Arts-Based Research and Visual Approaches to Urban Studies: Performative Drawing and Modernology

Abstract

In recent years, arts-based research approaches have gained prominence among the research community, allowing a broadening of perspectives for knowledge creation in urban studies and beyond. Among arts-based research methods, different visual research techniques, including sketching and drawing, provide a handy and multifaceted toolkit to help scholars from multiple disciplines explore urban phenomena. The generated visual outputs are often easily understood, communicating rich emotional and affective meanings, and reformulating complex data in graphic form. In addition, the inherent spatiality of visual media makes them ideal for documenting and exploring urban environments. Based on Xian Zheng's method of Performative Drawing as a technique for studying everyday life worlds in cities and villages in Austria and China, we will describe different steps in an arts-based research process. Providing insights into everyday practices and spatial structures, the Performative Drawing process creates a space of interaction that affects both the researcher and the people/spaces to be researched. Consequently, Performative Drawings not only establish a visual language, translating spatial environments and spatial practice into graphic form, but also trace the process of knowledge creation of an arts-based researcher, while intervening in socio-spatial relations at the basis of everyday spatial realities.