Since 1985, Bronwyn Platten has worked extensively on creative projects with diverse community groups including people with multiple disabilities and psychiatric illnesses. From 2003-08, she was employed by NHS Trusts as an artist, curator and project manager.
In her work in arts in healthcare she is especially interested in researching the value of multi-sensory creative interventions and interdisciplinary research in the field of person centred care. Bronwyn has been awarded her doctorate in 2012 from The University of Salford for, Mouths and Meaning, a collaborative multi-sensory arts in healthcare research project which explores the experience of embodiment for people who have been affected by an eating disorder.
Bronwyn Platten is an Australian artist, based in the United Kingdom since 2001. She is interested in creatively exploring the influences of sexuality, identity and gender upon perceptions of body image and experiences of embodiment.
www.bronwynplatten.com
www.imaginalregions.co.uk
Here Bronwyn gives a summary of the talk she gave us at Fabrica...
Talk for Fabrica Gallery, Brighton November 19/11/12
Naomi Kendrick in conjunction with Fabrica invited me to present on my approach as a contemporary visual artist in reflection upon the way that I work with diverse audiences.
I first met Naomi when I took part in her “What is a multi-sensory intervention?” at the Manchester Art Gallery in 2009. Her own work in this area has been influential in my own recent research to engage people who have been affected by an eating disorder. My talk that I describe below, sought to summarise some of motivations for working with others along with the relevance of utilizing a multi-sensory approach in healthcare contexts. As well, I was hoping to articulate some of the challenges, benefits and insights that appear particular for artists working with potentially vulnerable people.
The talk at Fabrica began with a screening of Untitled 2011 a film made with Sarah Coggrave and filmed and edited by Insa Langhorst. You can see the film by going to this link:
http://vimeo.com/18043765
I followed the short screening with some examples of artworks that I have made with other people during my work in community settings and in arts in health contexts.
In my work with others, I am especially interested to support people to share their own stories and experiences particularly for people who may not have had the opportunity to do so, or feel that their voice may not be listened to. One of the examples that I showed, were photographs of Bruce Rodenrys’s pages from his photo albums. The photographs were shown as part of the 1998 Biennale of Sydney. Bruce is someone that I have worked with for over twelve years. He has an intellectual disability, speaks only a few words and at the time was resident in an institution that provided supported care. The photographs of his work are unusual, in that would not be the kind of artworks that are easily accessed by the mainstream art world given that Bruce lives in relative isolation. Bruce would perhaps fit the definition of an ‘outsider’ artist. I described how the project between us – my facilitation of his work and its inclusion in a significant exhibition and gallery – the Museum of Contemporary Art articulates something of the ethical dilemmas associated with working with vulnerable people.
My intention at the time was to simply document selected pages from Bruce’s albums. I had his approval to do this and felt that people would find it interesting to see the way in which he collates his interests and passions and in so doing communicates to others his perception of the world. From my observation his interests in no particular order include: buildings; bodies; faces; objects; fatness; drink can collecting, and belly buttons. What also struck me, was by way of its visible absence, Bruce critiques the current obsession with thinness. In fact, after viewing his photo albums, in my experience the world can appear profoundly anorectic.
I described the dilemma that I faced in establishing this project. As I said earlier, I had hoped that the reproduction of the pages would offer insights for viewers as to different ways of being in the world. Perhaps too, the photographs may break down some of the experiences of social marginalisation that people with an intellectual disability face via the opportunity for shared communication. However, with art there is always many ways to interpret the work and its meaning. Comments from the viewing public included expressions of interest in Bruce’s pages from his photo albums. Whilst I was careful to include Bruce there were also assumptions that I was taking advantage – furthering my career via my work with him and other artists with a disability. In the talk I explained how influential this experience had been for me in terms of taking subsequently more care in art projects with vulnerable people to articulate clearly the nature of the shared involvement. Furthermore I recognised the need to foresee and address any potential ethical ambiguities and issues of copyright and informed consent that may arise.
From here I discussed a little more about my work with people in various social contexts, work with people with special needs or intellectual disabilities, and also in healthcare where I have worked as a curator, artist and project manager for NHS trusts in Aberdeen and Manchester.
In reflecting on my work as an artist, arts worker with communities and artist and curator in healthcare settings I have become more and more interested in artists’ abilities to engage directly with embodied experience of illness. For instance I mentioned Jo Spence (1934-1992) who explored and documented via photography her experience of treatment for cancer. I perceive that such awareness and expertise is commonly been left out the medical knowledge of bodies and illness. As an artist who as an adolescent and young adult who had encountered an eating disorder, I was aware of the very engaging artworks that have been created by artists to negotiate lived experience of eating and embodiment in relation to an eating disorder. I mentioned the work of Janine Antoni, whom in her work Gnaw from 1992 chewed on vast blocks of lard and chocolate, collected the spat out chewed lumps and reshaped them as commodities such as I noticed that while the arts are regularly evidenced as a way to improve the built environs of the hospital or as creative participatory methods for patients towards improving wellbeing it is less familiar to use art to explore the experience of illness to directly to inform understanding of those who treat illness.
In 2008 I was awarded a bursary to undertake doctoral research in arts in healthcare as part of HaCIRIC – Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Innovation Centre, School of The Built Environment, The University of Salford. My research sought to bring together my previous experience in community engagement, the NHS, with my own interest in exploring embodiment via arts based practice. I called the research project Mouths and Meaning. My interest in mouths was initially inspired by my own encounter with anorexia nervosa and bulimia. While I had undergone therapeutic treatment, my own embodied experiences were left unexamined. Embarking on a career as an artist, I found ways to explore and express my experience of eating disorders through consciously connecting my own embodiment to my then lived experience of the world. The interwoven nature of identity and embodiment is something that is often taken for granted, but not so for someone recovering from an eating disorder. For every aspect of bodily experience is affected by the illness and in turn, transforms the nature of daily life and social relationships. For me, my mouth was inextricably linked to the experience of my eating disorders and to my recovery. Mouths and Meaning grew out of the desire to investigate with others whether my own experiences and insights provided a model for engaging the mouth differently, and if so, in what ways.
Here I showed some earlier works that convey my own experience of exploring embodiment in relationship to my mouth, food and eating. The pictured work The Kissing Table, 1993 explores the mouth as symbolic and pleasure-filled and as liminal. For the mouth is both connected to the interior and exterior of the body, is both inside and outside, the mouth incorporates the outside to the inside but it also expels what is inside - outside. Our mouths have multiple roles in sensing tastes determines edible pleasures and disgust while being actively involved in acts of social communication – talking, kissing, sharing food, or alternatively not speaking, or not eating.
I provide a summary of Mouths and Meaning as a research project below:
Mouths and Meaning uses a multisensory, inclusive and interdisciplinary approach to creatively explore experiences of food, eating and embodiment by those who have been affected by an eating disorder.
I introduced some of the reasons as to why I was interested to explore experience of eating disorders particularly via a multi-sensory participatory approach.
There is no single cause contributing to the onset of an eating disorder – yet embodiment of those affected is largely understood as a preoccupation with body shape.
By the term embodiment I mean the ways in which all of our experiences, our daily lives are sensed, interpreted and communicated in and through our bodies. Susie Orbach describes how our bodies have become sites of anxiety, we now work on our bodies utilising exercise regimes, diets and or surgical procedures, in ways that we hope will make us feel better about ourselves. She makes a ‘plea to rethink the body in such a way that we can both take it for granted and enjoy it.’ (Orbach, 2009:145). How to do this was something my research sought to explore.
At the beginning of my research I was also fortunate to be invited to attend Naomi Kendrick’s ‘What is a sensory intervention?’ 2009, the Manchester Art Gallery. Naomi’s work and research in the area of multi-sensory participatory practice has been inspirational for me. Naomi’s approach offers some effective, interesting and fun ways to invite others to engage across all the senses.
Multi-sensory practice, I saw as resonant with the ways I had been intuitively through my own practice being exploring my personal experience of embodiment. I hoped that others could who had been affected by an eating disorder, could be supported through such a creative approach to consider bodily experiences beyond just viewing their body as an object predominantly via appearance and body shape. My challenge with Mouths and Meaning was to find ways to shift from the common preoccupations with visual appearances of the body towards representing people’s lived experiences of their embodiment. I also hoped that perhaps a multi-sensory arts based research project such as Mouths and Meaning could support people to engage the senses more equally and in so doing connect with their bodies more deeply and holistically.
As the process of embodiment is of its nature an intensely personal experience, I sought to design and facilitate experiential multisensory workshops that could optimize that aspect for the participants. For instance senses such as touch and taste locate sensory experience inside the interior body while vision tends to be considered as a distant sense. As example, when we look – we look with our eyes ‘out’ from our bodies. So perhaps then it is of now surprise that it is easier to describe bodies via the eyes than the more internalised and taken for granted senses and harder to replicate senses such as touch and taste. Multi-sensory experiences were initially developed in my studio, and involved practices I adapted from earlier artworks to draw the interior of my mouth. I experimented with doing drawings of my interior mouth with my eyes open and then with them closed. I even tried drawing the interior of my mouth using my computer mouse. My interest was to seek to represent my own particular relationship/ feeling/ quality of my mouth as sensed internally.
Wanting to invite others to explore their own relationship to their mouths and to make Mouths and Meaning a holistic engagement of the senses and embodiment, I included perceptual activities: the slow drinking of a cup of water and a series of movements of the tongue that I had learnt and used successfully to release jaw tension. These quiet and slow sensings, that engaged the interior of the mouth became a precursor to the mouth drawing activity. I showed some images that people had created of drawing the interior of their mouths with their eyes closed. Over 300 people have now taken part in the workshops. However no one has been identified in terms of whether they have had an eating disorder or any challenges with food. Rather the workshop has formed an aid for people to consider their embodiment in different ways such as is possible via connecting with the inside of one’s body via the interior mouth. People were encouraged to consider the experience in any way that they wished.
From here I described the longer-term co-collaboration with Sarah Coggrave with whom I worked with for over a year as part of the Mouths and Meaning project. Sarah, who when we first met in 2009 was then in recovery from an eating disorder. She has held a long-term interest in art and indeed shortly after we started working together began an art foundation course and is currently doing a BA in Visual Arts. The first part of the process of our shared working together involved exploring a range of multi-sensory experiences that we selected together including drawing with our eyes closed while listening to favourite pieces of music, experimenting with sound making and recording, visiting a sweet shop and making sculptures out of sweets. Here is our first collaborative artwork.
One of the activities we undertook together was based on one I undertook as a child and recreated as part of my PhD exploration. It involved mixing soil and water together in a metal bucket and stirring in personally selected items of food, plant materials and discarded found things such as eggshells and coffee grounds from the compost heap. I recognise something important in the ways that when as children we engage in experiments with the materials of the environment around us. Play forms an important part of how we learn about the material and sensorial nature of our own bodily being and about being in the world. Perhaps even as adults this taken for granted way of being in its multi-sensory spontaneity can be useful to reconsider a different kind of embodiment – one closer to Orbach’s sense of the body as something we can take pleasure in but also take for granted too. I also suggest that the pleasure of play, of having fun and exploring mulit-sensorial experiences could be highly valuable to consider a more holistic approach to the treatment of eating disorders. Particularly as a way to acknowledge unspoken, material and bodily aspects of the day-to-day experience of living with an eating disorder.
I had described to Sarah the nature of the potion/ mixture making process as I had undertaken it as a child as well as other artworks that I had made as an artist. Sarah suggested that she would be keen to explore the mixture making activity too. We ended up filming our shared exploration in a favourite landscape of Sarah’s. This is the film that I showed at the beginning of the talk (see link above). I recognise this playful experience as early ‘cooking’ and also as a multi-sensory pleasure but also as something dark and mysterious. Sarah expressed that the process allowed us to explore in non-judgemental ways without the requirement that anything be created as result. Also that for Sarah, the process linked her to nature and to the natural environment.
Finally, I showed the major filmed performance work that Sarah and I created together, Untitled (The Party) 2011. Sarah had the idea of recreating her experience of a childhood party. I had had a vision of applying whipped cream from a piping bag to a women’s head so that it formed a circle round her head like a halo. I also envisioned filling my own shoes with whipped cream and put my feet into them. Sarah expressed the desire to do this too – only she wanted to wear Wellington boots. We combined our varying visions and shared engagement including a short sound improvisation by me at the beginning of the film. In the performance we have a food fight, dance together to music, draw with food and have a lot of fun and laughs.
Rather than try and analyse this performance in depth, or any of the works that have been created as part of Mouths and Meaning I read out some of the comments that viewers of the exhibition elicited either via the gallery comments book, by written letter or online blogs.
“I am a scientist – What is the message?”
“A surprisingly moving experience for me
- very physical I thought I might be sick and also had to fight not to cry.
It has made me think about the meaning of (my) life – thank you ( I think!)”
‘Sarah and Platten have overturned the received wisdom … and illustrated the potential therapeutic value of adjusting to a rather different focus when attempting to understand and support those in our communities who battle daily with varying degrees of eating disorder.’
(Dr. J Morgan, Community Psychiatrist involved in the treatment of people with an eating disorder)
I also read out a discussion that I discovered on Mumsnet about Mouths and Meaning and some of the featured works. The discussion was really compelling as some of the women who made comments were really liberated by their experiences of perceiving the artwork while others were disgusted and sickened. Given that these women were either currently negotiating an eating disorder or in recovery, their varying comments underline how there is no ‘right’ approach to representing the experience of an eating disorder. Each experience is distinct for each individual. Also, the varying comments explain just how sensitive people affected by an eating disorder are to material distinctions and the nature of food and its incorporation into the body. Undoubtedly, multi-sensory approaches are invaluable towards gathering understanding of people’s individual lived experiences of embodiment. However, it is really important that such approaches are established with care and insight and respect for all those involved.
Following the presentation there was time for questions and comments.
One comment that was raised that was really pertinent relates to the interconnection of with the processes of Mouths and Meaning as a form of therapy. In reply I explained how I am not a therapist and cannot claim to be one. To do so would be unethical. Nor do I wish to take on this role. I am aware that being an artist can be a way of allowing others to engage more openly and perhaps more equally than is possible with someone who’s role is defined by being a therapist. However, such processes as those involved in Mouths and Meaning as well as Naomi Kendrick’s work in multi-sensory participatory processes perhaps straddle across art and art as a form a therapy. As comments raised by the audience at Fabrica suggest, engaging in art practice can also afford therapeutic benefits while not necessarily intending to be therapy. I am interested to question and further understand the distinctions and commonalities that exist between art and art as form of therapy.
Other comments from the audience stressed the very intimate nature of the collaboration. One person proposed that for Sarah and myself to have engaged in such a close and prolonged collaboration that we would really have had to trust each other. This is an aspect of our shared collaborative work that Sarah and I wholeheartedly agree with. We are planning to write an account together that records the development of our mutual and individual experiences that has informed our collaborative approach. I reflected that I feel I have been able to trust Sarah implicitly which is something that has been established through the way we not only have shared all the decisions but also have been able to question and include each other in our decision making. Also, and I think this is important – we share ownership of the collaborative works we have created together and the associated knowledge we have developed. To this end we have contractual agreements that identify our joint ownership of our collaborative art works.
For further information my work and the research project and exhibition Mouths and Meaning Go to:
www.bronwynplatten.com
