Jan. 29 Fuck Healing (?), or How We’re Going to Totally Rest, Chill, and Talk With Each Other About Collective Practices of Ongoing Care; Fuck Healing (?) (Curated by CtC)

Theory Stairs, 2:00-3:30 PM; moderator Menko Dijksterhuis

This lecture will take the form of a long table discussion, including members of the Fuck Healing (?) collective in conversation with invited artists, curators, and participants of the collective’s events as well as the larger audience of Studium Generale. Two conceptual operations will lead the discussion. Firstly, the process of wounding and living a wounded life: how it can be activated through theoretical/artistic practices to resist normative conceptions of trauma and illness not as repressive/repressed states, but as generative and affirmative forces. Secondly, the psycho-social procedures of exhaustion: how it can be actualised as an affective potentiality for alternative collective modes of existence.

The Fuck Healing (?) collective works at the intersection of theoretical investigation and creative practice around the themes of trauma, wounding and breaks. Founded in 2021, the collective critically interrogates ideas of 'healing' as proximate to hegemonic regimes of conformity and normative perceptions of health. From this position the collective questions the notion of healing as the transition from a state of ‘unwellness’ to ‘well’ and ‘healthy’, and propositionally work with methods to institute ongoing practices of care beyond these reductive categories. Through collaborative organization, the Fuck Healing (?) collective questions the merits of our wounds, the divergent momentum they present, and recognises the future modes of 'becomings' that 'breaking' may allow us. By bringing together diverse institutions, artists and thinkers, the collective strengthens the network between academic and artistic communities of The Netherlands, whilst contributing to urgent contemporary discussions on alternative therapies and the reintegrative power of creative making in response to woundings and traumas. The members of the collective are teachers, researchers, and creative practitioners, bringing together their artistic and academic work in their teaching at different universities in The Netherlands.