This workshop was centred on the drawing of visualisations of interoceptive sensations. (Interoception is the collection of senses providing information about the internal state of the body.) The artist Garry Barker has been working with individuals trying to help them find ways of visualising the somatic feelings that they have when various physical and/ or psychological effects trigger inner body sensations. Sometimes these images slide between visual invention and people’s memories of past experiences, between physical resemblances to other objects or a more abstracted understanding of the expression of feeling. The workshop was designed to help people explore how images that can arise unbidden from the unconscious when trying to visualise a particular somatic experience, can be crystalised or taken further so that they can be used as part of an evolving visual communication system. We also explored how interoceptual awareness helps with a growing awareness of how the body knows itself and its own metaphors. As the process of drawing and image making develops, we look at how sensations associated with internal body perceptions, can lead to a greater somatic awareness and as we do so hopefully we all become more attuned to what our bodies are telling us and we make a series of images that can eventually lead to the development of a visual language that cuts through verbal language barriers.
The workshop was divided into two parts. In the morning, Garry Barker addressed is own collaborative work in addressing the representation of interoception sensations and present the participants with a state of art discussion on the problem. Participants were then encourage to developed drawings in two different directions: first, based on drawing as invention, to generate representations than can address their sensations; second, to see if the drawings can communicate that same sensation to another person. Through the discussion, the drawings were reviewed and remade. In the afternoon, the workshop developed into a more collaborative way, as participants were engaged in drawing-writing-telling strategies.
