James Belarde // AUTHOR’S NOTE: Both this article and Part 2 discuss a short play written by the author, summarized below, that can be found in its entirety here. “Who am I to tell my private nightmares to if I can’t tell them to you.” -Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot “Why don’t my doctors laugh…
Category: Arts and Creativity
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster"
Jac Saorsa: Artist-in-Residence // For this contribution to Synapsis, I would like to share an extract from the doctoral work in creative writing that I am currently undertaking with Cardiff University, UK. The thesis is entitled Awakening Monsters: An Exploration of the Experience of Mortality through Creative Practice. The fundamental aim is to embrace an…
The Experience of Grief, The Truths of Bearing Witness
Bríd Phillips // We hang dangling at speed, in fragile air[i] In many ways, the texts at our Medical Humanities Book and Film Club, while dealing with serious topics, have maintained some streaks of positivity. This positivity formed a thread which we could follow to avoid opening up emotional maelstroms. To date, there have been…
When Music is a Social Good
Erica Cao // “Life Unclassed” has a simple backdrop—metronomic beats mark the grind of army life. The song has its own backstory: a joint creation by a 17-year-old high schooler from St. Louis with a 71-year-old veteran at the Bronx Veteran Affairs hospital in NYC. This probably isn’t the kind of music you’re used to….
Exploring the experience of illness through creative practice
Jac Saorsa, Artist-in-Residence // In my first post for Synapsis, I would like to introduce an ongoing project, Drawing Women’s Cancer, which I began in 2012. The timing is particularly appropriate as, just last week (and here you must forgive my shameless self-promotion!) my book entitled Like Any Other Woman: The Lived Experience of Gynaecological…
My Body Was Not Made of Photographic Paper: An Examination of Cancer in the Works of Jo Spence
Diana Novaceanu // With the Wellcome Collection hosting the “Misbehaving Bodies: Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery” exhibit this autumn, the public is presented with works dealing with the medicalized body and its reclamation. Both artists manage to disrupt the male gaze and the medical gaze. For British photographer, activist and writer Jo Spence (1934- 1992)…
Synapsis in Paris: Field Notes: How to be Generative
Darian Goldin Stahl, Artist-in-Residence // Field Notes: How to be Generative Silk, wax, toner, and multimedia 4″ x 4″ 2019 Field Notes: How to be Generative is an artist’s book made in response to the “Book as Body” Artist’s Book Atelier, conducted by myself and Reader of Medical Humanities Stella Bolaki at the CHCI Paris…
Open Heart
By Bennett Kuhn // Open Heart (2019) is an original essay-album composed at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City and on Long Island during May 2019. It is available to stream below via Soundcloud pending its digital release on Astro Nautico in July. Bennett Kuhn – Open Heart (2019) 01 Awash In (0:37)02 A…
The Empathy Chamber
Bennett Kuhn // Around us were dusty stacks of forgotten hardcover books and crowd members circulating in the now-defunct Beaumont Warehouse venue in West Philly. The three-night immersive multimedia art project called Going There was in full swing, and a short queue led up to the table where I sat with two synthesizers welcoming strangers…
The Artist’s Book as Body
Darian Goldin Stahl, Artist-in-Residence // The Artist’s Book as Body: Constructing the meaning of medicine through relational bookmaking practices Introduction For my pedagogical research in the health humanities, I am most interested in how bodily proxies can be employed to sensorially materialize a symptom, unease, or medical experience outside of the body so that it…
