Research, relationships and their infrastructuring: the reflexive mattering of dialogical correspondence as social sculpture.

This article presents a theoretical model developed from research which aims to explore how experiences of relationship can be used as a lens through which the complexities of an emerging interdisciplinary, transnational research project can be explored. Partners in the AMASS (Acting on the Margins: Art as Social Sculpture) project work in eight European countries on a range of activities that make use of creative arts-based research as a tool for addressing social need. The network of individuals, institutions and contexts making up the project delivers a unique collection of relationships which seek - through the actions of their project - to achieve concrete impact.

By using a novel participatory method for reflection in action via the materialisation of dialogue, it is possible to identify and discuss moments or instances in the development and formalisation of the AMASS relationships as significant in terms of the ways that a process of ‘social infrastructuring’ took place as the partners sought to develop the proposal document that would facilitate their project.

Through further reflection on concepts of ‘dialogical interaction’ (Kester 2000) and ‘correspondence’ (Ingold 2015), the process from first connections which are central to forming any relationship to its transformation when mutually-agreed goals have been achieved through the success of a funding application is analysed. This offers a set of examples which demonstrate valuable reciprocal connection between partners which are then used as the basis for the development of a model of ‘dialogical correspondence’.

With a specific focus on one case study - one partners’ reflection on their experiences of the establishment of the AMASS project’s critical foundations - the article seeks to develop dialogical correspondence as a tool with potential for defining the key infrastructural characteristics of any such relationship, whose value may also lie in a future-facing application as such work continues to be developed.