‘I feel your pain: caring not curing’: a joint shift from CKP & S:PAM (Studies in Performing Arts and Media), Ghent University
Nicki Shaughnessy and Melissa Trimingham presented their research into autism as part of a shift. The shift emerged from a research dialogue between the University of Kent, UK and the University of Ghent, Belgium. Colleagues from Ghent contributed their research on trauma, violence and posttraumatic theatre. The panel discussion was preceded by the audience experiencing documentation of immersive installation/performances undertaken with autistic children by CKP. The documentation was intended to provide stimulus for the panel discussion, perhaps posing the question as to how far the documentation itself is ‘affective’ of emotion, memory, desire and understanding within the unpredictable, precarious and ’affective’ encounter it records.
Full Abstract
This shift emerged from a research dialogue between the University of Kent, UK and the University of Ghent, Belgium. It focused on research into autism at the Centre for Cognition Kinethetics and Performance (University of Kent) and on research on trauma, violence and posttraumatic theatre at the Research Center S:PAM, Studies in Performing Arts and Media (Ghent University).
The panel discussion was preceded by the audience experiencing documentation of immersive installation/performances undertaken with autistic children by the Centre for Cognition, Kinesthesia and Performance. This experience was followed by a discussion with opening provocations by Nicola Shaughnessy, Melissa Trimingham (UKC) and Christel Stalpaert and Katherina Pewny (Ghent).
One of the main findings of the Ghent research programme is that researchers into trauma who are working within psychoanalytic and post-structural perspectives deal with ‘effect’ rather than ‘affect’ and do not address the possibility that the relationship between victim and event, spectator and memory, can be transformed through changing the relationship of the spectator to experience and memory. Another result is the transformative power of audiences´ encounters with the precariousness of the “Other” (Lévinas) in some performances in “posttraumatic” theatre. Researchers in Kent are investigating the autistic imagination via ‘affect’ where performance creates conditions for constructing and changing experiences. Both research projects explore the use of ‘technology’ in its broadest sense. ‘Intermediality’ becomes the liminal space between realities, where performed experiences create an empathetic encounter both ‘affective’ and ‘affecting’, a ‘site’ (as in Camillo’s theatre) ‘where felt emotion, memory, desire and understanding come together’ (Denzin 2003:23).
The documentation was intended to provide stimulus for the panel discussion, perhaps posing the question as to how far the documentation itself is ‘affective’ of emotion, memory, desire and understanding within the unpredictable, precarious and ’affective’ encounter it records.
Ref:Denzin, N. (2003) Performance ethnography: critical pedagogy and the politics of culture Sage