Embodied storytelling and the ecological entanglements of distress: practice research of somatic movement through polycrisis.
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Formosa, Fabienne. 2024. Embodied storytelling and the ecological entanglements of distress: practice research of somatic movement through polycrisis.. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]
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Text (Embodied storytelling and the ecological entanglements of distress: practice research of somatic movement through polycrisis.)
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Abstract or Description
This practice-based doctoral research is an interdisciplinary study sitting at the intersections of mental health and eco-somatic movement practice. The project is concerned with the ways in which mental distress is treated as the problem and responsibility of individuals rather than a complex intermesh of personal and ecological entanglements. The thesis principally uses autoethnographic and embodied methods to situate this question of the individualised subject within a specific set of concerns. Some of the contemporary issues that feature in the project include the mental health crisis in London, neoliberalism, systemic injustice, and the climate crisis. I analyse how these urgencies matter when considering the material and situated lived experience of distress.
The situated response I establish works from my own applied experience weaving embodied practice with mental health work in a third-sector crisis recovery service in London. Moving within the ecology I was plunged into from the onset of my PhD, somatic movement further led me to develop my practice from within contemporary personal and collective experiences, including ongoing precarious housing situations, climate justice organising in 2019, social lockdowns during the global coronavirus health pandemic in 2020-2021, and the energy and cost of living crisis in London in 2022-2023. These conditions evolved my movement practice during this time to incorporate collaborative group work, as well as outdoor spaces, which form the crux of my research into embodied relationality with the more-than-human.
I write this autoethnographic embodied storytelling in the context of repositioning my practice outside mainstream mental health services, and moving into the field of community arts, wellness and beyond. This re-orientation involved moving across disciplines to experiment with transdisciplinary work and alternative theoretical paradigms to those that orientated my initial training in psychology, deepening and expanding the ecology within which this research unfolds. The research is therefore situated within the activist scholarship of mad studies, posthumanist, new materialist and eco-feminist studies to incorporate an ecological understanding of embodied subjectivities in relationship with the more-than-human.
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Item Type: |
Thesis (Doctoral) |
| Identification Number (DOI): |
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| Keywords: |
Practice Research; Arts-based Research; Embodiment; Embodied Research; Group Work; Mind; Movement Studies; Ecologies; Eco-Somatics; Posthumanism; Crisis; Neoliberalism; Social Justice; Mad Studies; Somatic Movement; Autoethnography; Participatory Research; More-than-human; Mental Health; Performance; Applied Dance |
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| Date: |
30 September 2024 |
| Item ID: |
37741 |
| Date Deposited: |
17 Oct 2024 14:34 |
| Last Modified: |
17 Oct 2024 14:38 |
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URI: |
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