The Art of the Bodge: Understanding bodging as a methodology when working with themes of sexual violence in the mediums of sculpture and writing

This practice-based research focuses on experiences of sexual violence expressed through autobiographical writing and sculptures. These experiences are explored in Headstone, a collection of writing that draws on memories that seem only half-real. Extending from this reflective writing practice, sculptural works respond to insitutional hierarchies and engage with the aftermath of sexual violence.

The definitions of nonviolence in Judith Butler’s The Force of Nonviolence (2021) underpin the methodological approaches in this research. The thesis reflects on intuitive responses to being within the ‘forcefield of power’, and this is understood as ‘bodging’. The methodology of ‘bodging’ has developed in a hodgepodge way through intense periods of research practised in different states of being ‘outside’ – away from my birth country, away from the institution, in the loft of my home, escaping paid work into a relationship with creative writing. This methodology of ‘bodging’ has led to reaching an understanding of the place of protest in this art practice. Working both as a way to access a state of ‘not knowing’ and also concurrently undermining power and revealing vulnerability, I have developed the methodology of the bodge in my approach to sculptural works as well as writing and academic research.

This experimental way of conducting research has shown the importance of revealing a combination of aggression and vulnerability, both in myself and in the sculptural works, to express a subjectivity that reflects my lived experiences. This research has come to position experiences of sexual violence as central to the intuitive responses and solutions that are relied upon in this kind of rushed sculptural practice. Embodied yet doubted memories become central to the sense of loneliness invoked by the position of exile that the research is practised from. Through placing myself in a position of unfamiliarity, as a researcher, writer and sculptor I am able to work on the edges of each medium, within an area I have defined as the bodge. The words in my thesis are presented as an ongoing reflection which moves with you as you travel through the text. Welcome.