Psychosocial aesthetics and the art of lived experience

Abstract

This paper identifies the distinctive nature of arts-based psychosocial enquiry and practice in a public mental health context, focusing on two projects delivered as part of The Big Anxiety festival (Sydney, 2017): Awkward Conversations, in which one-to-one conversations about anxiety and mental health were offered in experimental aesthetic formats; and Parragirls Past, Present, a reparative project, culminating in an immersive film production that explores the enduring effects of institutional abuse and trauma and the ways in which traumatic experiences can be re-figured to transform their emotional resonance and meaning. Bringing an arts-based enquiry into lived experience into dialogue with psychosocial theory, it examines the transformative potential of aesthetic transactions and facilitating environments, specifically with regard to understanding the imbrication of lived experience and social settings.