Reflections on digestions and other corporealities in artists’ books

Couch, Amanda (2019) Reflections on digestions and other corporealities in artists’ books. Journal of Medical Humanities. pp. 1-13. ISSN 1041-3545 (Print) 1573-3645 (Online)

Creators:
Couch, Amanda
Description/Abstract:

With an avid attention to the valuing of embodiment and a championing of the re-emergence of the body as site for discussions of knowledge and knowing, this essay shares aspects of my practice that engage a performative, 11 haptic, situated engagement with the body through the artist’s book. The motivation for the creation of my bookworks was an interest in manifesting situated knowing and embodied ways of becoming. Engaging form, materiality, and bodily history, my artists’ books explore the processes and metaphors of digestion and in one example, mindfulness practice. In libraries and collections with links to health, my artists’ books can be experienced in teaching and research contexts to examine the body, health, illness and wellbeing. This essay focuses on my books which communicate embodied knowledge in several ways: through phenomenological writing to give expression to my irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and how it impacts on my teaching practice in Reflection on Digestion; through bodily material of Entrail Troyen; through the image of the digestive system in On Innards, Reflection on Digestion, and Entrail Troyen, particularly the concertina form emulating the undulations of the intestines; and through images of found objects that resemble the bowels in Huwawa in the Everyday.

Item Type:
Article
Official URL:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10912-0...
Date:
6 December 2019
Identification Number:
10.1007/s10912-019-09592-8
Projects or Series:
Books as Bodies
Additional Information:

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in the Journal of Medical Humanities. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-019-09592-8

Uncontrolled Keywords or tags :
embodiment, artists’ books, materiality, digestion, intestines
Schools:
School of Fine Art, Crafts & Photography
Depositing User:
Miss Amanda Couch
Date Deposited:
12 Dec 2019 11:12
Last Modified:
04 Mar 2022 04:30
Couch, Amanda:
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8344-9668
URI:
https://research.uca.ac.uk/id/eprint/5359

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