Curriculum of Departure: Learning to Leave an A/r/tographic Community of Practice

This chapter tracesTrace a scholar’s post-Ph.D. journey of learning to leaveLearninglearning to leave an a/r/tographic communityA/r/tographya/r/tographic community of practice in Vancouver, British Columbia and movingMovemoving home to Toronto, Ontario. This autobiographicalAutobiographyautobiographical and a/r/tographic work explores an intimateIntimate experienceExperience of movementMovemovement and materiality, as well as their embodied implications of rhythmRhythm and weightWeight. In going through a transitional period of rapid change, the writer seeks narrativeNarrative gravitation and a pronounced articulation of time. With walking practiceWalkwalking-practice, digital photography, and writingWriting, the researcher processesProcess a wide range of affectiveAffectaffective, materialMaterial, and relational data, which enables her to make temporospatial and material shiftsShift in her every day. Eventually embracing an emergent becoming, the author comes to understand the self as a site of a/r/tographic creationA/r/tographya/r/tographic creation. Through a curriculum of departureCurriculum of departure, she finds her way from a ‘running from’ to a ‘movingMovemoving toward,’ with an attuned wide-awakeness to the rhythmRhythm she aspires to live and create, and to the amount of weightWeight she wants and needs to carry.