Pairs Together: A/r/tographic Learning in Relation with Visual‐Textual Propositions

Abstract A/r/tography as a methodology of art education research emphasizes the significance of artful engagement with our subjectivity as sites of living inquiry. While the technologization of society creates increased demand for the datafication of education, a/r/tography seeks understanding with the potentiality of difference. A/r/tography as a co‐creative practice retextures analysis from a reductive tool of measurement to an ongoing process of relational knowing. Opening to relationality, emotionality, and multiplicity, analysis of ‘data' becomes an engaged process with the entanglements of lived experiences that increase in richness through collaborative participation. The process of making visual‐textual pairs as a visual proposition is such an enactment of a/r/tography where the possibility of multiple readings and collaboration holds in tension shared and subjective understanding in invitational, meaningful, and accessible ways. The method of making visual pairs juxtaposes two images to create a visual metaphor, demonstrating the pedagogical possibility of research that centres on artistic practice and objects. With visual‐textual pairing, we intentionally extend the method to enable collaborative practice. By starting with the same image and text, going out to form our individual pairs, and returning to share our completed pairs. Inquiring alongside collaborators, images, texts, and situated sites, we engage reflexively and imaginatively in how we might become with the human, non‐human, and more‐than‐human.