Journal of Writing in Creative Practice - Volume 14, Issue 2, 2021

In this article, the author-researcher presents three intertwined texts: excerpts from an autobiographical novel, extracts from a reflexive journal written during the writing of that novel, as well as a theorized account and analysis of the overarching creative process. These texts talk to each other as a form of intertextuality in the similar way that the three generations of a Chinese Indonesian family depicted in the novel interact with one another and present differing perspectives and fresh insights. The issues of the writer’s inner voices and multiplicity of the self feature prominently in this work, the result of a deep and critical engagement with the author-researcher’s creative writing and reflective thinking processes. Together, these three interrelated texts capture and explore multiple perspectives interacting during the writing process while at the same time present how the self and sites of meaning-making can be constructed through writing.

The article consists of two parts, Introduction and/or Conclusion and a Meditative Enquiry, to be read in any order, if indeed we do ‘read’ meditative enquiry. Meditative enquiry here concerns the meditative writing and/or reading of this article on presence. The enquiry is divided into numerous subheadings that encourage a slow and circular, rather than linear, narrative, and a participative reading approach, in which each section aims to return to, or arrive in, the present moment. The materiality of our presence is continuous, whether or not we are conscious of being in the present. The article also enacts resistance to, or an apparent inability of conscious awareness to arrive in, and stay with, what is happening in this moment. Implications are, firstly, the unmaking of: a qualitative researcher-participant’s ‘Self’; and the autoethnographic self within writing as creative practice. Secondly, validating a dual contribution of meditation to philosophy and writing on presence.

Having recently given, and published in Third Text referee journal and Third Text Online, a series of articles on mask, class and carnival, I was recently invited to write a text to accompany an exhibition relating to masks. Mask, Masque, Masc was a group exhibition hosted online between 14 and 31 May 2020. It was curated by Marc Hulson, Alessandra Falbo and Rolina E. Blok, and hosted by Five Years and Darling Pearls & Co at Platforms Project Net 2020 (see: http://www.fiveyears.org.uk/archive2/pages/277/Masc_Mask_Masque/277.html. Accessed 28 July 2021). This article is a transformed version of that text, edited and extended to suit this journal and the requirements and suggestions of the journal’s reviewers. It starts out with an epigraph taken from Nietzsche, followed by two quotes from Walter Benjamin that relate writing playfully to ‘magic’. It later turns towards a conclusion with two more fulsome quotes from F.W. Nietzsche, which dispute the priority of truth and claim that every word is a mask. The piece aims to encourage and support newcomers to writing, as well as non-native speakers and those from less privileged backgrounds; any and all of whom might nervously feel that their own writing is in some way illegitimate. I draw upon my experience as an arts lecturer and arts writer, as the article becomes an example of an autobiographical strain in my work that uses first-person narratives to explore ways in which writing, education (in general) and art education (in particular) might contribute to or help us negotiate class consciousness and cultural barriers. The article discusses ways in which new technologies invite and allow new voices to gain confidence in writing, and also alludes to ‘masks’, ‘imposters’ and ‘imposter syndrome’ (initially nominated as a feminist concern). It attempts to help and to advise aspiring writers by ‘dis-spelling’ myths of writing as transcendent, privileged and thereby socially divisive, and promotes the idea of writing as a material process (no less ‘magical’ for that) open to all. Interestingly, the title of this article alludes to its own word count, and thus the title had to be changed each time the article was edited and as it grew into the approximately 6,000-word essay it is now. As well as being, in this and other ways, self-reflexive and self-conscious, the writing becomes self-deconstructive towards its conclusion, tugging at a certain ‘masc’-ulinity concerning the sources and motivations for the writing and of the author that might otherwise remain masked to the author. This allows the piece to end by extending the implications of a purported écriture feminine to become an encouragement to more and different ‘others’ to find a way, and to find their way, to and through writing, meanwhile expanding on the many ways in which we might deploy a new-found freedom to write according to the model of words as masks, of writing as a masque and of the author as masked.

This article is supported by the author’s experience through a methodology created during her Ph.D. thesis ‘The experience of book’s place at the university’, also during COVID-19 restrictions. The student transformed public presentations into collaborative research workshops, where new interrelations and concepts occurred rooted in arts-based research methodologies, exploring art and education, in its scope. Cardography is an invented designation based on a/r/tography, as a creative living research methodology that uses cards as a device for a visual inquiry, considering that each book’s page is a card to be written or drawn (digital or paper), documenting the dialogic process during each research workshop. The research result contemplates an artistic object, which is displayed afterwards in university and art exhibitions. The reader is invited to follow a fil rouge alignment, inspired by a book structure, reflecting upon concepts and research methods not yet implemented at the art education doctoral course.

Online learning can be an alienating experience; students can feel their emotions are disregarded, marginalized or even viewed as hindrances as they try to motivate themselves to learn, staring at the dancing pixels of their illuminated screens. They feel at a remove from other students, trapped in other rooms, far away from them. The closeness of bodies in a shared physical space is raised as an absence. And yet, we contend in this article that connecting with affect in online learning spaces could build connectivity that counteracts the alienation of social distancing. Raw creative affective discourses can be challenging, and uncomfortable for others to take in but they are necessary online. We show that using non-digital practices such as drawing and writing freely, without inhibitions, can immeasurably enhance the online experience, giving a space for affect to be expressed in a safe but emancipatory learning architecture.