On the Fringe/At the Fringe: Fleshing out Research

Abstract

Be ‘open to becoming affected by encounters, rather than simply reporting them’ is the invitation from Fotaki et al (2017, p. 8), and it is this message that we have taken to heart in our ‘fringe’ production. Inspired by friendship, ideas, and an interest in fleshing out research, we offer our work as an illustration of embodied research as a process in action, in terms of both form and content. We share the story behind our research-in-the-making as it emerged over two days, during Edinburgh’s Fringe festival. At night we went to performances at the Fringe, where life and research experiences were serendipitously reflected back at us in terms of content – topic and genre, as well as form – and enabled us to appreciate the provisional and unpredictable relations between performer and audience. By day, in our research practices, we allowed ourselves to use eclectic, improvisational and experimental modes of expression, that are only just on the fringe of acceptability, even within the most enlightened circles of organisational studies. Using arts-based methods we present our work through a variety of media that serve also as a medium for experimentation. We show how a range of possibilities may arise from touching fieldwork encounters. Incorporating these into our writing is affirmative, in providing recognition of our own, and others’ bodily experiences and illustrating the potentially powerful, recursive and transformative effects of researching, writing and reading.

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