Art

Art and Culture as Therapy. Website

Art and Culture as Therapy for Alzheimer’s is an innovative initiative from the Dementia Unit at the Hospital Virgen de la Arrixaca in Murcia: opens up the debate about the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) towards a new line of research where the arts join science. The project has offered new paths and forms of stimulation in order to enrich the field of non-pharmacological treatment for AD. Among the aims are: to improve patients’ quality of life and self-confidence; generate a link between the past and the present by creating bridges between existing neurons through emotional memory; to encourage an expression of empathy and to encourage interaction and communication as well as to create new measuring tools for check-up control.

The website offers access to the project’s activities and publications: “The Art of Entretelas” with the painter Chelete Monereo, “Narrating Memories” with the journalist José García Martínez, “Frásagnir minninganna with the writer Þórarinn Eldjárn”, “Murcia Tart” with the pastry chef Paco Torreblanca, “Emotions in Silence” with the video artist Bill Viola, and “MuBAM Alzheimer Project”.

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Art and Culture as Therapy
Art | Pedagogy

The Power of Art

The author Roland Wenninger deals with the removal of boundaries in an art institution and on the other hand shows its limits. This examination is explained using the example of Thomas Hirschhorn’s exhibition “Never Give Up The Spot” at Museum Villa Stuck Munich 2019, which was curated by the author himself. It was free of charge and was intended to be accessible to everyone. In addition, anyone could participate interactively in the installation – but also destroy it. It is an attempt to connect institutions with the street and with life through art. This example shows new approaches in museum education.

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Art | Therapy

An island of stability: art images and natural scenes – but not natural faces – show consistent esthetic response in Alzheimer’s-related dementia

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00107

This publication has researched people with dementia who still have aesthetic sensitivity despite being severely affected in other areas, such as short-term memory loss. So there seem to be neurological skills that are still there, especially in the perception of handmade paintings. The authors speak of “islands” that have a stabilizing effect.

Art | Therapy

Arts and health: Active factors and a theory framework of embodied aesthetics

DOI: Doi 10.1016/j.aip.2017.02.002

Koch explores the specific artistic factors in artistic therapies. In doing so, she does not limit herself to the visual arts, but also investigates other arts, such as dance, music and movement. Through the multi-dimensionality of her research into aesthetic media, she overcomes rigid classifications of the effects of artistic action. This qualitative study encourages research and the formulation of theses according to scientific criteria in the field of the visual arts and in questions of aesthetics.

Art | Art Therapy

Sóló, dúó og kvartett endurvarp (e. Solo, Duet and Quarrtet Reflection)

The participants mirror each other through the drawing and their movements in the art work Reflection (2010, 2019). Mirroring from a therapeutic point of view and how to bring its function into a partishipatory art context is the core of the art project. In the light of such therapeutic thinking the audience who participate in Reflection, mirror each other through the drawing which potentially facilitates social functions including empathy which would contribute to the aims of the SWIPE program; to facilitate Social Inclusion and Well-being through the Arts and Interdisciplinary Practices. The work is interdisciplinary as it relates to both art therapy and contemporary art. 

Art | Pedagogy

Elements of Therapeutic Architecture. Workshop SWAIP

DOI: http://rua.ua.es/dspace/handle/10045/95472

This Final Degree Thesis is the result of the organization and participation in the International Workshop SWAIP (abbreviations of “Social inclusion and Well-being through the Arts and Interdisciplinary Practices”) held last March in the University of Alicante. This proposes to redefine architecture from disciplines such as art, music, therapy or architecture itself, in order to obtain an architectural model that adapts to the conditions and qualities required for the evocation of memories and personal experiences in individuals who live with the disease.
Elements of Therapeutic Architecture completes with this contemporary vision the collection of books Elements of Architecture that the architect Rem Koolhaas published in the Venice Biennial of 2014. Although in those books, the architect talked about the elements in terms of temporal and conceptual evolution without blurring the architectural limit, the extra chapter that adds this thesis shows the qualities that architecture must contemplate as a participant in the fight against Alzheimer.

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Art | Art Therapy

Therapeutic thinking in contemporary art

DOI: 10.1016/j.aip.2008.10.004

For the purpose of exploring the links between professions or moving closer towards interdisciplinary practices this is an article which makes links between therapy and art. The article is about links between contemporary art, community, politics, and therapy, with reference to work that has been made in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona. The author who is an art therapist, psychotherapist and anthropologist first discuss the contemporary role of the museums in the society. In the article the author claim that often, both in training and professional practice, there is little interaction between art therapy and contemporary art.  Work of three artists, Sophie Calle, Krzysztof Wodiczko, and Lygia Clark who have worked with relationship between community work, therapy, and contemporary art, is reviewed in the article.

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Art | Art Therapy | Pedagogy

Art therapy to Address Emotional Well-being of Children who have Experienced Stress and/or Trauma

ISBN: 9780367487843, 0367487845 and eText ISBN: 9781315454399, 1315454394

This reference is partly about the way in which art making creates a fresh understanding and a new kind of relationship to the project worked with. The process of creating art leads to increased understanding and awareness, which connects to personal meaning. As a result, the understanding of the project can be more meaningful, as opposed to understanding that is formed solely by reading and writing, which is more connected to a linear process. The subject is discussed in terms of a research project and how such drawing can facilitate coursework learning and at the same time serve therapeutic purposes.

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Art | Pedagogy

Grunduð kenning og teiknaðar skýringarmyndir. (Grounded Theory and Drawn Diagrams).

ISBN: 9789979724414

In this chapter Unnur Óttarsdóttir explains how she used drawn diagrams in a research where the methodology of grounded theory was applied.  The drawings were applied for:

  1. Creating concepts
  2. Create in-depth understanding about phenomena
  3. Abstract description
  4. Examining the connection between phenomena, categories and concepts
  5. Building theories
  6. Facilitating creativity and intuition.
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Art

Bad New Days – Art, Criticism, Emergency

This is the last book of the famous American art historian and was written already in Trump times. Here he discusses how art can deals with what he calls Bad New Days and one of the main ideas is the emergency of the present.