notes for recovery (touch), 2020 Ink and graphite on paper, set of two drawings (each): 45.5 x 30.5 cm
notes for recovery (touch) is a drawing that proposes a scheme of understanding wounding and healing through a system of change. The work follows Dennis’ system based approach through which material and metaphysical processes can be unpacked. In notes for recovery (touch) Dennis explores possible conditions of healing through Octavia E Butler’s aphorism that “all that you touch you change, all that you change, changes you.”
Dennis explains:
“A wound signifies irreversible change at the level of the body. A wound can heal but cannot be undone, a trauma that can be recovered from, but not rescinded. Can we conceive of our wounds as conditions for another country, another world, rather than a disturbing sign of this world?
notes for recovery (touch) presents a scheme for understanding wounding and healing as a system for change through four propositions:
prop.1) preconditions: the whole body;
prop.2) intrusion: first contact, the break;
prop.3) suppression: false security, or hoping the problem goes away;
prop.4) superposition: entanglement and integrating the break into the whole.
These four propositions are accompanied by a series of diagrams which unpack the psychic and spiritual conditions of each stage guided by (black) science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler’s aphorisms on change. ie. all that you touch you change, all that you change, changes you.”
