Description
Sarah Scaife
Medicines of uncertainty: slow radio for well-being
Wednesday June 29 • 11.30 – 13.00 Outdoors
You must be registered for Sentient Performativities to book a place.
If you need to make changes to your workshop bookings you can read about it here:
About the Workshop:
In partnership with Soundart Radio 102.5FM, I propose a listening and field recording, sound-based, walking workshop on the Dartington estate. This will result in a radio programme, broadcast once the symposium is over.
Uncertainty can be an unsettling aspect of ill health. Can uncertainty become a friend during times of dis-ease? By connecting sensorially with the health enhancing qualities of the local ecology, we will make a gentle journey into more hopeful ways of being with not knowing. We will explore, hold and record conversations which arise in the spaces between us and the more-than- human. Here we may find memories, imaginings, confabulations and little moments which allow us to explore health uncertainty with some honesty. In my experience, by working in alignment with flowing water-based ecologies, these conversations are likely to be ultimately lyrical and optimistic, but all voices and feelings will be heard.
During the workshop we will make field recordings using readily available technology, such as smart phones. A small number of handheld recording devices will also be available to book out thanks to Soundart Radio 102.5FM. Practicalities mean that the making of the final programme will be done by me rather than all the participants together. Participants will be invited to share their field recordings with me digitally after the workshop. I will remain in contact and collaboration with them during programme making process, and work to be respectful of what arises in our shared time together.
This workshop is offered in the context of my own practice-based PhD enquiry in the field of medical arts & humanities. I am an artist-scholar with an established walking practice. My research considers medicines of uncertainty. It asks how, in a more-than-human world, might polyvocal, practice-based performance methods develop new ways to articulate spells of illness? Outputs from my research so far include a series of six radio programmes, first broadcast in spring 2021 on Soundart Radio 102.5FM. I also have several publications, including for The Polyphony, a new web platform which aims to stimulate, catalyse, provoke, expand and intensify conversations in the critical medical humanities.
By joining in this workshop, participants are invited to become collaborators in my PhD enquiry. This means that I will provide an informed consent process on behalf of University of Exeter which formalises permission for me to gather, edit and broadcast the field recordings we make. This will include options to be an identified or anonymous collaborator and to withhold or withdraw any sensitive material before I begin the editing process.
About Sarah:
Sarah Scaife (she/her) is an artist-scholar who tunes in to the overlaps between being-in-a-body, listening and mutual space. Sarah is one year into a practice-based PhD enquiry in the Department of Drama at the University of Exeter together with the University of Bristol. Her research is AHRC funded by the South, West & Wales Doctoral Training Partnership.
Weblinks: https://thepolyphony.org/2021/10/29/fluxambol-prototyping-a-medicine-of-uncertainty/
PLACES ARE LIMITED TO 8
