The Big Anxiety

This book takes a creative approach in examining one of the biggest crises of our time: that of mental suffering, distress and anxiety. By bringing together essays and dialogues from thinkers and artists across a range of disciplines, it re-imagines approaches to crisis, support, and care. Amid growing recognition that mental health is not only the province of psychiatry and the health sector, but a concern for the whole community, the book opens up critical new ways of thinking about our internal lives and the forces that affect them. The book significantly advances the way we think about cultural responses to mental health and the understanding of the struggles of inner life. Featuring both theoretical and practical examples of the value of using imagination in response to trauma, anxiety, and depression, The Big Anxiety shows how creativity is not a luxury, but a means of survival.

Jill Bennett is Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, Australia and Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow. She is Founding Director of the National Institute for Experimental Arts and of The Big Anxiety Festival; and is part of the leadership team of the Ageing Futures Institute.

List of Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The Politics Of Experience, Jill Bennett Part I: Suicide, Felt Experience And What Works 2. Why Do Art Therapies Work?, Siri Hustvedt, with Jill Bennett 3. Edge Of The Present: Mixed Reality, Suicidality And Future Thinking, Chloe Watfern, Jill Bennett, Stephanie Habak and Katherine Boydell Part II: Culture And Experience 4. Knowing From The Inside, Lynn Froggett and Noreen Giffney 5. Radical Creativity: Breaking The Cycles Of Trauma, Marianne Wobcke with Jill Bennett Part III: Dialogue And Embodied Encounters 6. The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland and Open Dialogue in the work of Ridiculusmus, David Woods and Jon Haynes 7. The Visit: A Collaborative Confabulation, Gail Kenning, Jill Bennett and Volker Kuchelmeister Part IV: Designing For Experience 8. Facilitating Environments: An Arts-Based Psychosocial Design Approach, Jill Bennett, Lynn Froggett and Lizzie Muller 9. I Have A Thing About Tables, Lois Weaver with Laura Hunter Petree Part V: Resistance, Racism And Decolonization 10. Narratives Of Resistance From Indefinite Detention: Manus Prison Theory And Nauru Imprisoned Exiles Collective, Omid Tofighian, Behrouz Boochani, Mira* and Elahe Zivardar 11. Poetic Solidarities, Claudia Rankine with Evelyn Araluen Part VI: Reparative Action 12. Designing Reparations: Creative Process As Reparative Practice, Andrea Durbach, Jill Bennett and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela 13. Embodimap I: Trauma Survival And Refugee Experience, Lydia Gitau Part VII: Thinking In Action With Creative Resources After Trauma 14. Unnerved, Anita Glesta 15. Wau-mananyi: the Song on the Wind, Pantjiti Imitjala Lewis, Rene Wanun Kulitja, Angela Lynch (Uti Kulintjaku) translated by Beth Sometimes 16. Embodimap Ii: An Auto-Ethnography, Sophie Burgess Part VIII: Soundwork/Earwork 17. Held Down, Expanding: An Exchange On Trauma Through Acousmatic Sound Art Practice, Thembi Soddell 18. Hold Me In A Circle Of Tender Listening: Entangled Encounters With Women Survivors From The Mental Health Testimony Project Archive, Amanda McDowell Part IX: Lived Experience, Activism And Survival 19. Being Together In A Neurodiverse World: Exploring Empathy And Othering With Project Art Works, Kate Adams, Sonia Boué, Chloe Watfern 20. Pathologize This, Dolly Sen 21. Super-Fast Augmented Anxiety, Clive Parkinson