Wayfaring and the knowledge-land-scape

In following with Karen Barad I recognize readers and authors (and many other more-than-human agents) as intra-dependently entangled within constellations of matter and meaning. In fact, we have already started to move forward alongside each other in our emergent processes of becoming knowledgeable. The idea here is that, instead of me presenting a descriptive narrative on ethical engagement and ethical space, we get to perform its mechanisms together – side by side.

The company for us to be- and think with varies, but emerge for a large part from the encounters I had as I threaded my way through my fieldwork in the hamlets of Uqsuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven) and Salliq (Coral Harbour) of Kitikmeot- and Kivalliq regions in the territory of Nunavut respectively. I was, for example invited to join along with caribou hunts, joined in with ice-fishing, rode an All-Terrain Vehicle to camp out at a fishing weir, collected ice, and took rides in the back of a qamutik (sled) to spend time at cabins, or check on breathing-holes and dens of seals. Also, within the communities, I learnt about the meaning of opening prayers at special meetings, and igloo building, as well as the “marginal”, every-day, material logistics that are part of land-based monitoring research projects in the Arctic, like car repairs, cargo transport, seasonal travel, and getting stuck for days during my regional travels multiple times due to blizzards and cancelled flights. Collectively, I refer to all those practical experiences that emerged as part of my methodological wayfaring, as ‘aesthetic encounters’- a term that I adapt from Robinson and Martin’s ‘aesthetic action’ . I look at the opportunities that emerge within such encounters for enunciating and conciliating different kinds of knowledges. What kind of spaces open up? What insights emerge within such spaces? And what possibilities for cross-cultural exchange, beyond data, become possible?

To engage such questions, however, while retaining the dynamic of open, affective and lively engagement with the world and each other in the way that the ESE calls for- we need to first, pay attention to the ways that we come to know the world. These ways are, I argue, connected to how we move through the world. Instead of mere observation, documentation, accumulation and representation, which reinforces subject/object divides, I argue for an ethos of ‘co-forming patterns of responsiveness, attention, desire and communication’ , by way of wayfaring.

Speaking of such, wayfaring, you have reached a split in the road. Moving forward threads you into the parallel tracks that will guide along the unfolding knowledge-land-scape of the Bearwatch project. This cut is all about the processes of wayfaring. Taking a detour redirects you to a different cut in space and time: Aesthetic Action. Which direction do you take?

[Detour Aesthetic Action]