This document discusses the concepts of art-based research and autoethnography. It provides examples of each, including how art historians study primary sources to analyze artists and movements, and how autoethnography involves personal narratives that investigate the narrator's experiences. The document also notes debates around the reliability of these qualitative research methods and examples of how they have been applied, such as in constructing a self-portrait through writing personal stories.

1. Debora Smith-Shanks & Karen Keifer Boyd describes in the editorial of Visual Culture and Gender, vol 2, 2007
the two concepts, Art-based research and auto-ethnography.
This is according to the authors overlapping areas.(just like art and sience somethimes overlap eachother)

2. “Art-based research sometimes refers to research based on art or art based on research” (Debora Smith-
Shanks & Karen Keifer Boyd, p. 5) This area is according to the auhors a broad field that connect into many
different areas.
One example they give of Art-based research, is research based on other artists which also can go by the name
of Historiography.

3. “Historiography, in which art historians, anthropological historians, and others study primary sources archived
materials to compose biographies on artists or art movements, or to analyze the historical significance of a work
of art” (Debora Smith-Shanks & Karen Keifer Boyd, p. 6)

4. When I think about an artist I would like to research more into the name of the German
Dada-artist George Grosz (1893-59) comes to my mind.
What I know of him today is that I enjoy his work both the political content and his aestetics. He is an artist I
admire. (He also looks a bit like my uncle.)

5. The first time I remeber I was interesten in art I was about 9 was at a Warhol exhibition in Oslo. I still rememeber
that I liked the Soup cans – I bought some postcards of them.
But what I really remember more from the visit was my first meting with the art of Fernand Leger which I also
discovered among the postcards.

6. Artistic methods of gathering information and presenting it is according to the athors:
“A legitimate source of data gathering” (Debora Smith-Shanks & Karen Keifer, p. 5)
On the other hand the Authors acknowledge that the methods are regarded by many as controversial, unreliable
and vague.

7. When I I look up the word Vague in my Oxford dictionary I find “out of focus”.
Some pictures I take gets out of focus because I don’t have a tripod but I still concider them to be valuable.
(Someday I will make a project based on vague photographs)

8. “Art-based research acknowledge the power of art to interrogate, inform, and challenge more traditional
systems of linear text-based research” This type of research can include “written or performed biographies and
auto-ethnographies” (Debora Smith-Shanks & Karen Keifer Boyd, p 6)

9. According to Wikipedia can Auto-ethnography be seen as a personal narrative that investigates the narrator’s
personal experience of life. It is different from Ethnography which is based on the knowledge of others.
An Auto-ethnographer reflexts on his or here experience and cultural position and may give insight to overlooked
problems that may include “identity, race, sexuality, child abuse, eating disorders, life in academia, and the like”
(wikipedia)

10. My closes experience right now is the fact that I am writing about Auto-ethnography.
It is Sunday 17.01.10 and I am sitting in my room in Harrow. At 2:09 pm I take this picture which for me
documents this event.

11. Or perhaps this is me on a Sunday writing about Auto-ethnography. Who knows what is true when it comes to
internet. (Anyway)

12. This is my view in London I think it’s nice to have a garden. When I studied in Bergen and took my BA I didn’t
have a garden and I really missed it because I grew up with a garden. The biggest difference is that my old
garden had a lighter feeling to it, not so much bricks and high fenses. (But I guess I can’t expect to get
everything in London)

13. This is the current view from my room in Norway. It is taken in January and it was so cold that part of the
windows froze. We had about minus 20 degrees C.
It was the coldest winter since 1990.
There is a big park just across the road to the right (outside of the picture)

14. I spent most of Christmas at my grandfathers house. It has been like that for 26 years. It is the on place I truly
call home. I know the rest of my family feels the same.
This is how it looks from my window there (This window-story is now complete)

15. In the construction of the self portrait researcher becomes the primary participant/subject of the research in the
process of writing personal stories and narratives.
According to Wikipedia there is a fine line between good auto-ethnography and texts that are “idiosyncratic and
narcissistic” (wiki)

16. One way of avoiding Narcissism is accordint to Robert Krizek, to always connect the work to something larger
than the personal. (wiki)

17. There can also be another problem: “When talking about their lives, people lie sometimes, forget a lot,
exaggerate, become confused, and get things wrong. Yet they are revealing truths. These truths don’t reveal the
past as it actually was, aspiring to a standard of objectivity. They give us instead the truths of our experiences”
(Wikipedia)

18. Between 04 and 05 I lived in this castel in Denmark. I was working with glassblowing, ceramics and graphics. To
the right was a lake and to the left first a baroque garden and then a large forresten (it was a harmonic
atmosphere)

19. “Wether we pay attention or not, we are working and learning during the visual experiences of our everyday
life. All Education and all images politically impact our knowledge of the world” (Debora Smith-Shanks &
Karen Keifer Boyd, p. 7)

20. As this powerpoint is coming to an end, I am thinking that to publish it will be painfull. To expose personal
information on the web is problematic for me.
(One who I know dislikes internet exposure more than myself is my brother)