Undoing Inequalities, Unearthing Humanity through Creative Practice and Art in/as Research and Feminist Engagement

Abstract (English)

Recognizing the growing precarity and vulnerability of the human condition, exacerbated by climate change, extractive Capitalism, liberal individualism, and rapid digital transformations, this panel is dedicated to presenting new, interdisciplinary research aimed at undoing inequalities. We seek contributions that employ feminist-inspired critique through art agency and creative practice research to address challenges in knowledge construction that shape and limit what and how we know. We invite critical, art and craft -based engagement, seeking change through epistemic redefinitions and in supporting the dignity of living. The panel emphasizes innovation, collaboration, activism and the critique of dominant power structures. We invite contributions examining sustainable living, caring practices as well as arts as/based research in unearthing humanity by promoting ecological balance, emphasizing 'wholeness,' and prioritizing people and their emotions.

Judith Butler’s Precarious Life (2004) has prompted investigation into the persistence of precarious forms of human existence, which at the current times of crises are thrown into a sharp focus, reinforcing established hierarchies, and marginalities. Work on feminism and emotion (Ahmed, 2004), affect (Stewart, 2007), as well as and feeling and material culture, for example in fashion and dress (Filippello & Parkins, 2023), meanwhile, explore spaces of possibility in which agencies can be forged or retrieved (Hackney et al, 2022). These approaches, alongside Alfred Gell’s work on art and agency and Grant Kester on art praxis among others inform this panel’s response to pervasive inequalities, precarity (Kosmala and Imas, 2016), and challenges to liveable life, particularly in a post-COVID world (Butler, 2022). The aim is to explore, debate and examine creative ways to contribute to rethinking knowledge and established norms as well as to engage with care aesthetics (Thompson, 2022) to re/build communities, reconstructing social bonds, reshaping relatedness and the means of being with each other.

This panel also addresses methodological challenges in undoing inequalities by mobilising creative practice and art as/in research around the issues of feminist inspired knowledge production and co-creation and seeks affinities with social justice struggles, engaging with contemporary debates and developments in the theorising and lived experience of people of all genders. We call for art praxis examples that conceptualise and analyse the subject of inequalities and marginalities as well as seek to empower through transformative practice. We call for the papers that demonstrate through creative and material practices - art, design, craft – how to source means and solutions to shape future world based on respect, valuing one another and improved quality of life, conditions of liveability and a sense of a shared world.