Aesthetic Enactment: Engagement with Art Evoking Traumatic Loss

Lynn Froggett () and Jill Bennett
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Lynn Froggett: Department of Social Work Care and Community, University of Central Lancashire, Preston PR1 2HE, UK
Jill Bennett: Big Anxiety Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2021, Australia

Social Sciences, 2023, vol. 12, issue 8, 1-15

Abstract: This article analyses audience responses to two creative works inspired by traumatic loss—the first, a performance presentation, recounting events from the author’s adolescence; the second, a short film about a suicide in the filmmaker’s family. Both were shown in 2017 as part of a mental health arts festival, attracting audiences with affinity for the lived experiences portrayed. Given the potential for such works to give rise to negative feelings and/or to retrigger trauma, the objective of this research was to understand firstly whether audiences could process the trauma conveyed in a contained and facilitative setting and, secondly, how the specific aesthetic modality of each work supported this processing. The psychosocial methodology adopted consisted of a group-based, image-led associative method—the visual matrix—which invites participants to express their sensory-affective and felt responses to a creativework. In the case of both works, the visual matrix gave rise to a distinctive form of aesthetic enactment , expressed through rhythm and image association. This imagistic and ‘rhythmic’ mode of engagement appeared to be key to the re-symbolisation of trauma for the audiences. The implication of this study is that the re-visiting of potentially distressing experiences in an aesthetically mediated, containing setting is potentially reparative in its effect.

Keywords: aesthetic; performance; suicide; trauma; OCD; enactment; psychoanalysis; psychosocial; rhythm; visual matrix; transitional space (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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