Diversity and disruption in arts and health
Clive Parkinson___The arts might well be a potent social determinant of long‑term public health and wellbeing. But we’ll never address the health and wellbeing of communities until we get to grips with the injustices and inequalities that poison our communities. In my presentation/ video Weapons of Mass Happiness for Artlands, Dubbo (2016), I suggested that as the UK embarks on its ugly divorce from the European Union and the USA on its next wave of selfish individualism led by Donald Trump, the arts should proactively disrupt inequality of race, gender, disability and sexual identity. Clive Parkinson in conversation with Jill Bennett. The snag for arts and health is that the way in which health is dis/ordered Clive Parkinson’s performance at the understood is increasingly focused on Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, is part competition and not compassion. In of The Big Anxiety: festival of arts + science + a largely clinical context, the arts and people directed by Jill Bennett. As a reflection on health agenda has emerged as a force to humanise healing environments, his own traumatic experiences in adolescence, advancing its relationship with and subsequent long‑term engagement with Arts medicine as a means to achieving for Health, a flagship program at Manchester individual health. But perhaps if we Metropolitan University, Clive is a passionate begin to understand public health in terms of equity and justice, then advocate for experimental practice as proactive we might engage more deeply with disruption in the cause of mental health. the social determinants of health, and not simply decorate the edges of our individual lives. Art has the power to provoke debate and stir up our sleeping imaginations; it has the potential to galvanise us if we can Jill Bennett___Arts for Health at think outside our own little worlds. MMU is the UK’s longest established arts and health program, and one of What’s wrong with arts and health? the most progressive with its focus on health inequalities and creating Well, the movement, if that’s what a better society. In contrast to the we want to call it, seems to be many arts‑health projects, which thriving. Yet without diversity, it focus on more immediate gains, risks becoming inward‑looking and your program takes “the long view”, self‑congratulatory. At the moment, mobilising for generational change. there’s a dominance in the field of a
10 | Artlink Issue 37:3 | September 2017 turgid middle ground that seeks to It would be more relevant to get to that arts/health interventions should answer the call of health leaders, to grips with the underlying factors that have empowerment of people tailor something that sounds like art influence long‑term societal health. as their primary objective. into the health agenda. But in truth, For me, this is about long‑term cultural it’s all about trying to be a bland change, not just sticking a decorative No one can take issue with cost‑effective solution to health Band‑Aid over systemic problems. arts and health programs with targets in a climate of austerity. As a counter‑blast to this, the straightforward, practical goals but This is a case of finding blanket launch of Creative Health: The Arts they often don’t begin to exploit solutions, which hand‑in‑hand with for Health and Wellbeing (2017) in the the capacity of art to enhance a corporate aesthetic seem remote UK, offers us some real promise. This insight into experience or its social from anything you might call art. report by the All Party Parliamentary determinants, and the empowerment In the UK right now, there’s been Group is the outcome of a two‑year that comes from that kind of insight. quite an investment in dance, which inquiry into arts and health across They are purely instrumental. And on the surface sounds like a great idea, the life course. It places a critical this, for better or worse, drives a but a lot of this work is about exercise emphasis on the social determinants wedge between arts for health and and creative physiotherapy. This is of health and wellbeing, focusing the contemporary artworld, which is all completely laudable, but more explicitly on inequalities and social conversely resistant to anything with arts by stealth than arts and health, justice. The report’s key message real‑world outcomes. The problem focusing less on any cultural agenda is that the arts, imagination and with prioritising a specific health and fixated on savings for the National creativity can help keep us well, aid outcome is that you get caught up Health Service coffers by avoiding our recovery and support longer lives with the measures and metrics of slips and trips. It’s well‑meaning, but better lived. For me, this is the critical health deliverables when there is sanitised and functional, devoid of part, as is the overarching emphasis more significant work to do in terms aesthetic appreciation, thrill and joy. on mental health and the proposition of understanding how art works.
Issue 37:3 | September 2017 Artlink | 11 From top: Tracey Emin My Bed, 1988, © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2017. Image courtesy Saatchi Gallery, London. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Jeremy Deller It Is What It Is, 2009, mixed media installation including banner, film and US version of Twin Towns. Installation view, Jeremy Deller, New Commissions: It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq, 2008, New Museum, New York, 2009. Commissioned by 3M Project, Creative Time, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary art, Chicago and New Museum, New York. Image courtesy the artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow. Photo: Benoit Pailley
12 | Artlink Issue 37:3 | September 2017 It doesn’t just make us feel better public art. By simply erecting a statue angles and close ups, and being in the moment but can empower in an impoverished area of town, we asked: “What it’s all about?”. You people to question beliefs, feelings, can transform the underclasses into can guess the answers: “It looks like diagnosis, institutional forces and so dewy eyed aesthetes. Here’s your my bedroom”, “Someone died there”, on. The best arts and health work, it cultural quarter. Boom, you’re sorted! “It’s a squat”. The comments were seems to me, starts from the really Our work around addiction rich and deeply personal. But then to fine‑grained collaborative work with and recovery in Europe offers a be told that it’s “art”—and have the individuals and communities. It has very different perspective, because opportunity to get to grips with it, and to be experimental and emergent, not it isn’t concerned with curing the even rail against it! —now that’s a the rolling out of a generic program. sick and evangelising addicts—it’s powerful way of opening up difficult about giving people opportunity to conversations about shared experience We might challenge both the arrogance scream from the rooftops. Through and the things that contribute to of the art establishment, and the things like the Recoverist Manifesto, people’s lives. I had similar responses cloying evangelism of art and health. we can suggest how things might to Jeremy Deller’s It Is What It Is They both offer us gated communities, be different. You don’t have to (2009), an exploded car taken from when in reality health has to reimagine be passive—you have a voice. the scene of a car bomb attack in itself in a 21st‑century context and Baghdad, which toured across the the arts establishment may in fact Recoverism is a creative social USA to provoke discussion about learn a lot from social practices. practice in itself with the focus the war in Iraq. Initially people said If there’s anything that cuts across on engagement but you have also “This is the result of a drunk driver.” all of this, it has to be our mental utilised the work of other artists in But we took it much further to get to health. Mental ill health negatively this process. grips with what it is that artists are impacts on our physiological doing and, ultimately, how we as a health—the evidence is unequivocal. When I was developing the community affected by substance But there’s more to it than that: all Recoverist Manifesto with people misuse can radically reframe thinking. that stuff that underpins our mental affected by addiction, I worked health—those determinants again— with a number of people who had The chaos and mess is the point. stretch out across every factor, age, avoided going to prison by agreeing As someone recently said of The context, society, religion. If we to be part of recovery communities. Big Anxiety, mental health advocacy don’t put mental health at the top of Most people who took part had is conventionally articulate and the pyramid, everything else falls never heard of Jeremy Deller and measured, so those in recovery apart. But there’s no one‑size‑fits‑all Tracey Emin, but these were the effectively have to overcome their mental wellbeing solution. artists whose output enabled me issues before talking about them. We’ve seen some sublime to work with these people beyond Giving space and expression to work that brings people affected by superficiality to explore the ugly, something more real and unruly is dementia into galleries, especially at the misunderstood and the violent. hugely empowering. This is what we MoMA, New York. But I’m interested Recoverism is driving change through need to promote and evaluate. in what arts institutions themselves collaborative research. It’s only by learn from working with people sharing new ideas that we can move Yes, indeed. And, in answer to your affected by dementia, how they might away from clichéd representations question about measures and metrics, change and evolve. Now that has the of addiction—from addiction being I think we beat ourselves up marrying potential to be revolutionary. At the seen as a criminal or purely health ourselves to a bio‑medical model. Fifty moment, the new and vapid trend for issue, to one of civil rights. years ago, John Berger suggested that arts and health might seem like an Imagine confronting hundreds of the comparative methods in health care extension of the neoliberal agenda different photographs of Emin’s, My and the arts were “equally absurd”. where all society’s ills can be cured by Bed (1998) from as many different I’m inclined to agree with him. His
Issue 37:3 | September 2017 Artlink | 13 book A Fortunate Man (1967) is as survivor’s sense of truth. For wards, but an artistic inquiry, exploring relevant today as it was then, when Parragirls to take back the site is the sonic landscape through noise he challenged us to ask ourselves, therefore massively significant. and musicality. It’s a journey that how does “the cure of serious illness” And the processes of recording has exposed us both to challenging compare in value with “one of the a soundtrack, of co‑creating a moments, one of which will feature better poems of a minor poet”? work and shaping its narrative are predominantly in his work as part psychologically important. This is of The Big Anxiety, which is in part We certainly need a more about Parragirls controlling their focused on a young woman who imaginative way of thinking own representations. embarked on some spontaneous work about qualitative impact before The examples you give with Vic, but who sadly died part we get to quantifiable metrics. can similarly be understood as way through. For Vic, this young How, for example, would we collaborative research projects as patient and myself, our shared work go about evaluating a work like well as interventions, insofar as you is a strong motif for understanding Parragirls Past, Present, one of the go into a community and work with the value of contemporary artists commissions in The Big Anxiety, people without any evalangelising who work in social contexts. which relates to the experience aim or even a predefined notion The work is not about fixing, of women who in their teens were of what a health outcome would but doing what art has always residents of the Parramatta Girls’ look like. Your work with Australian done—challenging and provoking Home. This work is a collaboration artist Vic McEwan at Alder Hey and taking us into difficulty places. between immersive media artists Children's Hospital is speculative It’s about what artists can offer in (Volker Kuchelmeister, Alex Davies) and ambitious in this way—and you terms of a critical experience, and a and the “Parragirls” themselves, are preempting the “evaluation” very different kind of critical care. building on a multifaceted, long‑term problem by writing a book, taking a arts project led by artist–researcher similar, person‑centred approach to For The Big Anxiety you have Lily Hibberd and Parragirl Bonney Berger’s. developed dis/ordered which is a Djuric. Its visible output is a high‑end new departure … immersive media art production, We’re awash with arts and health but behind the technology is a “frameworks” “evaluation guides” and Yes, it’s quite nerve‑wracking in “process‑based” community project, new “how‑to” books. They all tend to many ways, as I step out of the focused on advocacy and recovery come out of the same stable and are community of arts and health into the in the context of institutional abuse less about inequalities in health and spotlight of a major cultural setting and trauma. culture. It feels like a bun fight to get like the MCA, to explore my very How will this project support the most robust evidence‑based book personal perspective of obsession the mental health of those who out there. So, when the opportunity and compulsion, but also some views work on it, and what will be the to work with Vic came along, I was around how OCD has emerged as impact of enabling the Parragirls’ keen to write up what I observed a “disorder” alongside an apparent voices to be heard? It may well in his practice, warts and all. I’ve global boom in mental illness. As achieve things that no clinical been participant observer, joining in part of this work, I’ll be questioning program could. The Parragirls have with his work as an artist working whether we are all as ill as we’re testified to a Royal Commission; with children and young people lead to believe, or simply buying into their stories have been officially undergoing difficult health crises. what we believe is happening. Could told and reported. But story telling I wanted to explore what artists our mental distress be a very healthy is not only about the public record. do in these difficult situations. So it’s response to a sick world, and could As we know, the trauma of abuse not been about Vic creating a piece this apparent “epidemic” in mental ill is compounded by institutional for people to gawp at, nor about health, be better understood as a gold denial, which undermines a resolving “sound problems” on the rush for those with vested interests in
14 | Artlink Issue 37:3 | September 2017 McKewen Caption TBC Parragirls Past, Present Creative team: Bonney Djuric, Gypsie Hayes, Jenny McNally, Lynn Edmondson Paskovski, Denise Nicholas, Volker Kuchelmeister, Lily Hibberd, Alex Davies. Expanded Perception and Interaction Centre [EPICentre], UNSW Art & Design, Paddington. A 3D immersive environment commissioned for The Big Anxiety: festival of arts + science + people, supported by the Australian Government Department of Communication and Arts: Catalyst Arts and Culture Fund. Photo credit: Nick Cubbin keeping us ill, medicated and passive? I think this is exactly where the arts contemporary practice, that people I’m not out to disprove mental can make a vital and distinctive might begin to look at the bigger illness. I’ve too often seen the contribution. Critical psychologists picture. My only hope is that there consequences of distress and trauma, like Kinderman point to the might be a shift from focusing on and as part of what I share at the importance of questioning top‑down our own individual mental health MCA, I’ll be navigating a fragile diagnosis that doesn’t attend issues, to thinking about ourselves path through a personal exploration sufficiently to the impact of social as communities, and why are so of what would now be badged up factors. But to see and understand many more people apparently as childhood obsessive compulsive the psychological impact of those affected by mental health issues? disorder, alongside what I think are factors we need rich methods the roots to the cult of diagnosis, for the description of personal Art is in an obvious sense still elitist, whereby we need to quantify every experience, which is hard to get on but conversely it provides the means texture and nuance of our lives. the record. These rich descriptions to describe traumatic or difficult will come from art not from medical experience when everyday language There’s a strong critical movement science. But your point about limited fails. in the UK, challenging the medical access and interest is important. As model of mental health and the we know well, it’s not just a question Yes, and perhaps the system notion of “disorder”… of opening the doors of museums, itself perpetuates this as a form we need to design engagement and of gatekeeping in a smug and Psychologists like Peter orient art practice towards the goal hermetically sealed world, safe Kinderman offer us an alternative of examining unspoken experience. from dissenting voices. Worse to the bio‑medical—or rather, still, it mythologises the “mad” pharmaceutical—dominance of We both know that mental illness can artist or exoticises people from our psychic terrain. In his essay happen in anyone’s life, regardless the fringes consigning them to the Drop the Language of Disorder, he of background or privilege, but the neat “outsider” category. That’s suggests that we need a “wholesale overwhelming evidence is that people why programs like Tate’s Tate revision” of the way we think about who experience higher levels of Exchange offer something beyond psychological distress, starting inequality have far higher rates of tokenism—a space for everyone to by acknowledging that distress is mental ill health. Yes, galleries and collaborate, test ideas and discover not abnormal but a normal human museums that really want to throw new perspectives on life, through art. response to difficult circumstances. open their doors offer new ways of Art certainly gives us small Kinderman gets it right, in that provoking exchange and making sense moments of joy, but art and artists any system that provides a lexicon of the world, but so do some of the also give us voice to question systems for identifying and responding to smaller organisations that span issues of control and the means to question mental distress should use language around mental difference and the arts. the status quo. In an interview and processes that recognise that In the UK, the NHS is waking with Studs Terkel in 1961, James psychosocial factors (poverty, up to the potency of the arts Baldwin suggested, that “artists are unemployment, trauma) are the most through social prescribing, where here to disturb the peace.” Perhaps strongly evidenced causal factors general practitioners have the if we embrace this call and refocus for psychological distress. From my option to refer people experiencing on the factors that underpin all our lived experience, I might suggest a period of mental crises, to arts mental distress, we might realise that these are, in fact, the social and cultural organisations as that if ever that peace has needed determinants of all our health, and something complementary to the disturbing, the time is now. that the arts might just be the missing usual pharmaceuticals. This has link—albeit one that so many people got to be welcome. It’s through this have no access to, and no interest in. often “first exposure” to challenging
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