collaborative mark-making and conversation (cm–mc)

itinerant space: a journal of art, design and communication research practices, is an experimental online platform for doctoral researchers at RCA.

Editor-in-chief: Professor Teal Triggs
Founding editors: Nick Bell, Karen Bosy, Kirsty Smith
Editors, Issue 3: Nick Bell, Kam Rehal, Yunqi Peng

Contact: itinerant.space@rca.ac.uk
itinerant space, School of Communication, Royal College of Art, Garden House, Dorando Close, London W12 7FN

Peer review panel, Issue 3:
Nick Bell, Kam Rehal, Yunqi Peng (School of Communication)

Website design: Regular Practice.
Site development: Mads Kullberg

Contributor Biographies

Issues

Issue 3 is anticipatory.
The theme for Issue 3 is anticipatory practice and suggests that research is never static nor fixed. It operates in motion, is expectant, if not enthusiastic. For example, anticipatory research necessitates foresight and an understanding of consequences. The work contained within this Issue 3 is research-in-progress, which anticipates for example, the multifarious ways in which the work might be developed, resolved, or might play in opening new lines of inquiry.

As a process, anticipatory practice fosters approaches that instil ‘an openness to be imagined’. This is not about speculation, rather anticipatory research is future-facing and holds the potential for revealing ways of how we navigate an increasingly complex set of contexts, challenges, and interactions.

‘In conversation. We posit – what it could be.’ – Teal Triggs

‘Anticipatory practice is imagining the future. It also means responding to the contradictions that emerge when imagination meets reality in practice. Every unexpected outcome that accompanies anticipatory practice is an opportunity for both surprise and reflection, as it hints at a thoughtful yet entirely new direction.’ – Yunqi Peng

‘Through the doing of research, we anticipate how our contributions might be understood / challenged / further expanded by the work of others.’ – Kam Rehal

‘Inclusive cross-community communication is an anticipatory practice in which social infrastructure emerges – a web of connections and relationships between neighbours, community gatekeepers, organisations and institutions – through which the challenges, opportunities and conditions of future change can be better anticipated.’ – Nick Bell

The Editorial Team would like to thank the eight contributors whose research extracts feature in this issue. The breadth of their subject matter, with the diversity of approaches to project work, predicts the exciting potential for research conversations in the making.

collaborative mark-making and conversation (cm–mc)
Kam Rehal

Project overview —

My process-led PhD examines the potential synergies between mark-making and the situated practices of plotholders across allotments and shared growing spaces. I suggest that the doing of mark-making within a growing environment produces gestures, rhythms and intimate connections that relate to and intersect growing practices.

This video demonstrates the stages of the ‘collaborative mark-making and conversation’ (cm–mc) approach that has been developed to invite members of UK allotments and shared growing spaces to participate in research dialogues. The drawing surface is prepared by pouring a mixture of plaster of Paris onto a sheet of birch plywood; once dry, the drawing board is taken to a site where participants gather to generate mark-making and conversation within the situated environment of their growing space; the resultant drawing is then recorded as a charcoal rubbing onto tissue paper; and a fresh mixture of plaster is poured onto the surface, ready for the next cm–mc session.

The dialogues and drawings generated by participants, present material registers of community in the act of taking place, of being constituted or thought, by those who participate in its thinking and making.

Biography

Kam Rehal is a PhD Candidate at the RCA and Senior Lecturer in Communication Design and Teaching and Learning Lead at UAL: Camberwell and Chelsea Colleges of Art. Kam works to develop collaborative design approaches to engage individuals and groups for ongoing relationships within practice, context and environment. Professional posts within arts and cultural institutions, including the Natural History Museum, Imperial War Museums and design agency HKD, have provided space to explore social, cultural and ecological narratives through the design of exhibitions and experiences. Kam’s ongoing collaborative practice-based entanglements include: development of research outputs following work on the Interreg Europe funded research project ‘Empowering Youth through Entrepreneurial Skills’ (EYES); co-editing ‘Itinerant Space’ – a journal of experimental art, design and communication research practice developed within the School of Communication at RCA; attachment to the research groups ‘joinedupwriting’; and the research trio, ‘Company of Situated + Relational Acts’.

Conversation: where critical friends of itinerant space are invited to comment on journal submissions as part of an ongoing research dialogue.

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