Ecologies of Pain

Ecologies of Pain is funded by a Carnegie Trust Research Incentive Grant. This practice-led research project that explores, through performance practice and theoretical engagement, connections between human experiences of chronic pain and wider ecological pain. I have lived with chronic back pain for 18 years. My experiences of living with, and learning to relate to, my chronic pain, has suggested to me that my relationship to pain can resonate with what it means to live with, and relate to, wider ecological pain. My proposal is that living with chronic pain provides knowledge - such as insights into human vulnerability and tactics for living within limits - that is useful for learning to live in a world that is becoming increasingly uncomfortable and unsupportive for human and other life. 

The performance research involves creatively collaborating with artists and community members who live with chronic pain. Through this project, new performance and dance methods will be developed which are inclusive of diverse people with chronic pain, and an original dance theatre piece will be publicly presented, performed by people with chronic pain. The research will create new interdisciplinary practice-based knowledge by working uniquely across the diverse fields: performance studies, choreography, intergenerational practice, pain philosophies, ecological theory,