“How to Knit a Human (the Interactive Version)” presented by Jacobson
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“My work ‘How to Knit a Human – the Interactive version’draws on the themes present in Everywhen, where the past, present, and future are living together in one point of time. For example, I use Twine to create a ‘choose-your-ownadventure’ for the reader, where multiple choices are representative of the different possibilities that existed in my memory(loss) after forced Electroconvulsive Therapy treatments in 2011. The pathways the reader can take represent the inconsistencies of memory from the severe episode of psychosis I experienced, and these forced Electroconvulsive Therapy treatments. My work also responds to the sub-theme ‘Resilient Stories’ and my act of storytelling challenges existing paradigms through its nonlinear and branching timeline. Acknowledging artistic works that psychiatric survivors create through transmedial or crossarts storytelling as a way of new knowledge production and as new ways of knowing, will help bring the voices of ‘mad’ people to the forefront. Storytelling through transmedial and cross-arts forms such as electronic literature creates more conditions for the reader to become immersed in the text from the perspective of the person with experiential knowledge. Our narratives can then create the foundation work for better understanding by others.”
