The Jarring Affects of Participatory Practice : A more-than-human reappraisal of the Linnentown Mosaic Project (LMP).

Using affect theory as a guiding theoretical frame, in this article a university artist/educator explores how participation in a socially engaged public art project might be rethought through jarring. Jarring refers to the use of jars as an artistic material and metaphor for participation which led to an installation titled, The Jarring Affects of Participatory Practice. Comprising 150 glass jars, the installation served as an iterative reappraisal of participatory art through the creation of a material register of natural, manufactured and handcrafted items, loosely and directly related to the Linnentown Mosaic Project (LMP). The LMP was a community-led effort to create a permanent tile and mirror mosaic honouring Linnentown, a once-thriving Black community erased through urban renewal by the University of Georgia and the city of Athens during the 1960s. Jarring as a form of research-creation reveals moments of resonance that in their precarity suggest new ways for thinking about participating as ever-changing iterations for undoing, waiting and feeling forth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]