Making Sense ─ Art Practice and Transformative Therapeutics

Making Sense utilises art practice as a pro-active way of thinking that helps us to make sense of the world. It does this by developing an applied understanding of how we can use art as a method of healing and as a critical method of research. Drawing from poststructuralist philosophy, psychoanalysis, arts therapies, and the creative processes of a range of contemporary artists, the book appeals to the fields of art theory, the arts therapies, aesthetics and art practice, whilst it opens the regenerative affects of art-making to everyone. It does this by proposing the agency of 'transformative therapeutics', which defines how art helps us to make sense of the world, by activating, nourishing and understanding a particular world view or situation therein. The purpose of the book is to question and understand how and why art has this facility and power, and make the creative and healing properties of certain modes of expression widely accessible, practical and useful.

Lorna Collins is an artist, critic and arts educator. She completed her PhD in French Philosophy as a Foundation Scholar at Jesus College, University of Cambridge, UK. She is the co-editor of Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Visual Art, published by Bloomsbury. Her provocative practice as an artist (in paint, film, installation and performance) drives the motor of all her philosophical enquiries.