Visual autoethnography, dance and illness: Diving into processes of health and resistance

Pini, S. (2019). HASS Your Say - Visual autoethnography, dance and illness: Diving into processes of health and resistance. The Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, CHASS Newsletter November 2019. https://mailchi.mp/ba52fcbfbd8a/chass-newsletter-november-2019?e=a4345d8b2a

2019 CHASS Australia Student Prize winner Sarah Pini writes about her creative ethnographic projects and research exploring the relationship between illness, dance and anthropology.

[...] The short film ABISSO is a visual metaphor of my emotional landscape at a particular phase of my medical journey. Filmed underwater in Tenerife, Spain, the film portrays the feeling of living with a life-threatening disease. It opens a metaphorical and autobiographical perspective on the emotional struggle during a 10-year long journey with cancer. The underwater dance symbolises the feeling of being immersed in a separate dimension, disconnected from the rest of the world, a dimension where it is impossible to breathe. ABISSO also portrays the last dance I performed with my original blood. A few months later having recorded this dance, I successfully underwent a stem cells transplant which radically transformed my blood and immune system. As a visual metaphor, ABISSO evokes the power of the sea and the element of the water as a source of life where all possibilities can emerge. By diving into processes of healing and resistance, it invites audiences to rethink the illness event through a performative perspective that can offer ground for transformation.