The Body as a Battlefield: A practice-based, empathic approach towards non-suicidal self-injury through Schema Therapy, the American Civil War, and Bodily Performance

Historically, non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) was a hallmark symptom for diagnoses of hysteria and Borderline Personality Disorder. My practice-based research critically assesses how NSSI can be utilised as a voice for a history of trauma. From the 1970s to the present, bodily fluids were used in art to convey messages about feminism, masculinity, physical illness and racism. My research focuses on how specific feelings and states of mind can lead to the utilisation of NSSI to cope with unbearable emotions, which is seldom investigated in contemporary art practices. My methodology primarily utilises Schema theory to critically assess how dehumanising narratives can become familial legacies that can be acted out on a person’s body. My investigation into NSSI is divided into three chapters that concentrate on NSSI as a symptom of a learned state of mind, bodily fluids as evidence of perceived character, and risky bodily endurance performance as a means of connection. As case studies about violence on the body, I critically assess American Civil War photography (1861-1865) of corpses and written accounts of the Battle of the Wilderness (1864). One of my practical methodologies utilises bodily fluids as an experimental material to investigate fragmentation and evidence of trauma. My practical methodologies involve photographic experimentation with collodion and platinum processes combined with my bodily fluids and endurance performances. Chris Burden, John Duncan, Marina Abramović and Ron Athey are utilised as case studies about bodily endurance performance. My goal is to potentially generate empathy for trauma through abstract visual and audio evidence of endurance and coping strategies. I utilise the potential of empathy as a method to express original, experiential information about living with NSSI as a maladaptive coping behaviour. The final results of my methodologies emphasise how dehumanising interpersonal interactions can become embodied messages about self-worth.