Hello fellow pedestrians,

I wanted to let you know that I have recently published my PhD that I have been working on in Falmouth for the past few years.

'Walking Home: The path as transect in an 800km autoethnographic enquiry' is a practice based research project that uses walking, memory and interpretation to develop an ecological form of subjectivity through a transdisciplinary approach to visual arts practice that started with walking and kept going, into drawing, performance, writing, film and installation.

I have recently taken up a position at The Cabinet at Falmouth University working with the Centre for Performance Research and their extensive collection of performance, writing and visual art archives.

Please feel free to contact me at [log in to unmask] or see www.bramthomasarnold.com for further works.

The abstract is pasted below and the thesis should be available digitally through the British Library in the autumn. The 9 part series of drawings entitled How to Walk  that form the spine of the thesis, were exhibited as part of the Plymouth Contemporary Open in 2015, winning the Audience Choice Award. A limited edition artists bookwork will be available of this series at Counter Plymouth in October.  

Abstract:

This practice-based project articulates the notion of an autoethnographic transect using Walking Home, a particular journey that I made in 2009, as its foundation. Borrowing key terms from the fields of ethnography and ecology, the project articulates a new contribution to knowledge by expanding the notion of a transect and using methods appropriated from autoethnography to generate visual arts practice in the wake of a long distance walk. Walking from London, England to St. Gallen, Switzerland the journey was undertaken in the wake of my father's death.

The key principle this project takes from auotethnography is that the position of the emotive self, as researcher and researched, can offer unique insights into a given field. Methods borrowed from autoethnography and ecology are re-employed throughout a transdisciplinary practice and body of research that, through the development of an ecological form of subjectivity, articulates an autoethnographic transect. The project expands the scale of a transect, from a line drawn across a field, to a journey taken across Europe; one that is drawn, walked and talked into being.

Walking Home is presented in a holistic form whereby contextual and critical work is interwoven with and within practice: writing, image making, performance and installation. This interwoven process whereby the practice and research become an inherent part of each other, is exemplified through a body of work called Fondue, a performance, taking place as a dinner party, which has evolved out of my engagement with autoethnography. An exhibition took place in Spring 2015, the outcomes of which are folded into this thesis. Articulating the notion of an autoethnographic transect as a new method within the field of visual arts practice this thesis will be of interest to performance practitioners, artists and writers engaged with the field of walking as a form of practice or process.

Thank you kindly,

Bram.