Gathering threads from psychoanalysis, art psychotherapy, and the arts I (re)examine the psycho-social role of reflexive art practice in honing sensitivity to the affective dimensions of human situations and experience. Conceptualised as speculative weaving in/through three transpositions, my research follows the intertwining dialogues and entanglements as I traverse institutional boundaries in healthcare and academia, unmaking, making, and remaking a body of work.
In the first transposition I cross disciplinary boundaries, unmaking previous practices to open spaces for learning from/through experience. In the second transposition I assemble frames through which to observe a healthcare setting and myself therein. Weaving in approaches from psychoanalysis and art psychotherapy I move attention to the site of artmaking, and my making process as a multi-layered response to the research situation. In the third transposition I remake the residual ‘body’ of work – deepening my understanding as I (re)situate and (re)present it in settings that bridge art, healthcare, and academia. Challenging traditional relations between researcher and researched, I amplify the psycho-social presence of the ‘body’ as audiences are implicated in the meaning-making process through receiving, handling, and responding to it.
Viewed as a space for imaginative encounter and performative enactment spanning inner and outer worlds, emergent threads indicate the speculative, entangled, affective, nature of the research process, and an ethics of responsibility, attention, and care for/of the body. While ‘things’ made along the way evidence the process, the emphasis moves to making as undergoing. Implicit in this ‘time’ and capacity to endure and sustain the slow, messy, material, affective, and psychological ‘work’ bound into unmaking, making, and remaking, from which insights are gained. New understanding emerges in/through the work of (re)assembling, and (re)configuring diverse practices and material, the interweaving of dialogues, and the negotiation of tensions and resistances encountered at the orders between domains.
