AHRC Workshop Series: Representations of Illness Making art to make change 25

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AHRC Workshop Series Representations of
IllnessMaking art to make change25 26
September 2008Loughborough UniversityETHICAL
PROBLEMS of REPRESENTATION and EXHIBITION An Art
Therapists perspective
Presentation made by Jamie Bird University of
Derby
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Context

• Art Therapy and the protection of images
• Creative Expressive Therapies undergraduate
  programme at UoD
• Two modules that have particular resonance with
  this seminar
• Experience of Illness biography and
  autobiography in text and image to understand the
  subjectivity of illness
• Representations of Self filmmaking to represent
  an aspect of self

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Representations

• Girgus (2007) Beyond Ontology Levinas and the
  Ethical Frame in Film
• Deleuze (film theory) and Levinas (ethics)
  suggest that there is a new aesthetics of
  representation and that aesthetics is the new
  ethics
• Cinema of Redemption - Deleuze
• Ethics of Transcendence - Levinas
• Oneself as another - Ricoeur

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(Re)presentation

• What is the difference between presentation and
  representation? the re part suggests a more
  considered showing or telling
• Taking what has been shown or told and creatively
  transforming that and giving it back to those who
  first presented it (Pedagogy of the Oppressed
  Freire 1970)

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Problems

• Who makes images?
• Whose memory and story?
• Whose interpretation?
• Who presents?
• Dissemination exhibition and the autonomy of
  the image (McNiff 1991)
• Differences between art forms do some allow
  more distance and space for reflection than
  others?
• Fiction or documentary?

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Levels of involvement
Inside

• Art Therapy
• Individual
• group
• Arts in Health
• Community Arts
• Participatory Arts
• Audience

outside
Different ethical considerations for each level
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Reflexivity and Supervision

• Emotional engagement and reflection at the core
  of reflexive research ethics for informants,
  participants and researchers
• Participation and cooperation based upon
  acknowledgment of consequences
• Responsibility - but also recognising that art is
  not always containable - creates complexity as
  well as clarity

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Resources

• Girgus, S.B. (2007) Beyond Ontology
• Levinas and the Ethical Frame in Film In
  Film-Philosophy Vol.11, No.2, pp.88-107
• Friere, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
  London Penguin
• McNiff, S. (1991) Ethics and the Autonomy of
  Images In The Arts in Psychotherapy Vol.18,
  pp.277-283