Aesthetic exploration with recycled materials. Concepts, ideas and phenomena that matter.

This project sets the concept of Aesthetic Exploration in motion in relation to empirical data by exploring young children’s encounters with recycled materials in a Blackbox at a Remida. Through four published articles that focus on different parts of the research: methodologically, empirically, and theoretically, I explore how theorising recycling materials and Aesthetic Exploration contribute to the field of early childhood. I make use of posthumanist and new-materialist theories that underline the significance of non-human agency and materiality (Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2010; Hultman, 2011a; Lenz Taguchi, 2010), to extend understandings of what matters in early childhood education. With the use of these theories, different perspectives on matter and materiality have emerged through conceptualising and materialising different Aesthetic Explorations in the encounter in-between recycled materials, young children, space (the Blackbox), and tools. Conceptualising Aesthetic Exploration through this study is an on-going process that has no end; instead, it continues to take shape and transform as readers engage with it.

Supervisory team: Professor Nina Rossholt, Professor Sidsel Germeten and Professor Jayne Osgood