CALL FOR PAPERS for RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2025
26 – 29 August 2025.  This session is sponsored by The Food Geographies Research Group (FGRG)

SESSION TITLE: Re-writing temporal narratives in food systems through embodied practice

Cherry Truluck (University of Aberystwyth/UK Food Systems CDT)

The session is drawn from the ongoing artistic practice of artist, curator and researcher Cherry Truluck in her recent publication ’The End is the Beginning (is the end is the beginning….)” (published by Cement Fields). This visual essay spins a narrative around the temporalities of rhubarb production in Denmark and the UK, arguing for a blurring of the perceived boundary between metaphor and reality as a creative and decolonial contribution to research practice

In the Handbook of Arts-Based Research, Patricia Leavy defines “ABR [Arts-Based Research] practices as methodological tools used by researchers across the disciplines during any or all phases of research, including problem generation, data or content generation, analysis, interpretation, and representation” (Leavy 2009). But what is lost in this instrumentalisation of creative practices and where (or who) is the artist?

A subtle distinction can be made within what Leavy calls “an umbrella category that encompasses all artistic approaches to research” (Leavy 2018) and that is to consider art not as a tool at the service of researchers but as a research modality in itself. This requires a more radical approach to knowledge-making, one in which the researcher might act as a farmer of artistic processes (their own or the practice of others), approaching it as a seasonal (temporal) praxis which may or may not generate a direct response to the initial enquiry but which one can be confident will certainly have a transformative impact on the embedded epistemes connected to it. Rhubarb can cross-pollinate, so seedlings of different varieties grown close to one another or in the path of a strong wind may, over generations, grow into plants which do not resemble their ‘parents’ – but who can tell what flavourful transformations might arise from these random mutations?

In the session, participants will be invited to take part in a series of experiments into embodied research practice, designed to open up conversation around ideas of praxis (building on Freire, 1972), embodied research/inquiry and arts-based research.  The session, like Truluck’s publication, will be woven through with a set of entangled narratives focusing on specific foods/ingredients which will have seasonal and local resonance.

SUBMISSION INFORMATION:  This session is seeking embodied inter-actions, sensory and performative offerings which situate a specific food/ingredient in a temporal context. Proposals can take the form of a traditional paper or something quite different but they must be manifested through live and interactive engagements lasting from 10-30 minutes. This might include (but is not limited to):

• collective reading sessions
• performances
• multisensory (edible) experiences
• workshopping
• convivial sharings
• tastings

Please send proposals of no more than 250 words (or equivalent in other formats) to 
cht86@aber.ac.uk by 26 February 2025

REFS:
Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Penguin.
Leavy, P. (2009). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. Guilford Press.
Leavy, P. (Ed.). (2018). Handbook of arts-based research. Guilford Press.
Truluck, C. (2024). The End is the Beginning (is the end is the beginning…). Cement Fields