Sustaining life on earth: An arts-based research exploration of collective lived experiences of COVID-19

This article presents the philosophy, innovative methods, and final aesthetic synthesis of a collaborative arts-based research project about the lived experience of COVID-19. The project was initiated in 2020 and completed in 2022. Nineteen international arts-based research scholars participated as co-researchers, submitting their arts-based and narrative responses to the project. The six-member core research team guiding the project collected and organized the submissions while simultaneously entering into immersive, iterative, dynamic, arts-based data generation, dialogic analytic and syntheses processes with co-researchers, and each other. Materials-discursive analytic processes, arts-based responses, sensorial coding, intersubjective dialogues, and arts-based assemblages conducted iteratively throughout the project. The performative result captured the sensory, embodied, and emotional experiences of the evolving stages of the pandemic as identified by and resonant with the co-researchers and multiple audiences. These stages were identified during the project by the co-researchers as: initial anxiety and panic; reflection and creativity; and resilience. The final synthesis of the project is an arts-based and performative piece using video and interactive gallery venues representative of these stages.