United & Severed: collaborative research and cognitive authority

Symposium:

• ISEA2009: 15th International Symposium on Electronic Art
• More presentations from ISEA2009:  

• Interactive storytelling and memory building

• United & Severed: collaborative research and cognitive authority

• Karen Schaffman
• Kristine Diekman

Venue(s):

• Waterfront Hall, Belfast, Ireland

• Abstract

  United & Severed: That Window of Time is an installation based on the experiences of women living with traumatic injuries. It is a collaborative project that embraces feminist values of collectivity and intersubjectivity as central to the process of corporeal research and art making. The collaboration consists of a dance artist and scholar, a media artist, two sculptors Anna O’Cain and Richard Keely, and three participants, Ivy Kensinger, Michele Caputo, and Kim Anderson. For this paper, ‘we’ refers to Karen Schaffman and Kristine Diekman, who conceptualized the project and collaborated on the audio and video.

  The project asks: How does the traumatic event disrupt narrative? How can the poetic process provide a way to re-imagine and re-member personal experience? What happens to one’s bodily perception when a traumatic event radically and abruptly shifts one’s reality? How does one see, hear, touch, speak, and move? What is the role of performativity in the project for the collaborators and viewers, and what can be learned through the experience?

Category:

• Paper