Shifting Work and Home Spatialities: Connecting in and Through Arts-Based Research During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

<p>The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many countries adopting containment measures. This transcontinental, transdisciplinary study draws on arts-based research to explore the value of connecting through 'disease' at the moment of disease during the COVID-19 epoch. The four researcher-author-educators engaged in collective memory work and drew on collaborative artful practices to create connections and deepen their learning of their home-work transgression experiences. As makers and creators, they participated in and produced a poetic assemblage which involved a netting and knotting process of "becoming". Leveraging the stories and images, pantoum poetry were then created in a poetic inquiry process that enabled further exploration of the lived experiences of working in home locked down. The picture-like pantoum poems tripped their tongues with phrases, concepts, words and ideas, reflecting and refracting from each gem-glints of gift offerings. Each poetic iteration, strangely unique, but unsurprisingly magical as they held in a web of sameness, concepts connected to their lived experiences. While the poetry enabled lines of flight, the photographs which juxtaposed the pantoums territorialised the imagery, with their iterations of home and a retreat to the 'iso garden'. Thus, home was placed under erasure.</p>