Visual Embodiments of Bodily Sensations and Their Individual Conditionality: A Visual Phenomenology

A Visual Phenomenology

Abstract

This paper gives insight into the exploration of perception, visual representation, and mediation of physical symptoms using methods of artistic research. A crucial question is what experiences and languages can serve to re-present the invisible. The cultural and individual context through which perception is first constituted plays an essential role. Bodily sensations are everyday experiences, but become even more explicit through symptoms of illness. Lived experiences are deeply subjective and require a language in order to be conveyed. This investigation is based on self-experienced incidents caused by multiple sclerosis (MS). Many individuals afflicted with MS experience paresthesia due to a signal-transmission disorder in the central nervous system. The symptoms are not perceived as occurring at the actual location of the damaged nerve cells; in addition, there is no external stimulus associated with the sensations. Such sensations include that of socks covering the feet or balls of textile material underneath the feet. This material is perceived as foreign. These illusions seem perfectly real and are irritating. The process of making bodily phenomena visual is preceded by introspection and leads to externalization, these phenomena ac- quiring, in this process, an additional existence outside the body. The transfer to a sheet of paper can bring relief and help in the process of regaining possession of an alienated body. The drawings are also a means of conveying the invisible to other affected persons, their relatives, and persons in the clinical field. In the process of sensation–perception–representation, a double question arises: What pre-existing images occur during perception and to what extent do the visual representations allow the recipient to begin to comprehend a sensation? Does legibility depend on similarity of experiences and cultural contexts?