Public Performances and Art-Based Interventions in Liminal Academic Spaces

Spatial Liminality

Liminal spaces offer opportunities to stretch scholarship, play with inquiry and knowledge, and experiment with various forms of research-creations (Manning, 2016). Despite its productive capacities, liminality has historically been a concept operationalized only in philosophy and anthropology, often to describe larger historical or cultural transitions or smaller personal experiences such as initiation rituals (Szakolczai, 2009). We work to extend the concept of liminality into the field of educational research. Too often, guided by current neoliberal discourses, academic spaces form normative borders and generate confirmatory structures that order knowledge, reality, and demand a particular type of scholarship. However, many scholars have recently begun to resist normative neoliberal apparatuses and they have started to re-conceptualize possibilities of work and inquiry in liminal, resisting, and third spaces (see, for example, Cannella, 2015; Cheek, 2017; Scheurich, 2018). In the context of this article, liminal spaces are political and relational. They co-exist with normative spaces, but they offer opportunities to practice a more critical “public” science and transgress borders between disciplines, practices, and different ways of knowing-doing. Since liminal spaces are approached here as speculative and as forms of potential and possible, liminality of scholarship and inquiry (and all relations embedded within) is impossible to define and characterize as a fixed tangible entity (see, for example, Bryant et al., 2011). Instead, liminality might become possible and practiced within third space which are neither this or that, spaces of in or out but instances and events of both and more than and in-between. Furthermore, we use flash mobs as examples, which provide a context and space for relationality. Some of this more critical public science can take place in train stations, market squares, and shopping malls, where the public visits, operates, and transforms spatial configurations. Following Derrida (1982), we wonder how scholars can work through liminal spatial configurations and pass singular liminality and limits (of space) that are not limits but which assure the limit’s permeable and transparent continuity. We also ask how limits of academia and scholarship work in relation to public performances and art-based interventions.

Liminality can take a variety of forms. For example, spatial liminality, which offers un/re/structuring possibilities for normative academic spaces, operates through its personifications, vehicles, and materials. For Murrani (2016),

liminality, that is, all that is marginal, ephemeral and on the periphery, is a social and a spatial condition that implies a temporal dimension akin to the becoming of transitional events and situations that are situated neither here nor there, rather in-between. (p. 192)

Spatial liminality rejects binary logic and it offers various approximations of knowledges where being and becoming are reconceptualized. For example, for Soja (1996), third space is an othering space, a thirding, spatial other which expands beyond fixed and stable normative spaces. It is infinitely open space. Similarly, Foucault and Miskowiec (1986) were drawn into space and sites that have curious properties, the marginalia, sites that connect with other sites while suspecting, neutralizing, or inventing relations they mirror or reflect. For Foucault, heterotopic spaces and heterotopias can mix and juxtapose in a single place several spaces which might be foreign or incompatible. Furthermore, heterotopias link to slices of time when traditional time is being broken or time accumulates differently, as in festival time—time that is experienced differently from seconds and minutes, which may be experienced as sped or slowed. A floating piece of space and a space without a space exemplifies for Foucault heterotopia par excellence.

In taking a closer look at the “third space,” we were inspired by postcolonial scholar Homi Bhabba (1990, 1994), especially his notion of the third space as a way to draw attention to (cultural) difference. He puts forward third space as a productive location, as a “position of liminality” (Bhabba, 1990, p. 209). In such a space, as noted by Gannon (2010), human subjects brush against one another and are consequently changed by that contact. And so, instead of understanding scholarly work as a third space that only gathers people together to create knowledge, we shift toward the notion of difference as an integral part in this kind of scholarship. Thus, a third space would be a liminal space that provokes productive instability by capturing the collision of differences, which are brushed against each other highlighting the complexity in, for example, values, beliefs, conventions, and diverse aspects of scholarly work. Instead of just producing “knowledge,” such a space would provide moments of living rupture that might open up new ways to think about the university as an institution as well as the academic and scholarly work, and, moreover, the academics themselves. Third space for us is then more a living inquiry stance to challenge assumptions, unearth unexpected encounters, act differently, and posit complex questions. If scholarly work is understood in this way, the role of the scholar moves in different directions, for instance, toward critical collaborative inquiry (Dyer & Löytönen, 2012; Löytönen, 2016, 2017) and differently structured university institutions such as free and open universities (Koro-Ljungberg & Löytönen, 2016). As we move forward with this third space framework, we wonder how work and inquiry happening in these un-/restructured, collaborative, open spaces build on diversity and otherness as operational assumed practices instead of trying to create institutional structures that are capable of responding to stabilized otherness and fixed and categorized difference. We seek to discover ways in which experimenting and studying within liminal spaces can generate important insights about complexities of human experiences and continuously becoming and changing lives.

Art-Based Interventions

Our inspiration for creating liminal spaces and twisting the normative notions of qualitative inquiry connect with interventionist art or art-based interventions (Richardson, 2010). While in qualitative inquiry, and especially in action research, interventions are typically understood as carefully planned specific activities with expected and predictable outcomes (see, for example, McIntyre, 2008; Reason & Bradbury, 2008). Art-based interventions use artistic activities or art works “to form as a disjunctive event within the ongoing daily activities of public life” (Richardson, 2010, p. 19). Thus, art-based interventions can be understood as performative events or performative interactions (Kester, 2004) that strive to deconstruct a specific situation or practice. One example of an artistic intervention is Lisa Erdman’s art-based doctoral thesis production called Finnexia^®. It was presented in September 2012 in the Helsinki Railway Station, addressing the need for international dialogue on social issues in Finland. Using the framework of a satirical medical advertising pitch, the artistic intervention presented an informal discussion format surrounding acquisition of the Finnish language. As described by Tavin and Erdman (2015), the

arts-based intervention, Finnexia is situated within the medical realm where the neo-liberal discourse associated with this industry is now familiar to many people on a personal and global level. For example, prescriptions and pharmacy visits have a place in everyday life, and direct-to-consumer medical advertising takes on an increasingly international presence within the media landscape. (p. 8)

Erdman’s artistic intervention is unique as it reveals and challenges the notions associated with medicalization of the society and at the same time opens a space from which public dialogue can emerge in Finland, regarding language acquisition and cultural integration (http://www.finnexia.fi/).

Within the Finnexia example, we see how arts-based interventions may be understood as both liminal and occurring inside the third space. As noted, interventions often occur in structured environments with accountability measures and high stakes. An arts-based intervention has no need for such structures and falls out of the traditional research space. However, it also brings this kind of research space to the public, creating a third space that is at once a research and a public environment, a space that straddles a line, both and neither at the same time. Similarly, our art-based or art-inspired intervention in creating liminal spaces and twisting the normativity of qualitative inquiry aimed to form a context-specific, personal, political, and social inquiry that was explicitly public, as well as one that promoted thoughtful investigation of qualitative scholarship, which is intimately tied to the everyday experiences of the general populace, a publicly academic space, or an academic-public space. Through our participatory and public interventions, we revealed, challenged, and deconstructed the normative practices of qualitative inquiry. Furthermore, art-based interventions did not necessarily offer alternative perspectives to qualitative scholarship or academic work, but they might open up a space for this possibility and redirect our focus away from what qualitative inquiry is, means, or represents toward a greater focus on what qualitative inquiry does. By doing so, the art-based interventions stimulated us to ask different questions and approach qualitative inquiry differently. The art-based intervention then intervened in social spaces as a performative event that took place as an interaction and exchange with people and public in such a way which had potential to generate alternative possibilities for qualitative scholarship to do and think differently.

In our study on liminal academic spaces, we used flash mob events as art-based interventions to twist the normative forms of (qualitative) scholarship, bridge theorizing and public performances, and to encounter (ourselves) actual limits to diverse (e.g., academic, public, private) experiences. We designed flash mobs to twist cultural appropriateness in diverse spatial and geographical contexts. For this purpose, we invited two Finnish artists, Antti Ikonen and Arttu Saarela, to compose a rap. The lyrics for it is based on our initial questions, ideas, and concerns especially related to public education and public’s perception and experiences of public education. Furthermore, it is important to highlight that liminality and twisted normativity in this project are not singular. Different types of liminalities draw cultural margins closer to the center, promote subjective flexibility, and produce some individuals as hybrid, cyborgs, and nomads who continuously move around and within different types of border spaces. Our flash mob is one of what we suspect are many unexplored avenues for leveraging art-based research to twist normativity and drawing these cultural margins inward.

Flash Mobs and Liminality

The very concept of the flash mob invites considerations of the liminal and third space, as it exists as a reimagining of conventional performance, happening sporadically, temporarily, outside the bounds of expected performance space. Flash mobs were initially conceived as a way to upset the conventions of performance. Bill Wasik, the first to organize a flash mob, has said that they “started as a kind of playful social experiment meant to encourage spontaneity and big gatherings to temporarily take over commercial and public areas simply to show that they could” (Urbina, 2010). There is thus an inherent playfulness to flash mobs, one that seems to be its own ends. Flash mobs exist simply to be different, to “disrupt tightly laced social and spatial conventions” (DuComb & Benmen, 2014, p. 34), to show that there are alternate ways of being and interacting in the world, acting out ephemeral suggestions to others that a different way of being is possible. Thus, what constitutes a flash mob is difficult to pin down. It exists as public performance, but it may be choreographed or not; it may include individuals that do or do not know one another; it may include only performers or performers and observers (Grant et al., 2012). Even those who may have initially appeared to be observers may join in and reveal that they are actually performers. Flash mobs exist in a performative space where nearly any kind of performance (or performer) is possible.

Flash mobs also have the capacity to heighten public emotion and participation in unpredictable ways (DuComb & Benmen, 2014; Grant et al., 2012). Grant et al. (2012) performed a study in a marketplace food court in an effort to explore how introducing music and performance might affect consumer buying behavior. Their flash mob consisted of six opera singers who sang selections from Verdi’s Rigoletto and Denza’s Funiculi, Funicula. While the researchers sought to understand consumer buying patterns, results suggested that flash mob performance can affect much less tangible or measurable elements of behavior and affect. Under a heading in their findings called “arousal,” they note that shoppers began singing and dancing with other shoppers. Shoppers interviewed after the performance indicated that they felt a part of something larger, that they were connected to both the performers and shoppers in ineffable ways. The performance brought some shoppers to tears, and descriptors of the environment included “buzz . . . energy . . . swelled . . . startled . . . electric” (p. 248), resulting from shoppers feeling that they were a part of the event. As “pedestrians” are caught in the flash mob, they necessarily “join the restless flow of bodies assembled on the spot” (DuComb & Benmen, 2014, p. 35). Whatever might constitute a division between performer and disinterested observer becomes immediately blurred. There exists no distinct line between participant and non-participant, performer and non-performer, the ambiance of the flash environment dashing labels that divide, stratify, and categorize. The flash mob creates an environment where individuals are simultaneously performer and not performer, a liminal space where participants might fashion themselves and fashionalize inquiry.

At the same time, flash mobs can produce feelings of dis-ease, fear, and terror. DuComb and Benmen (2014) noted that flash mobs, because they upset conventions of social and spatial order, must cause a degree of discomfort in onlookers. They explained that flash mobs always have the potential to erupt in unexpected, violent ways, citing riots in Philadelphia that initially began as flash mobs. This is another way that flash mobs always occupy a liminal space; it is difficult to tell whether they will be whimsical and crimeless or whether they will erupt into violence. DuComb and Benmen attributed this possibility first to the fact that flash mobs already operate by non-rules that push at convention, but also because of social “turbulence,” which can occur “stochastically.” As crowds gather and grow, they become more unpredictable and unstable, creating turbulence, here the potential for legal transgression.

In this way, flash mobs represent liminality in a number of ways: Onlookers may be distanced (even terrified) by the flash mob; they may remain simply onlookers, enjoying a performance, or they may become participants, complicit in the performance of the mob and delighted by their participation. The mob itself may be playful or dangerous depending on seemingly random events at the time of the gathering. In all cases, however, the flash mob turns both social convention and structured performance on their heads, interrupting the mundane synchronicity of the space in which it is performed. This fact has led us to wonder how the flash mob might be leveraged to push the bounds of conventional and sterile research.

Although flash mobs began without a purpose beyond upsetting established order and convention (DuComb & Benmen, 2014; Urbina, 2010), they have more recently been used across contexts and spaces to create greater social awareness, for example, to criticize an overly busy lifestyle, or to protest gun control laws and cigarette companies. Because of their potential to both distance and involve participants at once, flash mobs can function as a kind of Brechtian epic theater performance, where audience members are always aware that they are viewing a performance, as performance has the capacity to highlight and “make strange” or alienate through its hyper-focusing of otherwise normal events. In fact, the flash mob, although it appears sporadically in non-performance spaces, nevertheless requires that viewers recognize the “sanctity” of the performance space that is the flash mob (Peiper, 2015). Aware that the audience can be both separate and included in the performance, we sought to use the flash mob as a form of public engagement in scholarly research.

Flash Mobs on the Go

In our work, we have experimented with flash mobs in public and academic spaces including a shopping mall, railway train station, and university/conference environments. Specifically, we used a flash mob as an approach and engagement tool to collect the public’s concerns and questions about the status of public education, since education is the discipline that joins our scholarships but it is also an issue that relates (easily) to citizens and their experiences. At the same time, flash mobs enabled us to re-conceptualize various aspects and processes of inquiry including responsibility, research design, and inquiry practices. How might participant centered inquiry intersect with art-based encounters? How might these intersections address and speak to liminality? We also asked what is being produced through resistance, liminality, and twisted scholarship in the context of public inquiry and art-based interventions.

One of the purposes of our flash mob and experimental project was to extend existing qualitative research methodologies toward more engaging and contextualized participant-driven research practices. It was our intention to use flash mob events (in this case, collective research inspired events that suddenly emerge in public spaces) to generate research questions for future qualitative studies and to locate inquiry/problem spaces around educational discourses that matter for people. We viewed civic engagement and participation as vital generative force for scholarly inquiry of this kind. Through flash mob events we also aimed to bring educational research closer to the people, especially within contexts outside the Academia and to raise awareness of importance of educational research that activates and involves citizens. We began the flash mobs in pre-determined public spaces and all participants were onlookers and public unaware of our performance and inquiry plans. Members of research team approached those who watched and attended the performance and asked them to respond to the questions outlined on a piece of paper. More specifically, we asked citizens to respond by writing on a card to our prompt: “What questions do you have about public education?” Below, we invite readers to experience the movement and rhythm of our flash mob, followed by questions generated from onlooker-participants.