ACM Creativity and Cognition 2009 Conference Proposal -- Scar Story-telling/Photographing as a Daily Creative Process

This is a proposal I didn't send in, because I didn't know how to make something a pdf and I'd left it to the last minute (literally). I went to a 1950's dance night and felt guilty, instead.


Abstract:

The body is created on a daily basis through the unification of physical experience. The Life Lines project examines images and stories of scar acquisition and meaning as methods of creative re-unification after injury.




 Presentation Proposal:

As the boundary between the inside (body) and the outside (world), the skin plays an important role in the creation of identity [1]. Paint, burns, inscriptions and areas of exposure all convey information about ourselves and our bodies. Scars are often ambiguous markers – even on the same body, scars can be seen as both signs of weakness and signs of strength. In Life Lines, a social intervention and art project, participants have described their scars as markers of poverty, healing, strength, change, stupidity, emasculation and adventure [11]. Just as artists will make an infinite number of unique paintings from the same paint set, we all create unique and developing images and narratives about our scars.

Life Lines is composed of an online platform containing photographs, text and areas for user comments; it is also displayed in gallery exhibitions [11]. Since 2006, I have photographed over fifty participants for this project. In addition, I ask for written narratives describing how participants got their scars, what their scars mean to them, and what they mean to other people. Because it is publicly available online, individuals from around the world have contacted me with their own photographs, which are published on the same site.

Foucault proposed the body as the meeting point of society and personal power [3]. Similarly, Sheper-Hughes and Lock describe sickness as a form of communication, the body as the “…terrain where social truths and social contradictions are played out, as well as a locus of personal and social resistance, creativity and struggle” [6].

Martha Graham once stated, "The body says what words cannot" [4]. As an originator of body-psychotherapy, she considers bodily  communication to be not only with external society but also with oneself. From a phenomenological standpoint, corporeal integrity – the body perceived as a whole entity, unified in its perceptual experiences – gives us a deep and comfortable understanding of ourselves [7].

While it draws from both a tradition of narrative analysis and my visual arts practice, I grounded this project in my own experience of scarring. Having been a ‘miracle baby’ who survived emergency surgery as an infant, I had positive feelings toward the large surgical scar on my abdomen. I noticed, however, that it was harder to appreciate other anomalous parts of my body. I believe that the story of my scar as the remnant of a miraculous event allowed me to incorporate it into a coherent sense of self. Although they may have been less noticeable or conventionally 'unsightly', the areas of my body without such self-affirming narratives were more difficult to accept and therefore incorporate.

The ways in which we interpret all of the body’s many perceptual experiences are creative; those experiences are unified (e.g. interpreted, placed into hierarchies) as creative constellations, both visual and narrative. In situations where the body is ‘othered,’ such as immersion in a culture with new bodily practices, or in becoming suddenly disabled, these creative processes become more visible. Ekins and King describe creative ‘storytelling,’ re-representing and re-describing the body, in transgendering processes [2]. Sylvia Plath writes about her pregnant body as a series of metaphors, “a riddle in nine syllables” [10]. In a replication of this creative re-framing process, avant-garde dance teams base their choreography on the adapted movements of their disabled members [6].

Contrary to popular belief, there is no clear correlation between the size or appearance of a scar and the psychological distress that it causes [8]. As with the body, the scar’s representation is fluid, socially and environmentally determined. In their unique re-interpretations of their scars, Life Lines participants demonstrate the variety of stories scars can engender. The ‘same’ scar, for example, is interpreted into wildly different stories two participants. Both survived emergency surgery as an infant for pyloric stenosis. Tamara writes about how she “forgot it was there” and her tattoo artist thought it was “cool.” She sees her scar as “part of me” [9]. Fred, however, sees his scar as a marker of poverty and illness. Due to his parents’ “shy and reticent nature,” he did not discover the source of his scar until adulthood and experiences it as “the mystery pattern on my body” [9].

Many participants report a greater feeling of acceptance of and wellness in their bodies after partaking in this project. My intention, however, is not to attempt to change people’s perceptions of their bodies; rather, I wish to bring those stories and self-made images to the surface. In asking the participants to engage in a conscious creative process about their scar, I hope to reveal the subjective and somewhat malleable nature of their bodily stories. Once the fact of creative process is recognized, the artefact (narrative or body-image) can be re-framed, chosen or analyzed.


REFERENCES
1. Bakhtin, M. M. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Vadim Liapunov, Ed. & Michael Holquist. Trans. University of Texas Press, Austin, 1993.
2. Ekins & King: Telling Body Transgendering Stories. Sociology of the Body, Malacrida, C. & Low, J. Eds. Oxford University Press, Toronto, 2008.
3. Foucault, M. The Birth of the Clinic. Sheridan S., trans. Vintage Books, New York. 1975.
4. Graham, M. Blood Memory. Doubleday, New York, 1991.
5. Kuppers, P. The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performances and Contemporary Art. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 2007.
6. Shepher-Hughes & Locks. The Mindful Body. Routledge, New York, 1987.
7. Shildrick, M. Leaky Bodies and Boundaires: Postmodernism and (Bio)ethics. Routledge, New York, 1997.
8. Tebble, Nicola J., Robert Adams, David W. Thomas, Patricia Price. Anxiety and self-consciousness in patients with facial lacerations one week and six months later. British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery 44 (2006) 520-525.
9. Vikander, S. Life Lines. /http:www.onlinelifelines.blogspot.com/ 2007.
10. Plath, S. Metaphors. /http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/sylvia_plath/poems/18898/