About the Book
This book takes a creative approach in examining one of the biggest crises of our time: that of mental suffering, distress and anxiety. By bringing together essays and dialogues from thinkers and artists across a range of disciplines, it re-imagines approaches to crisis, support, and care. Amid growing recognition that mental health is not only the province of psychiatry and the health sector, but a concern for the whole community, the book opens up critical new ways of thinking about our internal lives and the forces that affect them.
The book significantly advances the way we think about cultural responses to mental health and the understanding of the struggles of inner life. Featuring both theoretical and practical examples of the value of using imagination in response to trauma, anxiety, and depression, The Big Anxiety shows how creativity is not a luxury, but a means of survival.
Table of Contents:
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Politics Of Experience, Jill Bennett
Part I: Suicide, Felt Experience And What Works
2. Why Do Art Therapies Work?, Siri Hustvedt, with Jill Bennett
3. Edge Of The Present: Mixed Reality, Suicidality And Future Thinking, Chloe Watfern, Jill Bennett, Stephanie Habak and Katherine Boydell
Part II: Culture And Experience
4. Knowing From The Inside, Lynn Froggett and Noreen Giffney
5. Radical Creativity: Breaking The Cycles Of Trauma, Marianne Wobcke with Jill Bennett
Part III: Dialogue And Embodied Encounters
6. The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland and Open Dialogue in the work of Ridiculusmus, David Woods and Jon Haynes
7. The Visit: A Collaborative Confabulation, Gail Kenning, Jill Bennett and Volker Kuchelmeister
Part IV: Designing For Experience
8. Facilitating Environments: An Arts-Based Psychosocial Design Approach, Jill Bennett, Lynn Froggett and Lizzie Muller
9. I Have A Thing About Tables, Lois Weaver with Laura Hunter Petree
Part V: Resistance, Racism And Decolonization
10. Narratives Of Resistance From Indefinite Detention: Manus Prison Theory And Nauru Imprisoned Exiles Collective, Omid Tofighian, Behrouz Boochani, Mira* and Elahe Zivardar
11. Poetic Solidarities, Claudia Rankine with Evelyn Araluen
Part VI: Reparative Action
12. Designing Reparations: Creative Process As Reparative Practice, Andrea Durbach, Jill Bennett and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela
13. Embodimap I: Trauma Survival And Refugee Experience, Lydia Gitau
Part VII: Thinking In Action With Creative Resources After Trauma
14. Unnerved, Anita Glesta
15. Wau-mananyi: the Song on the Wind, Pantjiti Imitjala Lewis, Rene Wanun Kulitja, Angela Lynch (Uti Kulintjaku) translated by Beth Sometimes
16. Embodimap Ii: An Auto-Ethnography, Sophie Burgess
Part VIII: Soundwork/Earwork
17. Held Down, Expanding: An Exchange On Trauma Through Acousmatic Sound Art Practice, Thembi Soddell
18. Hold Me In A Circle Of Tender Listening: Entangled Encounters With Women Survivors From The Mental Health Testimony Project Archive, Amanda McDowell
Part IX: Lived Experience, Activism And Survival
19. Being Together In A Neurodiverse World: Exploring Empathy And Othering With Project Art Works, Kate Adams, Sonia Boué, Chloe Watfern
20. Pathologize This, Dolly Sen
21. Super-Fast Augmented Anxiety, Clive Parkinson
About the Author :
Jill Bennett is Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, Australia and Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow. She is Founding Director of the National Institute for Experimental Arts and of The Big Anxiety Festival; and is part of the leadership team of the Ageing Futures Institute.
Review :
Through this diverse collection of provocations, Jill Bennett presents an exciting new paradigm for understanding mental wellbeing. We see how art, in its myriad forms, can be uniquely placed to explore the personal, political and spiritual dimensions of distress – and to guide us towards a deeper, more empathic response
Jill Bennett more than anyone manages to bind social and aesthetic issues on the profound level of thinking “in the world”. Mental health issues, or “neuro-diversity”, she takes on in this peerless volume, from a constructive aesthetic entrance. And “collaboration” is her middle name.
Breaking with the dominant bio-medical approach to mental health, this inspiring volume is firmly grounded in lived experience. Combining thought-provoking theory, practice and creativity, it encourages critical thinking with experiences of distress. The Big Anxiety leads the way in radically reconceptualising 'mental health' and its support through an exciting array of cultural and creative practices.
