I lost time and space. Where am I? – Erzählen von chronischen Schmerzen
(2021)
author(s): Tabea Rothfuchs
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
Was passiert mit der inneren und äusseren Welt eines Menschen, wenn kein medizinisches Verfahren den Ursprung des erlebten Schmerzes (mehr) zu entziffern vermag? Wenn der Schmerz zum eigenständigen Krankheitsbild 'Chronischer Schmerz' geworden ist?
In einer Dialogserie mit Schmerzpatient*innen und Schmerzspezialist*innen erforsche ich in dieser Untersuchung – als Künstlerin und Schmerzerinnernde –, wie chronische Schmerzen das Leben beeinflussen, verändern und welchen Raum sie im Leben der betroffenen und behandelnden Menschen einnehmen. Oder als Kernfrage formuliert: Liegen Menschen mit chronischen Schmerzen im Leben anderer Menschen, in unserer Sozialstruktur und dem politischen System überhaupt drin?
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What happens to a person’s inner and outer world when no medical procedure is able to (further) decipher the origin of an ongoing perceived pain? When pain becomes an independent clinical picture called 'chronic pain'? In a series of dialogues with pain patients and specialists, I investigate in this study – as an artist as well as someone who remembers an episode of chronic pain – how chronic pain influences and changes lives and what space it takes in the lives of people affected and those providing treatment. Or expressed as a central question: Is there room for people with chronic pain in the lives of other people, our social structure and the political system at all?
Systems of Pain/Networks of Resilience (First Compilation)
(2017)
author(s): Meghan Moe Beitiks
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
'Systems of Pain/Networks of Resilience' is a creative exploration of observation and entanglement as tools for negotiating pain. Research on ecology, restoration, and psychology creates a series of videos, images, and performances. How do personal networks of resilience overcome systems of pain, both in human perspectives, and in ecologies? The project explores commonalities in the context of divisive cultural politics.
Artist Meghan Moe Beitiks begins her research with personal interviews. She discusses processes of recovery with people with both personal and professional experiences of trauma and recovery, including an ecological restoration specialist, an animal behaviourist, several survivors of abusive relationships, and many others. Clips from the interviews become the basis for visual and material explorations, generating videos, installations, and images. Stigma and prejudice emerge as barriers to healing – acceptance, observation, and listening, as common tools to accelerate it.
This compilation takes components of Beitiks’s research and arranges them within their own system of exploration. Observers’ perceptions of the work are both assisted and disrupted by audio descriptions. Originally intended to make the works accessible to non-sighted audiences, the descriptions also serve as an exploration of observation and objectivity. A seemingly unrelated pine wallpaper appears to have been unfairly categorised as “masculine,” prompting further questions about categorisation and labelling, as well as depictions of nature. Beitiks’s presence and movement in the work is described as androgynous, their body taking on the narratives described in the interview clips. Boundaries between various disciplines and narratives disappear—we instead experience the labour of connecting disparate entities, despite the limits of our own perceptions.