Non-Representational Theory and the Creative Arts
Presenting distinct perspectives from both geographically-oriented creative practices and geographers working with arts-based processes, this book fills a gap in the already sizeable body of non-representational discourse by bringing together images and reflections on performances, art practice, theatre, dance, and sound production alongside theoretical contributions and examples of creative writing. It considers how contemporary art making is being shaped by spatial enquiry and how geographical research has been influenced by artistic practice.
Chapters:
Boyd, C.P. & Edwardes, C. (2019) Creative Practice and the Non-Representational. In Non-Representational Theory and the Creative Arts, (Eds, Boyd, C.P. & Edwardes, C.) Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-18.
Edwardes, C. (2019) Micro-Micro-geographies of the studio of the studio. In Non-representational theory and the creative arts, (Eds, Boyd, C.P. & Edwardes, C.) Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 53-68.
Scenes of studio practice (L’atelier mis en scènes)
The creative turn within geography has seen a number of returns to the artists’ studio as a site for exploring the vital, immanent, and affective relations that form these spaces of creative practice. Where interviews, observations, collaborations, with artists have directed attention to the non-representational, this paper approaches the studio as both a scene, and an atmospheric staging. Taking up broader discourses around the scenographic, it argues that scenes not only take account of the durational and compositional construction of studio spaces, but can be understood as a form of training and attunement through which participants are enrolled in the joint composition of studio atmospheres and registers. It directs attention to the agency that these compositions have in the production of the studio imaginary.
Edwardes, C. (2021) Scenes of Studio Practice (L’atelier mis en scènes). [Online] Ambiances, 7.
Distance and Belonging in the Studio
Focusing on the ways in which the art studio has been enrolled in emotional, professional, moral, and economic notions of health, this chapter offers a historical account of health-related associations that remain part of the studio topoi.
Edwardes, C. (2025) Distance and Belonging in the Studio. In Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Mental Health and Wellbeing (Eds. Boyd, C., Bell, S., et al) Routledge, Oxon.
On becoming intimate with scorched earth: Research-creation and infrathin data
Focusing on a short residency in Malaga, Spain, this chapter explores the intimate connections that emerge through creative engagements with material data generated from the site of a series of wildfires that engulfed the region. The text is anchored around two phases of creative activity, “on” and “off-site,” where existing writings on creative fieldwork and the “micropoetics” of intimate encounters are used to illustrate the vertiginous collapsing of scales that overshadowed attempts to respond to the wildfires. Turning toward the collections of organic matter gathered from the site, the chapter follows the unexpected, non-representational, and infrathin relations that develop through its recreation in a digital 3D modelling application. In doing so, it articulates a thinness of affective connections that resist an understanding of data as ways of capturing, describing, or “getting-into” place.
Edwardes, C. (2026) On becoming intimate with scorched earth: Research-creation and infrathin data. In Vannini, P. (Ed) Non-representational and more-than-human research: Vitalist methodologies for the end of data. Routledge, Oxon.