Environmental storytelling and the burdens we carry
For this particular exercise, I faced an immediate problem: traveling out for trips, and spending significant time outside/traveling without the comforts of home can quickly become tiring and cause a flare-up in pain.
SO, I decided to work with what I have. As per most of my work, I am going explore myself and my experiences and share them in the process. Below are photos of my room over a short time period with the times and dates. I wanted to pay attention and take note of the little things. I have always had a great interest in environmental storytelling in character development, so turning and applying it to myself was an interesting exercise. Some have less writing than others as I didn’t want to be overly repetitive, as it is the same space again and again.
In this exercise I did consider using another room in my house, but I decided to double down. I want to explore and share my experience with my chronic pain, and a large part of that is the feeling of being imprisoned. To combat this your space must become multiple. To shift and change your own environment in little ways where you can to reduce the monotony and dread of living the same day again and again playing pain wack-a-mole
The physical experience
for these drawings I used them to track my pain, the very thing that confines me to my room and to a slow-paced lifestyle. I worked with HB-9B graphite, going darker for more severe pain and layering for pain that comes again and again. Many people struggle with being believed about pain you can’t see, so in these drawings, I wanted to capture the unseen I deal with every day in this space. It was admittedly a bit of a depressing exercise to pay so much focus to pain, to attempt to capture the sharp nerve pains vs, the dull muscle aches and complex gut twisting- but I feel I was successful generally. I might’ve liked to do more sketches but this is where I landed. I included progress shots, as I documented my pain as it came to me over the day- and I wanted to capture a little bit of the element of pain that lingers and builds with repetition.
Day 1, Sept 8
Sept 8th end of day
Sept 9th end of day
Documenting time in space and exploratory prototyping
Sept 13th
In these photos, I decided to document something similar to my previous week’s work. I wanted to be more intentional and create a short visual narrative with my images of the space and the pains associated with fixing or changing it. I prepared the unshaded plain sketches earlier in the day, and spent an hour and a half or so quietly documenting my pain as I did before, shading again and again for repetitive pains or darker/sharper for severe and sudden pains. This time was just me laying in bed waking up while I worked up the energy to clean after losing my afternoon to exhaustion.
Below is my tidied space, still imperfect but about 15 minutes is all I could manage on this particular day. Underneath is the drawing after recording the aches, pains and fatigue this simple task put on my body. Honestly this exercise was a little depressing for me, my pain and aches often are pushed to the back of my mind to spare my sanity. Focusing on and following the pain to attempt to ‘accurately’ portray it was a challenge and a hurtful reminder that it’s often times worse than I think it is. Regardless, I got a tidy room and a neat drawing out of it so I’d say success.
Prototyping
sept 16th
This process was very much a dive-in head first for me. I couldn’t get my head around how sketching might help me in planning for my next part, so I ended up just getting my materials and getting into it. I ended up missing any opportunity to pick up extra newsprint for stuffing so I had to make a mini prototype to just give the materials a go. I intend to create a ‘body bag’ type shape, made to my approximate proportions coated with wire and using fabric to serve the same purpose as graphite in my previous sketch exercises.
I wouldn’t exactly call this a success as far as making something that will make it into the final piece but I did learn about my materials and what I will want to adjust. I think a second firmer type of wire, and definitely larger bags. I think in my next attempt shredding the paper would help with shaping. I also got to see how the materials all work together. I also took the opportunity to just take some pictures of this pitiful little object in the various messy spaces of my house, and I’m very pleased with how the material blends in with the space. (The scale however does make it looks quite funny)
Building with new knowledge
Sept 23rd
I don’t have much documentation as it’s been a slow and grueling bit of work, but I did take a timelapse of the initial building session. After working with the trash bags, paper, and fabric I realized starting with a general metal casing would be more effective. SO to create the effect of a body in a bag, I decided to wrap and weave wire around my body. I created the general form of the calves and spent more time working on the torso. I wrapped it around my body and created one firm connecting line to cut off of my body so I could sit and create sturdier rings- which I am bringing to class to show while we discuss.
This process is repetitive and time-consuming, and I’ve spent about three hours this week working on it- as I need breaks often due to the pain, and my hands and wrists locking up on me.
I also think this is a neat video purely to examine how I exist in my space at work, I might take more while just relaxing to see how my space changes over time in a format other than photos over time. I’ve also attached a short piece of creative non-fiction writing about my chronic pain I wrote for my creative writing course to offer additional context to the piece.