Photoworks X The Ampersand
Foundation Residency
In 2023 I was chosen to be the artist-in-residence for the Photoworks X The Ampersand Foundation lens-based Residency at Wigwell Lodge in Derbyshire. The residency is a career development opportunity running from February to June. Arts institutions from across the Midlands come together to nominate the candidates. The residency includes accommodation, two studio spaces, a bursary and mentoring.
Photoworks X Ampersand Residency film below:
Charlie Fitz with Oscar Vinter at Wigwell Lodge
Directed by Piotr Sell
Reconnecting with nature
As a sick and disabled person who was a covid shielder for many years my connection to nature has often been limited to whatever I can see from my bedroom window. Wigwell Lodge is in a remote location and amongst nature. I took this opportunity to reconnect with nature and explore grounding techniques. I reflected on the practice of convalescence, thinking particularly about the Victorian era practice of convalescence, in which people of privilege, frequently women were sent to the countryside to recover. Below are photos I took with my Hasselblad whilst exploring the area.
Wigwell Lodge Artist Showcase
In the final month of the residency we hosted a showcase of mine and my partner, Oscar Vinter's work, throughout the house which I curated. We included works-in-progress, photography, audio-visual works, painting and mixed media work. I displayed work throughout two studies and three rooms of the house, each room focusing on a particular medium, theme or period of time in my art practice. We invited curators, artists and art workers from across the UK and also hosted a lunch.
Wigwell Lodge residency studio tour
Photography as “evidence”?
Throughout the residency I explored my relationship to photography, building on my collaborative work of assisted-self portraits with my partner Oscar Vinter. I explored the history of photography and its use as supposed medical evidence; both photography that penetrates the body, such as X-rays, but also less conventional uses of medical documentation.
A particular focus of the residency became the use of photography by 19th Century French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot as he developed his theory of hysteria, studying the women confined to Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, an institution for the sick and poor women of France.
Referencing the book Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpêtrière by Georges Didi-Huberman I thought about how using photography in this way brings into question the legitimation of knowledge creation, which led me to develop a presentation which I delivered to the CHASE Medical Humanities Research Network.
For this talk I discussed how my roles as an artist, medical humanities researcher and patient/sick person intersect, exploring how theories, thinker's and artists have influenced my creative practice such as the work of Havi Carel, Donna Harraway, Michel Foucault, Arthur Frank, Johanna Hedva and Jo Spence. Through a discussion of the ‘patient expert’ I addressed issues of objectivity, epistemic injustice
Edited images credit: Charcot, J. M. (Jean Martin), 1825-1893. In the public domain
Rather than having a particular end goal in mind, I used the space of the residency to openly explore.
As well as reflecting on the use of photography by medical professionals I questioned my own use of photography, as someone with memory loss due to complex PTSD as well as spinal cord damage, photography is often my only connection to moments in my past, memories shaped by photography. As well as my use of photography throughout traumatic periods of hospitalisation to try and document my own experience.
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"Cripping" the residency
As a disabled person, I use and identify with the word 'crip' in the radical reclaiming of the word, which draws on Crip Theory and Crip Time. I recognise that some people in the disabled community may still find this word offensive, however the communities I am a part of found power and community in the reclamation of these words.
As the residency took place over 5 months I wanted to honour crip time and focus on paced exploration rather than production. And honour the labour that goes into care.
I am a chronically ill, disabled and neurodivergent self-taught artist with a history of trauma. I use my creative practice as a form of self exploration because of this my artwork is always connected to my experiences and how those experiences are embedded in history and culture.
Since becoming ill my partner and I have not had a home of our own. Due to the precarity of illness we have moved around a lot, staying with friends and family, never quite settling in or feeling secure. I decided to think of the residency space as a safe space for convalescence.
Convalescence is a space for recovering, as I have a degenerative and progressive illness I will never be well, but I hope to use the space to work on recovering from some of the trauma I have experienced and use the space to take part in online therapy and EMDR.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy technique used to treat trauma-related disorders like PTSD. It involves the use of bilateral stimulation, such as eye movements, to help reprocess traumatic memories in a more adaptive way.
I wanted my artwork during the residency to be an extension of processing my trauma. I particularly want to explore a concept I have termed 'Chronic Heterotopias' or the Heterotopia of the Sick. Heterotopias are worlds within our world, in which the inhabitants are cut off from society, breaking with its rules due to crisis or deviation. 'Chronic Heterotopias', which explores my existence in relation to time and space as a sick and disabled person
Since becoming seriously ill a lot of my creative work has been digital, as creating digital work is often more accessible, particularly when living and working in small spaces and moving around a lot. One of the areas I wanted to explore during the residency was making my work tactile, both making new work and exploring how to make pre-existing work tactile. By returning to previous works I felt I could honour crip time making.
I have been thinking a lot about Gerhard Richter's Overpainted Photographs. I particularly like how they distort time. The photograph represents a moment in time and the paint can bring that moment into the present and change it. Living with trauma can distort time, as trauma often lives in the present even if it is a historic event. EMDR aims to reprocess the trauma and change how the person feels about it, in a way overpainted photographs mimic this process.
Photography experiments - aesthetic of trauma
The experience of trauma often distorts time. It is an aesthetic of trauma blending the past and present. This is an idea I explore further in my academic worth on illness memoirs and art.
‘If trauma has an aesthetic, it would be an eternally occurring flicker, a modulation like this - back and forth, between the whirring of drills and the spatter of blood […] It would be a stammer; a staccato, pulsing struggle between speaking and not-speaking.’
- Jenn Ashworth, Notes Made While Falling
‘Wound implies en media res: The cause of injury is in the past but the healing isn’t done; we are seeing this situation in the present tense of its immediate aftermath.’
- Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams
The Hysteric Witch
The residency gave me the space and freedom to lay the groundwork for several ongoing projects. The most developed of these projects is the Hysteric Witch. An accumulation of the personal, creative and academic research I explored through the residency. This work-in-progress crip time project is rooted in my own lived experience, history and folklore. The Hysteric Witch is an alter ego , a ghost and a manifesto in development. As my friend Jennifer Brough put it, the Hysteric Witch is a process of “creating my own lore”. Learn more about the hysteric witch here.
