Stages of the project
Stage I: interviews
At the core of this project are the individual stories. Volunteers are recruited through various agencies working with women and through social media. A range of women are interviewed sensitively about their various bodily experiences with particular emphasis on experiences that were transformative or powerful in some way. The same core questions are asked to all interviewees. Beyond those core questions, the interviewer works responsively and drawing on extensive experience and research.
The interviews are recorded, copied into transcripts and analysed for common words, phrases and patterns. Interviewees are signposted to support where necessary.
Read what one interviewee said about this process here.
See an interesting film composed of similar questions asked to multiple volunteers by famous Polish director, K. Kieślowski here.
Stage II: responses
Interviewees are offered the opportunity to attend a series of workshops exploring different creative tools for processing experience and expression. The produce their own artworks. They are interviewed about the process.
Collaborative piece: professional artists working in different media (sculpture, visual arts, sound etc) are commissioned to work on a collaborative interactive installation in response to the collection of interviews. The installation will include the sound of the interviewee voices - for example as a Found Poem* in the direct simultaneous multiple voices.
Artists are commissioned to make pieces responding to their own specific bodily experiences and interviewed about the process.
Interviews will become available to those working in the fields of research of critical social sciences, gender studies, philosophy, medical humanities/researching in the medicalisation of women’s bodies.
Additional audiences are invited to respond to the outputs produced.
*Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them (a literary equivalent of a collage). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_poetry
Stage III: scale
An interactive online platform which allows individuals to upload their own bodily stories whether oral, written or visual art.
The platform will advocate and advise in exploring different media and methods of creative exploration.
Stage IV: audiences
An exhibition of the art works made will be exhibited in partcipiating galleries juxtaposed with presentations of existing dominant narratives about the female body. For example, the walls may be papered with extracts from medical leaflets and journals and women’s magazines. Audiences will be invited to interact in some way such as by writing/painting/sticking things on walls. Audience voice/responses will be recorded.