Abstract:
“I just can’t get passed the beauty of the nests. All of them frothing from the blog in delicate, woven glory. A soufflé of nests! The chapter sits puffy with blogposts of nests. Beaming, cheek-filled, like a child gorged on the reddest of strawberries, strawberry-smeared, inside and out. Now, I want to sit in the blog’s nests like a child tucked behind a curtain practising to tie her shoelaces, to learn herself, with no one showing her how” (PhD thesis draft excerpt, Early Winter 2016).In this paper I use blogposts of nests to examine how the blog transforms from a site of data collation to a space of creative new knowing. Does blogging as creative practice emerge with the disruption of the space between data and everyday life’s work? Bachelard and Somerville have written of homely nests (Bachelard 1958) and the performance of home (Somerville 1999). I am making a nest for my daughter Vivi, matted from sheep’s wool, surfactant detergent and water. The nest, made primarily with a core fibre is equally reliant on other-matter to perform its role in sustenance. It is a nest for shearwater. We live on Phillip Island where the short-tailed shearwaters nest six months of the year. At the time of writing the shearwaters are taking off for Siberia where they have a second, summer nest in the Northern hemisphere. Nests are original sites of sustenance, embracing us in order to survive, beginning as the womb and continuing. We are made of them, our nests, and they are made of the stuff of everyday life. Understanding the blog as a creative process is conceptualised in this paper using Paul Carter’s material thinking (2004) as research where creative knowledge is considered inextricable from the loom that produced it. Playing within the frame of body/space/place/water consciousness as part of the Space, Place, Body research collective, next to Maggie MacLure’s (2014) reanimating data with wonder as it reaches out and grasps us (MacLure, 2014, abstract), I find everyday life’s work (the surfactant detergent and water) bringing data to life, and life to the work. The blog’s openness to disrupting the space between the standard research data and everyday life’s work transforms the blog to a site of sustenance, a research practice that is beyond finite closure-oriented modes of research. A new avenue for meaning-making, the blog moves matter as a mode of sustenance for all entities. (400 words)References:Bachelard, G. (1958) The Poetics of Space. Presses Universitaires de France, France.Carter, P. (2004) Material Thinking. Melbourne University Press, Australia.MacLure, M. (2014) Reanimating data in qualitative research: the wonder of objects. Abstract Refereed, Conference proceedings, Australian Association of Education Research Conference. Somerville, M. (1999) Body/Landscape Journals. Spinifex Press, Australia.