My working practice as an artist has been led by an expansive amount of research, all profoundly important to my evolution as a creative individual. Now with the opportunity to continue this studying and application, I come to a point to consider how my researched ideas can expand into an expansive practice, which uses other disciplines and practical approaches to enrich the concepts. The position I am approaching within this proposal is concentrated in two directions. Both these approaches are aimed at the same goal of understanding how catharsis from sexual trauma can be gained. With both being intertwines with each other throughout the process of application and researching.

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One approach is remaining fixed to my own practice as a contemporary artist. Exploring the methods and researched ideas I will dispel in this proposal, to create within my practice. For me, the exploration in these avenues of inquiry are far from over and are still bountiful in terms of potential creative energy.

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The other approach is to expand the process out from my own experience and practice. To place it in the realm of other individual studies. The plan to use inter/transdisciplinary relationships in academia to apply certain aspects of my researched idea upon other individuals in newly constructed form of art therapy.

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Using my art and ideas to formulate a thesis and to solidify a practical application within this expansion. Which will enrich other approaches reaching into the different academic worlds of psychology, philosophy, and art theory.

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In this proposal I will express the potential of the research, the theoretical conceptions, and overall desired aims. Passing through differing subject matters all formulating a direction of inquiry. With the practical and researched approaches, I have so far undertaken being seen as having the trajectory of reaching passed the core source of the inspiration. Inspiration being an expression and derepressing of the sexual trauma as a subject and its place in my art as with emphasis on how art can help the gaining of a cathartic experience.

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This achievement I declare to the process of accepting the required philosophies and psychological constructs. The passing of this initial concept and application now rises to a level of expanded study. The unbiased attempt to apply this developed process to others with similar traumas is not an easy task, but one I am confident into refining into a methodised thesis and case study.

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This is not only to justify its potential, but also to build a foundation upon which I can stand as artist and researcher knowing the true strengths and weaknesses of the concepts and know for some certainty that the catharsis gained can be achieved beyond myself and the biasness that lies in self application of art and theory.

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To capture what it is I am proposing I will briefly summarise the concept in a brief statement. This is to solidify the idea and then from which to expand into the varying research points that synthesis with the desire to back up and explain the differing concepts as well as the core musings that have led to me using this concept as a direct plan of action; one I feel can create a strong study and thesis from.

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I propose to construct a four-step system of using my ideas around art and applying them in a format that acts as a form of therapy.

I propose to take an individual through the motions of looking back at feelings and visuals which form their first person and third person perspectives of the trauma. This is then used by me to form a picture of differing images and metaphorical objectivities and subjectivities they have about the trauma.

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The views which create ambiguity form a buffering veil of subjectivity that is known in psychological studies to have success in cognitive research (the third person perspective of trauma), also relevant to the therapy of allowing individuals to use creative techniques to develop good feelings through art.

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I however go further with my proposal. My role in the method is to be integral to the overall process. My role is to create art from the ambiguities found in the recounts and individuals’ moments of figurativeness. Here I as an artist will grasp imagery and concepts that can formulate art. The abstract, surreal, and ambiguous areas of sensations that are expressed in art but not in the raw real-life view of the trauma. This is where the method constructs artworks which the individual can view as an audience, not as a creator, but rather as another step back in perspective.

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This difference will allow the trauma they told to be buffered a step further from the outside-looking-in method, by allowing an uncontrollable force (the artists input) to form something new but also, hopefully, knowable. This balance of altering perspectives and covering objective pains through techniques could help change the objective trauma into a subjective tragedy and in that allow some form of catharsis.

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The reason I am choosing to go in this direction has to do with how art in practical terms has helped me. The method I wrote in my proposal summary is something I construct over a long time of looking into differing sources trying to capture the key to such relief. As someone who suffers from pain which I can trace back to a sexual trauma, I find it a great privilege to say that I helped myself out through what I love to do, which is make art. And it is with that prideful understanding that I wish to focus the process on others who may be going through similar pains. Partly to see if I can refine the process into a practice, but also to see if my biasness and pride constructed the relief I received, or if when used outside myself on others, can similar outcomes be achieved. If the construct was biased, then of course a wider research will be undertaken into how such a desired cathartisis can be gained via the ideas I have undertaken.

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The background which forms the foundation of this idea is built up from two subject matters. Ancient Greek Mythology and mindset and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Both aimed at understanding and constructing the ideas around tragedy and what it means to be a human with a glimmer of a ‘tragic disposition.’ That being the point of self-acceptance and awareness to understand the Sisyphean task of life and the tragic unfairness of existence.

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This research is explored as an artist with my own ideas around the power of art and so it is with this foundation of this research, I also meld in the ideas of art philosophies mainly coming from extensive studies into Surrealism, which bridge the divide between objective reality and subjective deviations of the psyche. This along with practical research as a practitioner of my own concepts in visual arts and performative art. This is the main gathering of subject input, but there is also a steady and growing side, which is my exploration of psychology and art therapy and how they connect and differ to my concept.

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Methodologies that must explore and give varying reflections will be psychoanalytical, art theory, feminism, queer theory, psychosocial theory as well as any others that seem to arrive necessarily. These mythologies may not all be required or able to capture the fullness of the differing approaches I will be undertaking, but the fluidity of the research must be synced with the flow of individual customisation. Certainly, I as the practitioner will not be able to determine every facet of an individual’s trauma, but with an ability to alter my perspectives to suite that of the case studies, I will allow a more fluxed conception of what it is I can craft with method and theory.

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A training plan will consist of working and in communication with individuals whose professions revolve around these same concepts of therapy, art therapy, art theory and psychology. Creating a disciplinary relationship with theorists, doctors, and patients. I certainly do not wish to place myself in as more than an artist who can use his abilities to help create great outcomes with my cases and so my role is to mediate my ideas in with those of practiced professionals and if need be, customise my thinking around how the practical relationships between me and them and me and the individuals who will be part of the case.

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I firstly develop a defined and understandable thesis which I can take to professionals with hopes of their advice and connectivity to creating a working study. I will then have opportunities to work with individuals one on one to test my proposed thesis; this will take time to construct enough repour and understanding to gather as much knowledge as I need from the individual to create with. This process will require learning on my part to test out different methods on how to best form a relationship between myself and them. I suggest a few observed tests by supervisors and professional who could coach me into the right direction.

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After the practice has built up and I have case studied a fair number of varying cases I will then return to my original proposed thesis and discover the truths and failings in my concepts. If the process has grounds of continuing, I will then reformulate the thesis with the potential to continue. This process will be ongoing and of course what is pronounced now as a theoretical concept is open to scrutiny and change, especially as the studying develops.

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1.      The verbal and written account of the trauma from first person, unbiased by psychoanalytical theory. All done to see how the individual expresses the trauma verbally and through written language. This is done to capture two accounts of the same trauma both focused and originating from the individual. But more focused on how the victimisation of the individual can be accounted via two varying accounts, as well as giving them two choices of expression. Part of this is to understand how the individual remembers the event. During this process, the individual will be asked to focus on how it felt, what emotions arose from the event as it happened, immediately afterwards, and finally how it feels to recount the tale in the present.

2.      The verbal and written account of the trauma from a third person. Same as before, completely unbiased in terms of psychoanalytical theory. This recounting is from the outside and aimed at alienating as many of the emotions recovered from first person remembering. As the individual prepares to tell the tale in both verbal and written form, they will be asked to see the trauma as an onlooker. To make themselves void to the physical situation and instead focus on what they see. This will extract them from the reliving of the event and instead place them as an audience to the trauma. The recount will end with a list of all the things the individual feels when seeing themselves in such a situation.

3.      The comparison. Here the individual works with me to explore all the aspects of emotion, language, and visuals they had expressed through the first two steps. From this exploration I can then formulate a chart cataloguing the differences and similarities between the two recounts. The differences may be the key. The cathartic moment may lie in such differences of acceptance. The comparison may recover the key to the ambiguous reconstruction. Efforts on my part will be to focus on metaphor, symbolism, poetics, and all things abstract. These will be the gemstones I need to find in the individual’s psyche. For if they perceive themselves in such ways, then the literal expression of such abstractions could allow a ‘Marvellous’ reaction conjoined with one of seeing the trauma as tragedy and finding the veil to buffer the traumas hold and provide catharsis.

4.      The experiment. After such abstract, poetic, or metaphorical formations have been captured, it will be my turn to ferry the individual to a point of expression through me. The aim of this is to not allow the individual to create themselves but to give the ambiguous feelings of an artwork formulated by the trauma they have recounted. From this I will construct art works, digital, visual, and performative to capture those essences through my hands and imagination. Here the individual is then presented with a fresh piece of art which is born from a foundation of their trauma recounted and the ambiguities they have themselves formed in response to the trauma. The objectivity is removed via the third person aspect, the ambiguity and by not making the work themselves. Here they are left subjective to their own experience.