Feltness: Research-Creation, Socially Engaged Art, and Affective Pedagogies

by Stephanie Springgay

Stephanie Springgay’s concept of feltness—which emerges from affect theory, queer and feminist theory, and feminist conceptions of more-than-human entanglements—is a set of intimate practices of creating art based on touch, affect, relationality, love, and responsibility. In this book, she explores how feltness is a radical pedagogy that can be practiced with diverse publics, including children, who are often left out of conversations about who can learn in radical ways. Springgay examines the results of a decade-long project in which researchers, artists, students, and teachers participated in events in North American elementary, secondary, and postsecondary institutions. In projects that ranged from children learning to be critics and artists to university students experimenting with building “a public” through art, participants blended participatory art creation with academic research to address social justice issues. Springgay shows how feltness can redefine who is imagined to be capable of complex feeling, experiential learning, embodied practice, social engagement, and intimate care. In this way, feltness fosters learning that disrupts and defamiliarizes schools and institutions, knowledge systems, values, and the legibility of art and research.

224 pages, Paperback

Published December 2, 2022

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating look at socially-engaged art pedagogy. Theory was well supported (and broken up) by case studies. Useful food for thought as someone who works at the intersection of social science and art.

A couple complaints: 1. Could have explained "anarchiving" more fully. 2. The image plates were not referenced in the text?? I kept forgetting there were images that went with the case studies!