Counter-scripting the body in pain: an artistic interrogation into pain as practice, site, and subversive force

Counter-scripting the Body in Pain, An Artistic Interrogation into Pain as Practice, Site, and Subversive Force conceptualises and enacts forms of resistance to the human tendency to negate pain, drawing on methods and sensibilities specific to artistic knowledge and practice. Through a series of text-based artworks, this project offers alternative modes for probing, perceiving, and understanding chronic pain, challenging dominant socio-cultural attitudes that regard pain as something to avoid or resist. The tripartite series: May and the Potentiality of Pain (2014-2015); It’s Always Three O’clock in the Morning (2016); and Gibraltar, A Walk with Disturbance (2017) are at the centre of an exploration into the motifs pain as practice, site, and subversive force. The artworks were created in tandem with an ethical strategy for art pursued through an experimental art-writing strategy I have labelled counter-scripting. Elaborating and engineering affect through performance, the art texts of the three artworks challenge dominant individual and cultural tendencies to explain, suppress, and ultimately annihilate pain