EN / Arts-Based Methods for Decolonising Participatory Research / Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Decoloniality of knowing and being: Artistic research through collaborative craft practice 

Nithikul Nimkulrat

Abstract: This chapter examines collaborative craft practice as a way of approaching a research problem and driving the artistic research process and its role in the decoloniality of knowing and being. Artistic research encompasses other disparities in the process and output relationship that can present challenges to non-arts researchers and university systems seeking to understand this research within their own scaffolds of reference for the research process. The author’s artistic research in which she collaborated with mathematicians is exemplified to illuminate how arts-based methods can foster pluralism, lower disciplinary hierarchies and increase multivocality, thus situating artistic research in a decolonial context.

 

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A mathematical characterisation process that results in a new knot pattern. From left: (A) a diagram of multiple knots using four colours; (B) a recoloured diagram using black and grey; and (C) a circular knot pattern of knotted paper string based on the black and grey diagram. Diagrams: Janette Matthews (2015). Photograph: Nithikul Nimkulrat (2015). 

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Single reef knots constructed into a lacy structure. From left: (A) a single reef knot with two additional central strands passing through the centre; (B) a group of knots forming a circle; (C) a lacy structure; and (D) an installation with knotted elements named The White Forest (2016). Photographs: Nithikul Nimkulrat (2013–2016).

Collaborative process between the author and her mathematician collaborator. Diagram adapted from Nimkulrat and Matthews (2017, p. 71).

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Sixteen two-tone coloured, four-strand reef knots defined as unit cells that can be tiled together to create a countless number of knot patterns. Left column: the 16 knot units mathematically identified. Right panel: 24 two-tone knot patterns, each produced from knot units shown in the left column. The patterns whose number indications are in the same colour are figure-ground reversal. The pattern number indications with asterisks show that the same set of knot units can be tiled in multiple ways to create variations of knot patterns and structures. Diagram adapted from Nimkulrat and Nurmi (2019, p. 20); photographs and notations: Nithikul Nimkulrat.