Mouths and meaning : a multisensory, creative and collaborative arts based exploration of food, eating and embodiment towards gaining greater understanding of the experience of eating disorders

While it is widely recognized that there is no single cause contributing to the onset ofan eating disorder, current understanding of embodiment for those affected ispredominately represented as a preoccupation with body image (Probyn, 2000).Clinical perspectives tend to consider such illnesses as an individual pathologyresulting from maladaptive cognition. Alternatively, feminist perspectives argue that itis not possible to consider eating disorders as separate to embodied identity and asinfluenced by gender and culture. Yet, academic and linguistic insights alone may noteffectively communicate the distinctive sensuality of embodied subjectivity (Davis,1997; Gillies et al, 2005). This research proposes that the use of multi-sensory, artistledpractices may augment current interdisciplinary understanding of the embodimentof eating disorders.Considering the extensive nature of the subject of embodiment, the research hasfocussed upon the mouth. Arguably the mouth, as both arbiter of taste and languageand as liminal - due to its existence both within and out with the body - cannot be soreadily objectified as bodily appearance. The methodology draws on the literaturesurrounding theories of embodiment and eating disorders from across disciplines aswell as feminist informed art practice to establish a non-hierarchical approach.Mouths and Meaning has utilised an innovative, inclusive and ethical drawing methodtowards the involvement of others to generate shared knowledge, and as a way toexplore individual interiority of embodiment. Also, extensive collaboration with S -who has been in recovery from an eating disorder - has conveyed embodiment asexpressed through performance, installations and drawing. Through arts basedresearch and artwork, Mouths and Meaning navigates across disciplinary divides toreveal eating disorders as informed through 'practical knowledge' of materiality, asrelational and generative. Additionally, the approach evidences interrelationships withphilosophies informing the role of art in healthcare, correspondences between artand art therapy and design of healthcare facilities. Insights are evoked throughcreative and textual representations of tacit accounts relating to abject materiality ofembodiment alongside the experiential and relational nature of eating disorders andassociated practices