Communicating Pain: a collage workshop with Danne Jobin
Thursday 29 September (5-6pm)
‘In her text, The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry writes that ‘physical pain does not simply resist language but actively destroys it, bringing about an immediate reversion to a state anterior to language.’ An episode of illness breaks down language and consequently limits one’s capacity to communicate pain to oneself and others. The experience, although profound, becomes unintelligible. Turning to other creative means of self-expression can offer a different slant, enabling meaning to emerge from that very site of fragmentation. Artist Rebeka Elizegi describes collage as ‘a hybrid language in itself’, one that ‘feeds on different kinds of elements and is made out of diversity, but at the same time […] allows artists to create dialects and grammars with their own personalities.’ Similarly, Blanca Ortiga states that collage finds its structure ‘in the unstable’, enabling ‘a relational way of thinking […] from which the unexpected emerges.’
This participative workshop will explore collage in relation to illness and disability to reflect on the ways cut and paste can join up disparate elements to express complex realities. Through collage, you will be encouraged to address altered states and distorted temporalities, the psychological and bodily sensations of illness, and the discrepancies between personal experience and outsiders’ perception of illness.
Participants will need scissors, glue and magazines or other printed matter. Mixed-media approaches are also welcome.
Bio
Danne Jobin holds a PhD in English from the University of Kent and has an interest in trans & nonbinary poetics and collage. Danne’s poems have been published in Magma, harana poetry, Datableed and Tenebrae. They have read at the festival Poetry in Aldeburgh as well as for the 87 Press and Datableeder. Danne vlogs regularly on their YouTube channel Poetology and organises workshops on collage poems, poetic rituals and queer poetics. They also support writers and artists as a creativity coach. https://www.dannejobin.com/
Liz Orton works with archival images and text to explore language, authorship and the body. Her recent work, based on personal experiences of illness, uses found medical material as a contested space to explore issues of trust and consent in doctor-patient relationships. Images can never be external to the reality they seek to represent, and by recontextualising found images, Liz exposes them to both personal and political critique, and dwells on the idea of unresolved histories.
Liz will read from two recent text-based works, Every Body is an Archive and Shadow Work. These works address tensions between personal and medical ways of knowing illness, and draw on/in multiple voices to produce fractured narratives.
In a short workshop we will explore the politics and poetics of re-working found medical material. We will enjoy the push and pull of images, working with feelings of desire and vulnerability. By co-opting medical gestures such as cutting, stitching and annotation we will use the space of the image to generate our own language.
Please bring two or three found medical images (a photocopy from a book, a postcard or a printed download from the internet). Plus pens and scissors.
Liz Orton is an artist using archival practices, both real and imagined, to explore the tensions between personal and scientific forms of knowledge. Before being diagnosed with ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 2019, Liz was a Lecturer in Photography at London College of Communication, and Associate Artist with Performing Medicine. She is the recipient of several major grants and awards including the MEAD Fellowship, a Wellcome Trust arts award and UCL Grand Challenges grant. She is editor of Becoming Image: Medicine and the Algorithmic Gaze, and regularly exhibits in group shows. In 2022 her work has been featured in Trigger, Tendon Magazine and Notes Journal, and her text You are My Territory will be in the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Performance and Medicine.
Thursday, 17 November 2022| 17:00 18:00 | Online
Join Caitlin McMullan for a screening and discussion of two recent films, Material Bodies and First Step Swim.
Through interweaving dance and dialogue, Material Bodies is a sensual and cinematic look at the relationship between amputees and their limbs. This visceral and colourful short film explores how a prosthetic leg can be more like a piece of jewellery or a dance companion.
Touching on themes of identity, body image, disability and isolation, First Step Swim is a self-portrait following Caitlin on a journey of wild swimming. By taking control of how she is viewed Caitlin looks to challenge the non-disabled gaze and gain a better understanding of her body and surroundings.
Bio:
Caitlin McMullan is a London born and Glasgow based independent researcher and filmmaker with a background in design. Often exploring her own identity within her practice, Caitlin is interested in creating work that changes perceptions and creates new ways of thinking about disability.
In 2018 Caitlin co-founded the project Sensory Prosthetics with Dr Sarah Wilkes, working with University College London’s Material’s Library at the Institute of Making. Sensory Prosthetics led to a collaboration on the film Material Bodies which has now been screened internationally and published by NOWNESS in 2021. Caitlin received her first film commission in 2021 and has since gone onto participate in Scottish Documentary Institute’s New Voices and Bridging the Gap programmes. She is currently working on her latest commission through Bridging the Gap.