Finding Home and Losing Space

My research focuses on an investigation of how my body reacts to spatial and sensory information and developing visual motifs and metaphors that poetically capture somatic interruptions in my daily life. While subjected to the onset of neurocardiogenic episodes that cause me to have uniquely altered sensory somatic encounters, my body feels like a receiver for a multitude of sensory information from internal and external environments. Sometimes objects, shapes, spaces and sound change instantaneously, and my body is left to respond accordingly, losing parts of vision, sense of touch or ability to hear. I look to these somatic experiences for inspiration in making art. Key research questions have guided my practice, such as What can the fragmentation of spaces that occur in these moments provide my practice? How do I translate somatic experiences, such as a corner of a room disappearing or a wall floating upward through the ceiling, into a visual narrative? How does one remain orientated in such a moment and how can one's (re)orientation be transposed into an art installation? My aim was to make sonic, visual and material gestures about these experiences to better understand them and the relationship between sensory and spatial perception. Much of my inquiry assesses the aesthetic content of the ‘home’ as a way of mapping the manner in which my body and perceptions are ‘organized’ by and within the world. I draw on the work of Gaston Bachelard and Tim Endensor, among others, to not only develop my discussion of architectural spaces and its aesthetics but also as a way of navigating my personal experiences of architectural spaces that enclose the fragility of my body and its reliance on an external environment for orientation.