Nineteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

While the concepts and imagery presented in Inhabitance are not necessarily autobiographical, there is no way to fully detach lived experience from the process of making and theorizing this work. And although its impetus is a lifelong journey of healing, the focus in this study is transforming the inhabitance of trauma into an awareness of embodied presence. From a space of reflexivity, Inhabitance asks you to come back to your body through heart-minded creative action. This practice-based interdisciplinary methodology integrates the emancipatory powers of women and gender studies, consciousness studies and new media art. Through this hybrid approach, Inhabitance creates space for reconciling an imposed fracture between the sensory and cognitive aspects of our lives to rewrite the restrictive narrative that trauma can hold over both.