Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Within the traced outline of a body on a piece of cloth or paper all kinds of knowledge can be expressed and created about human experience. We have used body mapping across many different scholarly projects at the Black Dog Institute, Australia’s leading mental health research institute. In this paper we unpack the ontological dilemma that our bodies present when researching the self in the world. As scholars with a commitment to social and ecological justice, who understand individual mental health and wellbeing to be fundamentally intertwined with community and planetary wellbeing, what role should our skin-bound bodies play? Through the lens of a recent project with children and their caregivers, who made family body maps articulating their feelings in and about the natural environment, we unpack the tensions involved in situating this experience within and around the human form. We demonstrate the value to participants of returning to this body, in this place, at this moment in time. We also show how, through choice of materials and careful facilitation, the skin-bound body becomes porous and interconnected.