Artful Dementia Research Lab, Centre for Women's and Gender Research, Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education, UiT, Arctic University of Norway, Norway.
J Aging Stud. 2023 Dec;67:101169. doi: 10.1016/j.jaging.2023.101169. Epub 2023 Sep 28.
This article generates new understandings of dementia through feminist posthumanist and performative engagements with co-creative artmaking practices during a six-month study in a residential care home in Norway. Dementia emerges within multisensorial entanglements of more-than-human materials in three different artmaking sessions, which first materialized in the form of collective photographs and vignettes and culminated in a final exhibition, Gleaming Moments, in the care home. Drawing on these photographs, vignettes, and the author's engagement as a research artist in the sessions, this analysis examined how dementia was enacted as a spark of inspiration, felted warm seat pads, and a friendly more-than-human touch, that is, a touch of human and nonhuman art materials. These findings suggest new ontologies of dementia within multisensorial artmaking practices, in which dementia functions as a material for co-creative artmaking rather than a disease. These findings disrupt dominant biomedical ontologies of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, as well as humanist person-centered practices in dementia care, which have concretized an individual, rather than relational, focus on dementia. In contrast, this study explores dementia as a phenomenon within the entanglements of human and nonhuman intra-active agencies. By highlighting the significance of these agencies (i.e., sponge holder-painting, wool-felting, choir-singing, chick-making) for different worlds-making with dementia, this study provides an entry point for imagining feminist posthumanist caring. Thus, dementia becomes a matter in life that is not to be managed and defeated to achieve successful aging, but to be interrogated and embraced.
本文通过参与挪威一家养老院为期六个月的研究中的女性主义后人类主义和表现性合作艺术创作实践，对痴呆症有了新的理解。在三次不同的艺术创作过程中，痴呆症在超人类材料的多感官纠缠中出现，这些材料最初以集体照片和小品的形式出现，最终在养老院的一场名为“熠熠生辉的瞬间”的展览中达到高潮。本文借鉴这些照片、小品以及作者作为研究艺术家在这些环节中的参与，分析了痴呆症是如何被表现为灵感的火花、温暖的毛毡坐垫和友好的超人类触感的，也就是说，一种人类和非人类艺术材料的触感。这些发现为多感官艺术创作实践中的痴呆症提出了新的本体论，即痴呆症是合作创作艺术的一种材料，而不是一种疾病。这些发现打破了阿尔茨海默病和其他痴呆症的主流生物医学本体论，以及痴呆症护理中的人本主义以个人为中心的实践，这些实践将痴呆症具体化，而不是关注人际关系。相反，这项研究探讨了痴呆症作为人类和非人类内在互动机构纠缠中的一种现象。通过强调这些机构（即海绵支架绘画、羊毛毡、合唱团演唱、小鸡制作）在与痴呆症相关的不同世界创造中的重要性，本研究为想象女性主义后人类主义护理提供了一个切入点。因此，痴呆症成为生活中的一个问题，不是要管理和战胜它以实现成功老龄化，而是要对它进行质疑和接受。
