Description
Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP) is a deeply visual and contextual method of civilian (self-) protection. The centrality of visibility to its methods such as protective presence means it effectively challenges and reshapes the material-aesthetics of violent, military infrastructures as places of security. The importance of in-person research when studying epistemological process of embodied conflict-knowledge is crucial, yet increasingly precarious due not only to Covid but to ever more stringent ethics procedures and funding limits. Moving research of such a practice which is so contextually and spatially bound online presents unique challenges; to create a shared space between researcher and participant in which mutual trust and understanding can be built without physical proximity or extended social interaction. Whilst there is a wealth of literature covering online ethnography of digital communities, work on online research of communities that centre on their contextual and spatial boundaries is sporadic at best. This paper will argue that a combination of PhotoVoice and DrawingOut, two arts-based methods, can combine to explore the materiality of space through the blurred spatial bounds of online research. By asking participants to take and share photographs of embodied metaphors of key conflict-related themes, such as security, this method seeks to merge the physical and technology; to ground the intangibility of meaning-making processes through imagery of physical space. This paper explores the possibility of (re)creating shared space through digital arts-based methods and allowing participants to remake ‘their place’, and the potential this may have for understanding epistemological processes when researcher and participant are kept at an unsocial distance.
