Fall 2019
Ground Works Special Inaugural Edition
Link: https://a2ru2019.groundworks.io/gallery
Exploring Research as Craft (ERAC) collaboratively engages seemingly disparate disciplines through craft, material meaning-making, and critical response. Across the sciences and arts, people engage with their material and social environments to craft meaning about the world. However, academic siloing and the prioritization of jargon over communication endorse narrow understandings of science, art, research, and craft. Developed by an anthropology PhD student and an MFA at the University of Georgia (UGA), ERAC is a three-part workshop series to promote cross-disciplinary communication by conceptualizing research and practice as craft. This series culminated in a public exhibition at ATHICA, a non-profit gallery in Athens, Georgia. ERAC uncovers commonalities in how students, researchers, and faculty from diverse disciplines engage with questions about the world. In this way, traditional disciplines are deconstructed and research itself is promoted as an expression of cultural values and individual experience.
Exploring Research as Craft is supported in part by an Idea Lab Mini Grant.