Haptic Happenings / Gestalt shift

christoforidou, maria ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-9894-9643 and vaux, viviane (2024) Haptic Happenings / Gestalt shift. [Project]

Preview	Image (Haptic Happenings / Gestalt shift _Maria Christoforidou & Viviane Vaux_Cove Ward_Corridor_Photo by Oliver Udy_Courtesy of Hospital Rooms) Maria Christoforidou & Viviane Vaux_Cove Ward_Corridor_Photo by Oliver Udy_Courtesy of Hospital Rooms_HR_1.jpg - Published Version Available under License All Rights Reserved. Download (8MB) | Preview
Preview	Image (Haptic Happenings / Gestalt shift _Maria Christoforidou & Viviane Vaux_Cove Ward_Corridor_Photo by Oliver Udy_Courtesy of Hospital Rooms) Maria Christoforidou & Viviane Vaux_Cove Ward_Corridor_Photo by Oliver Udy_Courtesy of Hospital Rooms_HR_2.jpg - Published Version Available under License All Rights Reserved. Download (8MB) | Preview
Preview	Image (Haptic Happenings / Gestalt shift _Maria Christoforidou & Viviane Vaux_Cove Ward_Corridor_Photo by Oliver Udy_Courtesy of Hospital Rooms) Maria Christoforidou & Viviane Vaux_Cove Ward_Corridor_Photo by Oliver Udy_Courtesy of Hospital Rooms_HR_3.jpg - Published Version Available under License All Rights Reserved. Download (5MB) | Preview
Preview	Image (Haptic Happenings / Gestalt shift _Maria Christoforidou & Viviane Vaux_Cove Ward_Corridor_Photo by Oliver Udy_Courtesy of Hospital Rooms) Maria Christoforidou & Viviane Vaux_Cove Ward_Corridor_Photo by Oliver Udy_Courtesy of Hospital Rooms_LR_6.jpg - Published Version Available under License All Rights Reserved. Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract / Summary

A set of workshops and a public work by 'Haptic Happenings' (Christoforidou and Vaux) is a funded commission from Hospital Rooms.
'Haptic Happenings' is the peripatetic dialogue and communal making of Maria Christoforidou and Viviane Vaux. These workshops and public artwork grew out our own research into art making as mediation and exercise. We have been researching (walking and discussing) philosophies of the haptic. Eastern mediation philosophies, the connections between words, actions and symbols, ancient goddess cultures in production of arts and crafts. The question is how do we bring healing to us? Through everyday actions, somatic attention and community gathering. What is good for the self is good for the community.

Hospital Rooms is collaborating with artists, service users, staff and members of the public with lived experience to create twelve new artworks for the inpatient mental health wards at Camborne Redruth Community Hospital and Bodmin Community Hospital. Together, they transform the wards with artworks made especially for these spaces, and making access to arts and culture central to the treatment of mental illness in Cornwall.

" In autumn we bring our practice in 3 guided workshops to the residents and staff of the Cove Ward, Redruth - drawing as massage, feeling the felt, water coloured arches. We bring calm and presence.

We wanted to promote a settling of the nervous system by paying attention to a felt sense of the body, interpreting our memories of the landscape and its textures, temperatures and light with different art materials and techniques. In the space of making, the hands occupied, the mind quiet, the invitation and question ‘look, what do you see through the arched window?’ was answered in colourful strokes.

She says, walking with the horse, she says the hill, she says the sea, she says I love that blue.

Subtly supported by conversation and materials, we exercise small freedoms choosing colours, shapes and daydreams, guiding us back to a balanced self. In winter we rest. In spring we have to listen and start again.

In summer the final work. The arched window is a metaphor for the mind’s eye. It is a symbol for sacred spaces of peace, protection and reflection. The view through the arches responds to the workshops’ visual responses and the process of cyanotype connects with the social history, care and study of plants. Images of plants caught with light, ignite the imagination, the plant movement, their freshness, their smell their taste. Even in memory the landscape flora has a soothing effect on the physiology of the body. The texture of the photograph stirs the feeling of touch, the haptic captured by the eye."

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