Vital Signs 2: Paper Session 3c
The artistic image and the exploration of multi-layered realities
Wednesday 8 September, 11.30 - 1pm
'On the Emotional Work in Protests: The Two Agendas of Contentious Art and Contentious Politics' - Cristiana Olcese (University of Reading)
Scholars’ emphasis on the rational and instrumental aspects of social movements has led them to identify social movements with their leaders, their organisational aspects and their relationships to their opponents. Even the study of emotions in movements is mostly identified with the management of emotions useful to contention (e.g. anger for intimidating the opponents; fun for making the struggle more attractive; sense of belonging for unifying protestors versus opponents). In contrast, by broadening the investigation to the variety and behaviours of people attending street protests, this paper argues that movements are more than instrumental endeavours. The paper’s analysis of the creative expressions in protests (films, art projects, songs, theatre performances, and so on) by artist-activists highlights types and uses of emotions not normally addressed by the literature on social movements. For artist-activists, emotions are a battleground in themselves. Through art, emotions are expressed, investigated, and used to make sense of the world and to achieve individual wellbeing—an objective recognised as important as a collective resolution. The analysis rests on participant observation data (descriptions, photographs and interviews), as well as content and qualitative analyses of documents which were delivered at four protests in France, Italy, and the UK.
'Gender, Knowledge and Art: Feminist Standpoint Theory synthesised with Arts-Based research in the study of domestic violence' - Jamie Bird (University of Derby)
This paper sets out the ongoing development of an arts-based methodology for the documentation, representation and dissemination of women’s experiences of domestic violence. Of particular concern is the ways in which an arts-based approach to the acquisition of expressions of lived experience has the potential to provide access to multi-sensory and embodied knowledge that words alone might struggle to articulate. The possibility of using the arts to generate different kinds of knowledge and multiple perspectives would seem to fit with the concept of 'strong objectivity' as articulated in Sandra Harding's defence of feminist standpoint epistemologies and with David MacDougall’s identification of ‘stereoscopic knowledge’ within film-based ethnography. The place of imagination in feminist standpoint epistemology’s central concept of beginning thought in the lives of others would also appear to justify the synthesis of standpoint and creative research methodologies. In bringing together feminist and arts-based methods, several critical questions emerge. These are: how might art and language be considered to be gendered , and how might gender influence this researcher’s relationship to the different kinds of knowledge made and shown by the women participants of the study? This paper seeks to tackle these challenging questions.
'Look at Me! Visual Methodologies. Exploring Images of Woman & Ageing' - Prof Susan Hogan (University of Derby), Dr Lorna Warren (University of Sheffield), Rosy Martin (freelance phototherapist), Naomi Richards (University of Sheffield), Prof M Gott (University of Auckland) and Clare McManus (Aventus)
The Madrid International Action Plan on Ageing identified as one of its objectives the ‘need to facilitate contributions of older women and men to the presentation by the media of their activities and concerns’ (Second World Assembly on Ageing, 2003: 45). The importance of creating new images of ageing and counteracting preconceived biases and myths was identified as a particular concern in relation to older women. Older people are heavily under-represented within our image-saturated society (Woodward, 1999). Those images that are available generally represent older people as either frail and dependent (Johnson and Bytheway, 1997) or as ageing ‘positively’ and belying their physical age (Featherstone and Wernick, 1995; ‘Age, Snapped’, ,2008). However, ageism is gendered: women’s experience of ageing is deeply rooted in their appearances, in particular the perception of their aged bodies which ironically renders them invisible in later life and can subsequently impact on the assigning to them of social value, resources and opportunities (Clarke and Griffen, 2008).
Such invisibility is being increasingly explored and challenged by women, and this project constitutes part of this challenge, and is enabling women to explore their feelings about aging and giving them an opportunity to use creative media to make their own images of ageing.
This paper will compare & contrast different practical methodologies employed in 1. a visual eliciation group. 2. phototherapy workshops 3. The use of community artists.
This presentation will discuss some of the methodological issues raised in organising the projects, so far, and in organising projects which are interdisciplinary in their focus. This will include a discussion of the concept of participatory research and how this focus played out across the projects.
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