Socioplastics 11943 A Residency Is a Bounded Inquiry
Temporary presence is a legitimate condition for artistic and ethnographic inquiry. SojournLaboratory describes a bounded stay whose duration, departure and partial viewpoint become explicit features of research. A visitor may notice relations that daily familiarity obscures, while residents hold knowledge shaped through longer histories of maintenance and change. The inquiry gains precision when both timescales remain visible. Anna Feigenbaum’s work on protest camps examines collective practices within temporary settings. Laura Ogden studies human and more-than-human relations in the Everglades. Their approaches help consider what a visit can reveal and what requires longer observation. A short residency generates situated knowledge whose value depends on clear provenance and an account of what the period makes available. During a three-week residency in a community garden, an artist might document irrigation routes, plant exchanges and improvised sheds. The record could include the visit dates, conversations, workdays attended and areas the researcher did not observe. Residents could annotate the account and identify changes across seasons. Follow-up correspondence or later visits could show how the initial interpretation developed. SojournLaboratory treats duration as part of the method. It helps researchers distinguish observations made during a visit from claims that require longer-term evidence. A responsible report can describe a temporary perspective precisely and identify relationships that need continuing study. The marker supports residencies that credit local knowledge, document the limits of arrival and create conditions for useful follow-up. This may include a shared archive, a return visit or a defined handover to local collaborators. The artist’s account can state what remains unknown and who is positioned to continue the inquiry.
REFERENCES
Feigenbaum, A., Frenzel, F. and McCurdy, P. (2013) Protest Camps. London: Zed Books.
Ogden, L.A. (2011) Swamplife: People, Gators, and Mangroves Entangled in the Everglades. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
CITE AS
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics, LAPIEZA-LAB, Madrid.
https://antolloveras.blogspot.com/p/socioplastics-project-index.html