Contribution short abstract:

This paper discusses several creative projects and workshops that pushed the participants beyond the limits of textual representation. The metaphors of playing, stretching, and fermenting unpack the multifaceted relational dynamics that shaped specific practices of doing and undoing.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper reflects on several creative workshops organised in 2023, 2024 and 2024 that pushed the participants beyond the limits of textual representation. The metaphors of playing, stretching, and fermenting unpack the affective relational dynamics that shaped specific practices of doing and undoing. While ethnographic inquiry always requires flexibility and the ability to think on one’s’ feet, the multisensorial activities confronted the player-participants with out-of-the-ordinary procedures and methods, which forced them to experiment beyond familiar disciplinary practices and work with and along each other in new ways. Counterintuitively, the restrictive, structuring rules of the workshops produced a playful mindset that, as extensive feedback highlighted, was in most cases experienced as a welcome opportunity and challenge. The participants, transformed into ‘co-players’, were bound by sensorial directives and immersed in the exercises, which shaped their subjectivity and influenced the ways in which they came to know and interact with their surroundings. While the workshops were mostly welcomed as liberating experimentations, some critical comments alluded to important ethical considerations to be taken into account when designing unconventional ethnographic learning projects.