References:
[1]Brené Brown. Daring Greatly, How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead. UK: Penguin Random House, 2012, 33
[2]Brown. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, 43
[3]Brown. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, 37
[4]Emily Dickinson and R.W. Franklin. (ed). The Poems of Emily Dickinson.Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999, 215
[5] Siegel, Daniel J. Mindsight: The new science of personal transformation. Bantam, 2010, 36
[6]Brown. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, 80
“Vulnerability is the core of all emotions and feeling. To feel is to be vulnerable. To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that feeling is weakness.” - Brené Brown [1]
My first year of artistic research revolved around my obsession with vulnerability; it became the compass of which I would navigate the waters of my research and film. A personal health crisis occurred for me shortly upon entering the Master's program. With time I would come to develop distance to my own situation and start to question the concept of crisis, and how crisis serve us. This school would become both an anxious and fascinating cocoon for my own professional and personal exploration.
It took some quality time to realize that the dark path that my mental health began after the first semester would be elements that I could actually draw upon later in my own film work. In my initial laps, I found myself swimming in the research of Brené Brown, whose research path was born out of her work on shame and how we can destigmatize its power upon us individually and as a society.
This online exposition is an accompaniement to the work of my Masters short film project, “Orbits” (working title) for the program Documentary Processes in Film & Media at Stockholms Konstnärliga Högskola.
This short film revolves around three characters and how the limitations of their bodies provide starting points to embracing their own resiliency. We come to understand how they rise above their circumstances to embrace their vulnerabilities and instead dare to maximize their lives to the fullest through creative expression.
“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability. To be alive is to be vulnerable.” Madeleine L'Engle [2]
