Psychosocial aesthetics and the art of lived experience

Abstract

This article identifies the distinctive nature of arts-based psychosocial enquiry and practice in a public mental health context, focusing on two projects delivered as part of The Big Anxiety festival, in Sydney, Australia in 2017: ‘Awkward Conversations’, in which one-to-one conversations about anxiety and mental health were offered in experimental aesthetic formats; and ‘Parragirls Past, Present’, a reparative project, culminating in an immersive film production that explored the enduring effects of institutional abuse and trauma and the ways in which traumatic experiences can be refigured to transform their emotional resonance and meaning. Bringing an arts-based enquiry into lived experience into dialogue with psychosocial theory, this article examines the transformative potential of aesthetic transactions and facilitating environments, specifically with regard to understanding the imbrication of lived experience and social settings.

COVID-19: Harbinger of a New Psychology of Religion for Postcolonial Societies

“…In trying to re-create and replay the same cultural atmosphere that were the foundation of these imposed relevances, many things have gone wrong, and the entire societal life has become traumatic. The work of healing institutional/societal trauma implies moving from the given to the affordance, from non-agency to agency (Bennett et al 2019). This could involve wrestling to retrieve control of one's own affairs.…”

A visit with Viv: Empathising with a digital human character embodying the lived experiences of dementia

“…The Visit does not design experience per se but rather creates the potential for an experience by attending to affordances (Gibson, 1979). It presents opportunities for action ‘that neither demand nor allow a participant to easily co-opt, normalise or resolve the experience of another’ (p.98, Bennett et al, 2019). This article reports on how this immersive artwork was received by viewers and impacted empathy by measuring changes to state empathy and emotional distance.…”

Lived Experience and the Limits (and Possibilities) of Empathy

“…established disciplines and practices, and where the politics of micro-interactions might be addressed in practical ways. 3 To this end, in 2017 I launched The Big Anxiety, a mental health arts festival, designed to address key challenges in the mental health field by shifting the sphere of operations beyond the health sector. This shift does not mean abandoning the practical goals of improving mental health and wellbeing in favour of work that simply 'represents' or 'exhibits' in the manner expected of a gallery or museum; it entails using the cultural sector differently to undertake practical aesthetic work.…”

“…In other words, it starts from the practical reality that 'non-help-seekers', by virtue of keeping out of the sector, are not medical subjects and may even resist the pathologising of their distress or its labelling as a disorder. 5 In many instances-particularly in the case of trauma and abuse-survivors are empowered by the more critical formulation that their symptoms and feelings are less a 'disorder' than a rationale response to disordered world.…”