The Human Bower

Citation

Morgan J (2020) The Human Bower. In: Harrison R, DeSilvey C, Holtorf C, Macdonald S, Bartolini N, Breithoff E, Fredheim H, Lyons A, May S, Morgan J & Penrose S (eds.) Heritage Futures: Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices. London: UCL Press, pp. 223-237.

Abstract
First paragraph: This visual essay focuses on creative practice as a route for addressing questions of future keeping. Susan Hogan and Sarah Pink (2010), who explore the synergies between feminist art therapy and anthropology, argue that making and reflecting upon art can bring forth ‘interior states’, including ‘imaginative worlds’, that might not be expressed by talk alone. Through the images and text that follow, I aim to illustrate the methodological value of creative collaboration for examining processes of selective keeping and future-making. I document a participatory arts–research collaboration with Encounters Arts associate Shelley Castle, which led to the interactive public artworks The Story in the Object and The Human Bower. The process of designing and facilitating these events generated rich insights into what people decide is worth keeping for posterity, and how these decisions and actions play a role in creating the future. As one participant in The Human Bower put it, ‘it has opened my mind to the process of making these choices’ to realise that ‘the seed of the future is here’.