of ideas for 'messing' with people's obsession with individual ownership of texts, as well as lots of interesting reading..I've already rushed out and ordered Patti Lather's 'engaging science', but I took away a whole book list. As an arts-based researcher, I found I had much common ground with Susanne's background in the humanities and use of literary and aesthetic conceptualisations of narrative inquiry. She is going to be great to work with if/when she comes to Bristol.

There were two keynotes this evening, one from Isamu Ito,

from the university of Fukui, Japan, about the effects of globalisation on rural identities and the changing social constructions of farming and rural lives in contemporary Japan. This was a good talk that had my full attention and had many parallels (and differences) with similar developments in the UK, but the keynote that really struck a chord with me was Cynthia Dillard's, from Ohio State University, on 'learning to remember the things we've learned to forget', which was an exquisitely worded contribution to her growing body of work on endarkened feminisms and the sacred nature of research. What struck me most about this keynote was her everyday sense of  the significance of intergenerational memory and her questioning of our contemporary fascination with differences at the expense of rootedness, locatedness, sacredness and collectivity. To quote Cindy Gowen, who I was sitting next to, Cynthia totally rocked. I hope this keynote gets published somewhere.

Caption contest number 2

They came, they saw, they...

Workshops

It all started for real today, with three-hour workshops in the morning (8.30-11.30) and afternoon (12.30-3.30). Bochner and Ellis, Laurel Richardson, Ron Pelias each run one. Ann went to Ron's today and reported good things (and got a round of applause for her own writing, I hear told). I thought Ron's was excellent when I went a couple of years ago, as I did Richardson's, though she now does a different theme to when I went, which is working with the idea of writing only in three word sentences. The story goes that before last year's conference Norman Denzin called to ask her to run a workshop again, as in previous years, and her first response was "Oh, Norm, I don't think that I can. I've had an awful year and, well, I can hardly string three words together," to which he replied "That sounds like a great idea for a workshop...".

Jane, Malcolm and I went to Susanne Gannon's workshop this afternoon, which was on using collective biography as a strategy to consider neoliberalism in higher education. Sue's in teacher education, as is Malcolm, so Malcolm regularly complemented her on her classroom organisational skills...(She was very organised, it has to be said, with some great ideas for introducing different writing strategies).

Keynote speeches launched the conference proper, which I missed because I was rehearsing (honest). Strangely enough, though, we finished rehearsing just in time for the opening night 'cook-out'.

Paul Newman moment

As mentioned in the previous version of this blog (see: QI 2009, from the archive below) visits to the United States are peppered with references and scenes from just about every film you've ever seen. If I were less tired and a little more sure of the difference between pseud's corner (see Ann, below) and academic rigour, I would perhaps make some erudite reference to multi-storied texts and/or  intertextuality. As it is I feel yet another version of the Amtrak story is upon us as I  neither experienced the familiar delays or frustrations that Jonathan did, nor the domination of big voiced black women, since our train was on time and our conductors were all very tall white men with enormous feet. I did however, have a seriously tempting "Paul Newman moment', since we were in the very last carriage, which had the kind of open platform with railings depicted in trains in all the best movies. At the time I took the photos the platform was crowded out by men with very large feet, but clearly, if I'd had the bottle, I could have staged my very own Paul Newman scene.
The 'bottle', however, totally eluded me and I resisted all temptation to step out onto the platform, shimmy up onto the top of the carriage and crawl along clutching the top of the roof with one hand, firing shots at the baddies with the other. This was not, you understand, because I am a total wimp who is scared beyond death of moving  heights, but merely because there are no low bridges between Chicago and Urbana Champaign and the whole bit where the hero (ine) ducks just in time to prevent decapitation and subsequently emerges at the other end of the tunnel unscathed to fire another shot etc was just not gonna happen.

Most of us are now here and registered for the conference, I have had a quick hug, before the frey, with the wonderful (and extremely hugable) Norman Denzin, who makes these conferences possible year after year. As I said to Norm, I found it (find it?) frustrating in a way that this conference is always in USA and always in Urbana  Champaign, but at the same time coming back year after year gives us a sense of a base and place and a geographical as well an intellectual homecoming. A very particular space is created here at this time every year, just as the students have gone...it is a different space every time, as different people provide different energy, but the climate of critical friendship and excitement about this field continues unabated. (Thinking about different energies reminds me that although more and more of us come from Bristol, there are some people missing, the particular energy that Ying Lin Hung brings with her is missing this year, last year she had her birthday here, so it must be her birthday this week... happy birthday Ying Lin ... we miss you!)

There's been trouble on this campus during term time mind... there have been four /five rapes of young women across the campus over the last few months and as you walk across the central quads the stencilled graffiti 'end rape' across many surfaces make chilling reading and are food for thought for us all. It is not all as tickedy boo as it might at first appear around here...

Strawberry Salad Days

Hurrah, we are all pretty much here, just a few stragglers still making their way across the prairie towards U-C.

We went out this evening to the Breadstore, a pleasing little restaurant just off campus. Several of us were taken with the idea of their strawberry salad, a good choice as the temperature rose again today, as did the humidity. This may be the last in this run of hot and humid days, tonight the clouds were piling up in the west, which made for a beautiful sunset, but is likely to end in rain shortly. As if to herald this change the breeze was blowing up as we left the Breadstore, cooling our walk back.

Suzanne Gannon joined the Bristol ‘home team’ for supper, and no doubt will be helping us tomorrow to fly post the Union building, to advertise our sessions, and particularly the Spotlight, which showcases several streams of work ongoing at the Centre.

There was some excitement on the walk to the Breadstore when we saw a Cardinal bird, bright red and crested. It makes a pleasant change to see more wildlife, there seemed to be very few birds and small mammals about in Chicago. Here I have seen squirrels and several kinds of unfamiliar small birds.

Earlier a different type of excitement as we discovered that the campus computer store had a supply of iPads. Ann, Sue, Suzanne and Glenn all fell to temptation and for the rest of the day were heard explaining to anyone who would listen just how useful a tool the iPad would be for their research. Glenn has added iPad setting-up and wi-fi connecting to the list of invaluable services that he provides to the UoB community abroad.

One of the things I have particularly valued over the last few days has been the sharing about what to expect from QI from some of those who have been here before. Its been reassuring for those of us who are QI virgins to hear from Viv, Jane and Artemi how their sessions have gone in past years, and to know that we will be supporting and encouraging each other in and out of sessions, while also having the space to develop our own ways of engaging with the conference and the wider community here.

Sue

Gioco Collage

a few pix of some of the people at Giocos restaurant the other night.

Individually, these pictures perhaps invite a caption competition? Can you resist?

What do you think Tami and Ann are looking at?

(Answers in no less than 2000 words, double spaced...)

Having been expedited –after Lawrence Weiner

“Taken from here to where it came from…”

Being part of and not, coming and going… familiar feelings for the traveller and, when layered with both superficial familiarity and a fundamental unfamiliarity, makes for an inconsistent gaze.

Jonathan tells of a train journey to U-C he experienced, from the carriage next door to mine. His is a story of delay, frustration and familiarity. My story is essentially different, experienced from a different angle of view, a different position, that of sitting down.

“and taken to a place and used in such a manner…”

Arriving in Chicago’s Union station I still teetered on the edge of giving myself up to the Amtrak system and the big voiced black women passenger handlers who seem to dominate that underground world. My last sinew of resistance relaxed by the bossy assembling of passengers into cohorts; business class, senior citizens (anyone over 62) and the ‘physically challenged’.

“Bits and pieces put together to present a semblance of the whole”, as Lawrence Weiner might have said (and did). Having reassured the passenger handler that I was able to wait on the hot platform while a wheelchair lift was found, I followed a conga of the rich and aged across the tracks to platform C30.

From where I sat the Amtrak trains looked like skyscrapers, causing me to tilt my head back in an effort (futile) to make eye contact with the driver. As I wheeled down the platform a train guard, so tightly uniformed that she appeared upholstered, took control of me. She stepped close and leant down “what’s your first name?” (I answered “Sue”). “Well Sue, Pleased to meet you. I’m Audrey and I’ll be looking after you, don’t you worry” and shook my hand. At this point I was hers! She was as good as her word, placing me in a carriage “where you won’t be swarmed over by students”, fussing about the open carriage doors and air conditioning, repeatedly addressing me by name as she passed up the carriage, and bringing me (not my travelling companions) a bottle of water when the train was delayed . As we approached U-C station she stood tall in the gangway and directed the other passengers to use the exit at the far end of the carriage so that “this lady can be expedited”.

“… it can only remain as a representation of what it was where it came from”.

Freed from the metal cage of the hand-cranked wheelchair lift I wheeled along the platform to say goodbye to Audrey. I waited as she swung down suitcases for passengers, always punctuated by “have a nice day” , then job done she turned to climb back onboard. I wheeled forward, hand outstretched to say thank you, adding ‘and have a nice one’. Audrey looked surprised and as if we had not met before. Her duty discharged I didn’t really exist anymore.

Either pseud's corner or Blue Peter

Sooo, in the spirit of visual inquiry and do it yourself art, I have decided to do my bit of Sue and Ann's blog through pictorial means. Using my breakfast styrofoam plate as a printing plate, I am going to make a 'cultic' image (step forward, Herr Benjamin) for each day of the conference. Today's is the Goddess of Sweet Relief.

I will also knock.off copies back in Bristol if anybody wants them.

Chicago to Urbana-Champaign

I woke up this morning (you can tell we've been to hear some blues) with the sunrise over the lake. The hotel we were in is 40 floors up and I only ventured close to the window tentatively, but it had to be done.

The train journey later this afternoon felt disappointingly familiar: slightly hassled passengers gettting tetchy on a train that was delayed by nearly an hour, though this one was due to 'freight traffic' which I don't remember being a reason given for delayed trains back home. But we're here now and it's good to be back (or here for the first time for a few of us).

It feels a bit strange

It feels a bit strange being in Chicago with Walter Benjamin, particularly since he’s been dead for seventy years, but he’s sprightly and invigorating company. Very challenging yesterday in the Chicago Institute on the cultic and display value of art as we stood and watched people taking pictures of a Gaugin with their high-powered lenses. Herr Benjamin (it will be a while before I call him ‘Waltie’) was tickled when I took a photo with my phone of a man taking pictures with his phone. ‘I knew this would happen,’ he said, and he did.

This morning in Millennium Park Herr Benjamin was beside himself again as we stood beneath Anish Kapoor’s ‘Cloud Gate’. All around us in the blazing sunshine people were taking photos of reflections of themselves. ‘It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind all those years ago,’ he said, ‘but I think it stands: “The reproduced work of art is to an ever-increasing extent the reproduction of a work of art designed for reproducibility.”’

‘This is great,’ he said skipping around Kapoor’s enormous pillow of polished metal. ‘The artist has designed something that exists almost entirely to be photographed. Wonderful.’ ‘Yes, but people really seem to love it, Herr Benjamin,’ I said. ‘Yes, yes, progressive, progressive, democratic and progressive,’ he said, and toddled off in search of an iPad.

Ann Rippin

modern art day

I started at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art this time and was transfixed by “A sheet of paper on which I was about to draw", as it slipped from my table and fell to the floor,’an installation by Ryan Gander (from London) of three huge photographs of the artist in his studio watching a piece of paper float to the floor and 100 large crystal balls laser etched with images of the piece of paper and (seemingly) half filled with liquid as you looked into the balls (you had to get down on your knees on the floor) you saw different perspectives of the room you were in and the people in it. It was quite lovely.

Then I wandered around the Institute of Art for the rest of the afternoon. ... well actually I sat beside the fountain in the courtyard reading bits and pieces of Mieke Bal's work (University of Amsterdam) on visual inquiry for a while and then wandered. In relation to what we are here for, I was very struck by Lawrence Weiner's words on the wall of the new modern wing that seemed to speak to all the issues and dilemmas of the 'crisis of representation' that seem to trouble qualitative researchers so much. i tried to do a panorama of the whole quote, but its come out a little skewed  I suspect:

Hello Chicago, goodbye Chicago

This morning's determination to finish an annotated bibliography (plus the fact that I didn't think to look indoors on such a glorious day) meant I missed out on a coffee with the others.

I spent much of today walking. I walked leisurely past people hurrying around and watched them carrying briefcases, suitcases, 'cello cases, tennis racquets, clipboards; every now and then there was someone who had nothing to carry and held out an empty hand hoping for small change (no pun intended.) A lot more people begging on the streets this year; were they not here or did I not notice them before?

Performed my annual pilgrimage to Anish Kapoor's "cloud gate" in Millennium Park, an extraordinarily beautiful sculpture ceaselessly offering up a snapshot of the here and now. I stood opposite it and there I was, clad in white with my bright pink scarf, reflected in the middle of this spectacular piece of art and feeling I have finally arrived. After a while I moved back and sat at the middle of the 20-metre-long table (my guess - I counted 13 benches on either side.)

Sat there for quite some time looking, noticing, writing... My thoughts were circling around the excited shouts and yells of fun-having people in the crowd, as well as the extraordinarily tall and ornate buildings all around us. Savouring my moment of calm contentment, I could not help wondering what it might be that drives people to scream, shout, erect even taller and more impressive buildings, or otherwise engage in spectacular, if unnecessary, acts that earn them acknowledgement from others.

I braved the shopping district for the first time this year, intending to get my girls something more exciting than what airport shops offer. On the way back I walked magnificent miles (unintentionally; will take map next time) then enjoyed a meal with Jane, debating the rationale behind inclusion for all. Early night now, as Jane, Laurinda, Viv and I plan to catch the early morning train to Urbana-Champaign.

fun in the sun

After a fab breakfast, Jane and Laurinda headed off to the gallery. Tami, Suzanne, Ken and Jon wandered off ahead of their trip to U-C. And I did my best to play in the fountain (sadly prevented by a fence round it - a great shame in this scorching heat). Maybe a dip in Lake Michigan later ...

Last day in Chicago

As one of the really dodgy types (Wales, not Bristol based) I can confirm that, having taken a river tour of some of the architectural highlights, we will be jumping on a train this afternoon for the short journey south to UC.

As the temperature rises outside it becomes easier to think about leaving the city, even the attractions of spending more time in Renzo Piano's fabulous extension to the Art Institute. Maybe the temperature and humidity won't be that different a few miles south, but I will be glad to get away from the sheer volume of ambient noise here, much of it from rickety air conditioning.

Already beginning to think that Ann (Rippin) and I need to do some more rehearsing of our session, which is very much a performance piece -- looks like that's the task for the train journey to Urbana Champaign. Pity the other passengers!

morning bonny lass

A fine night was indeed had by all - stolis all round, fabulous food ... walking through the streets of Chicago ... plotting and scheming ... today it's breakfast at Hackney's followed by a little Matisse ... or even a lot. Viv 's hoping to lie under a tree by the beautiful Lake Michigan and possibly roll up my trousers. Some of the posse (aka 'the dodgy-Bristol types' as, I think Jane, termed us?) are heading down to ~Urbana-Champaign later to day, while the rest of us follow tomorrow.

Oh dear!!

Well Giocos was nice, but much more expensive than we remembered, partly  because of the different exchange rate of course and partly because we all had Martinis to start with. It was worth it though if only to  hear Tami  (Spry from St Cloud State Uni who visited Bristol earlier this year, see the identities theme link on right) ordering them. I intend to rehearse this order and use it when I get the chance ... I can't quite think when as we speak  ...  but here you go: 

'I'd like a Stoli,* straight up with  whisper of vermouth,  two olives and just a little dirty'

*(Stolichnaya vodka)

We met up with Ann, Sue  and Glen, who recommended the Chicago cultural centre as being worth a visit and Susanne ( Gannon from Western Sydney) also joined us.  We are hoping at arrange a visit to Bristol for Susanne who has some done some very interesting work with collaborative texts  and has some really interesting ideas on the teaching of the separation of text ( that we can all work with) from autonomous boundaried individuals (and imagined/alleged ownership of text). We then got into an interesting late night conversation about the ownership, editing and representation of collaborative texts...at least it seemed like it at the time, but then i was jet (and a bit martini) -lagged

I slept like a log actually, but I do seem to have woken with a slight headache. Today the temperature is already 73 F with 72% humidity, so after my breakfast coffee, I'm heading for the air con.

Camera lights action!!

Okay now we've all arrived.  Laurinda and I came from Bristol via Paris, others via London Heathrow and/or  Amsterdam .... Tonight we are all meeting up at Giocos restaurant on the south loop and then we have one day to recover from everything and get into gear before heading down to Urbana early Wednesday morning.
I am going to spend tomorrow in the Art Institute 
a) because it is wonderful and
b) because the Art Institute has GREAT air conditioning and it is 92 degrees (F) here and incredibly humid (and you think you're having a heat wave back in the UK...huh!!)
Others who have not been here before will probably take a river trip to see all the fabulous architecture and/or wonder around looking at all the public art.

When I blogged last year I uploaded loads of pictures of the magnificent Chicago skyline (see archive below), so I thought I'd ring the changes this year with "skyscraper planets' as my A level art student daughter, Esther,  has been teaching me how to make them with photoshop. Mine are not as good as hers, but they are not bad!!

Ken and I are in the advance party. We arrived in Chicago late Saturday evening and are staying, together with Tami Spry, as guests of Soyini Madison. Soyini is professor of performance studies at Northwestern and lives on the ‘south side’, in Hyde Park, where Barack Obama used to live until his minor promotion 18 months ago. Our cab driver proudly pointed out Obama’s old house and we’re going to get breakfast this morning at his (Obama’s, not the cab driver’s) favourite breakfast haunt.

Soyini and Tami will both be at the conference. Awake before the others I’ve just been looking at Soyini’s beautiful new book, Acts of Activism: Human Rights as Radical Performance, drawing on her field work in Ghana, about how performance forms part of everyday struggles for human rights and social justice. She comes to London regularly. Perhaps she can be persuaded to take a short trip or two westward….

Blues club last night – the Checkerboard Lounge. http://www.centerstagechicago.com/music/clubs/checkerboard-lounge.html

Theatre later today (after Obama breakfast). How cultural are we?

The Bristol posse arrive tomorrow.

Collaborative blogography

Okay, change of plan ... Jane and Jonathan are going to edit this blog, but we are going to have five authors now, which should be interesting!! I have already had to re-edit this entry because the previous photo was not Viv's best side (!). This is my final offer ... as five go off to QI.
The five Bristol QI bloggers are, from left to right, Jane Speedy, Jonathon Wyatt, Sue Porter, Viv Martin and Artemi Sakellariadis.
Jane is coordinator of CeNTraL and Reader in Qualitative Inquiry at the University of Bristol;  Jonathon, is a CeNTral graduate member and Head of Professional Development at the University of Oxford; Sue is  a research fellow in the Norah Fry Centre, University of Bristol and an EdD Narrative Inquiry student;Viv is a CeNTRaL graduate who has just submitted her post doc fellowship application to continue her esearch in the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol and Artemi is also a CeNTral Graduate member who now directs CSIE.

Fly posting @ QI Congress

QI congress is a huge, diverse and exciting conference. We decided this year that with so many Bristol presentations, the sense of our own diversity and interconnectedness might get lost. To counteract this we decided to produce a poster highlighting the Bristol contributions. Here it is!

QI 2010 Off we go again

It's that time of year again and there's a flurry of e-mails going back and forth from  a range of us here in Bristol and from UK to USA, to Australia and back again as we begin to prepare for the Sixth International Qualitative Inquiry conference in Urbana Champaign Illinois. This year a record number twelve of us (plus Glen Hall, Sue Porter's partner) are going from the Centre for Narratives and Transformative Learning at the University of Bristol - Jane Speedy, Malcolm Reed, Laurinda Brown, Viv Martin, Artemi Sakellariadis, Cindy Gowen, Ken Gale,  Jonathan Wyatt , Mclean Percy, Ann Rippin, Sue Porter, Dan Doherty - that's three GSOE staff, five recent graduates and four current research students.

A few of us are meeting up in Chicago next Monday (24th) with colleagues from the States and Australia. The conference starts in Urbana Champaign on Wednesday. There's a lot going on and everybody is doing a lot it seems. I'm  involved in a live book review session for Laurel Richardson's new book 'last writes' and Jonathan and I are also assisting with a collective biography workshop and forthcoming publication alongside Susanne Gannon from the University of Western Sydney. I won't begin to list the number of things Jonathan and Ken are doing -they are running a workshop together and love this conference and contribute more and more to it each year. If you want to look up what each if us is contributing, look up our surnames with the search tool in the online conference programme and list of abstracts.
Most of us are giving a paper of our own and many (eight) of us are engaged in the collective Bristol plenary. My paper is in a 'performative writing' panel chaired by Viv Martin and Elyse Pineau from the University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale on friday morning and I'm putting the finishing touches to it today. I'm working at home and my family are all out, so in a minute I' m going to practice giving my paper to the bathroom mirror to see how long it takes.

There is also a large group of us involved in the 'Bristol plenary spotlight event' which is on Saturday afternoon. This particular session aims to showcase the very prominent and innovative position that we are carving out for u ourselves in Bristol as leading international players in the generation of collaborative forms of writing as inquiry and in the development of theoretical and ethical know-how in this field . We have a great panel this year showcasing fragments of some of our best work using collective biography; generating writing as inquiry methods using web2 technologies - in this case twitter; exploring the complex ethical and personal dilemmas about authorship and ownership that collaborative work in the academy highlights and expanding the arts-base of social research by exploring different realities, including the magical realities evoked by 'ghost' writers.

We'll tell you more about our spotlight and how it is received as we get to it, but if you are interested, you can keep track of the congress and what is going on by exploring the congress website.

Today I'm just shaking the cobwebs off the blog and alerting you to it...but do follow us as we go and add your comments. We may add a little something next week, but really we are setting off next Sunday (23rd). Jonathan and/or  I will probably blog every day as he is my co-blogger this year  (gives us something to do as we are  usually awake half the night!!)

24th/25th Back to Bristol-end of blog

Jonathan and Ken drove Bronwyn and Tami back to Chicago earlier, but the rest of us stayed to have an amazing Sunday breakfast at Gloria's place (my B and B). I have already booked Gloria's for next year. The boys are such schmoozers - so they like to be to be at the Illni Union near the action (in case they miss something!) and Viv likes to be there too, as walking tires her and it is nice to be able to nip upstairs for a nap mid-conference, but for all my fascinations with, and personal/political commitments towards collectivity, collaboration and community, I like to walk back by myself across the quads and through the trees to gloria's house up a leafy quiet lane. These walks have been some of the most productive moments of the conference in terms of my own thoughts and plans and distillations. Besides which Gloria does the most amazing breakfasts!!


Here we are with Gloria, getting
ready for the road trip back



We set Mavis (as we had come to call the very bossy Satnav) to return us to Chicago O'hare airport and off we set with Ying lin at the wheel (it was just like driving in Tai wan as far as she was concerned, so she was a good choice of driver!!)


Ying Lin and Mavis did a fantastic job between them, apart from the moment when we stopped for gas, which Mavis seemed to take very personally-she went beswerk , pointed her arrows in three directions and once and started to squawk!!

Jane has already made plans with Bronwyn for a workshop/panel contribution combining the thinking and writing of philosophers, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, educationalists, and historians, re-revisiting Foucault's revisiting of the testimony of Pierre Rivierre, which we could start during Bronwyn's visit to Bristol as part of the Learning Identity and Society theme.

During our road trip back we also thought that as well as a contribution from the Bristol Collaborative Writing Group (which has so far contributed as part of panels and plenaries but could now come of age at QI and contribute a whole session) we might combine with our UWS and St Cloud State companions to contribute a arts-based (music, song, poetry, writing, dialogue, perfromance) panel on road trips to QI. By the time we get to QI next year Tami spry and Bronwyn Davies will both have visited Bristol and Jane will have visited Western Sydney, so there will be possible moments to work on this...not to mention further interrelationships networks and projects will have developed...more of which....


Whichever plane we were returning on we all always seem to meet up at Gate M11 in the dreaded O'Hare airport, where for some reason there is no coffee available (no tea either, but no coffee????

C'mon, this is America!!) This year was no exception,

although we seemed to make more mess than usual
with all our stuff..and , due to lack of coffee, felt obliged to drink gin and tonic...(tough work but someone had to do it...)

Eventually after various night flights, we got back to Heathrow and got our various National Express coaches to our various cities.


I suppose that's the end to my QI blog for 2009. I have enjoyed doing the blog though and have received very good feedback from readers and followers at home, perhaps the best was from Laurinda Brown who commented
'this was the first blog I've seen the point of'...so perhaps now I've had a go, there will be others...if i can see the point to them!!



Jane Speedy, May 26th , 2009, back in Bristol after a long journey

May 23rd -final day

Well here we are, final day of the conference and a lot to organise for our own plenary session, as well as going to hear other people's work. Our colleagues from UWS (see below) presented several chapters from their forthcoming book (pub shortly by Peter Lang) which took really richly nuanced stories from pedagogical settings and framed them using Deleuzian conceptualisations.

Jonathan and Ken presented with the rest of their writing group (Tami Spry, Ron Pelias, Larry Parker)

and we presented our plenary, which was exciting to do and clearly evoked interest and discussion and received positive feedback. It was interesting to notice how, when presented with multiple entry points to our work, the audience responded from their own disciplines and theoretical perspectives which helped us to more clearly position ourselves. Jonathan and Ken were interested in the space between them and how to inscribe that space, as was Cindy in relation to China, but the rest of us are more concerned with developing the ethical knowhow that might collectively build and sustain community, however transiently, and it was interesting also to notice how much the collective activity of coming to QI and producing this plenary sustained our sense of collective endeavour.

There was a last minute glitch in that the building supervisor arrived to find us re-arranging the chairs and announced that we were not allowed to re-arrange anything as the building was unionised and were also not allowed to use the tables we had stacked up in order to mount our projectors. It looked, at the last minute, as though we were not going to be able to use any technological equipment. However, he then went way out of his way to produce projector trolleys for us all in time for our session and all went well.

After the session we went out for a quick drink to celebrate Ying Lin's birthday

Happy birthday Ying Lin!!!!

before returning to the Illini Union one last time to see Jon and Ken receive their honorarium and attend the QI 'town meeting' which started with a an acknowledgement by Patti Lather of the work of Joe Kincheloe, who has recently died and to whom this congress has been dedicated.

We then all went to the last night party, which was a traditional southern cookout, accompanied by live cajun band music. Last day tomorrow!!

May 22nd-Full-on conference life

Okay so it hasn't all been hard work! Here we are at 'the Bread Store' in Urbana, our favourite cafe


As for the conference...There are a lot of likeminded people here from all over the world , a lot of sessions and conversations and it is hard to take in....
I went to a panel on ageing led by Carolyn Ellis , including Art Bochner, Mary Gergen, Ken Gergen, Laurel Richardson and Norman Denzin. It was really good to hear these founding figures from the congress looking both backwards and forwards over their interconnecting academic lives and some of their presentations were superb, yet I found myself hoping that we would get such a panel in years to come, not too many years, that included people from elsewhere in the geographical, cultural, intellectual and social mix (they are all white North Americans and know each other well).

This conference is a great mix. Ying Lin has met Katherina, a doctoral scholar from the Czech republic, studying in Australia who is doing similar work to her own .
Ying Lin and Katherina are both interested in working with collective biography in their different cultural settings (Taiwan and the Czech republic) and how this kind of work can/cannot be adapted, translated and taken up in these contexts
Johnny Saldana
Ying Lin was also literally bouncing with excitement after going to Johnny Saldana's auto/ethno/theatrical performance this afternoon, as were we all in the early evening after going as a group to see Elyse Lamm Pineau's performance of 'Nursing mother'. This led to a whole series of discussions about overlaps and differences between performativity, performance, writing for performance and performative writing and about the performative element that is central to the narrative inquiry doctoral programme that remains central to our work, but theoretically underdeveloped (by us). We (I) could do with some help with developing the conceptual frameworks for this work.

There was also an excellent session on writing as witnessing....which included another very powerful contribution from Antjie Krog exploring Ubuntu- the spritual philosopy behind truth and reconciliation and the ways in which black South Africans used forgiveness as an instrument for change and as an invitation to white South Africans to take up their humanity and work together.

Desmond Tutu explained Ubuntu as:

One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu - the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality - Ubuntu - you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.

Antjie also positted events in post apartheid South Africa as an ethically and philosophically different conceptualisation of exploring and acknowledging issues of social justice. Critiques of the truth and reconciliation process, she argued, have been routinely presented as critiques of ubuntu as unworkable, rather than critiques of white South African's refusal to take up the invitation to humanity they have been offered. This gives us a huge amount of food for thought, it seems to me, if we are working in collective and collaborative ways, to consdier what kinds of relational and ethical frameworks ubuntu might invite us into with each other.


It was a good day but a long day and we went off to supper with our colleagues from Western Sydney, and then early to bed. Ken gave his presentation today ' an inquiry into the ethical nature of a Deleuzian creative educational practice', which was very well received, but most of us have at least two presentations of our own to give tomorrow. Yikes!!

Artemi, Bronwyn, Viv, Ying Lin and Suzanne - off to supper and an early night.


Jane Speedy, May 22nd, 2009, Urbana Champaign