Wearable Objects and Curative Things book launch
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
Wearable Objects and Curative Things (Palgrave, 2024) explores the intersections between wearable objects and human health, with particular emphasis on how artists and designers are creatively responding to and rethinking these relations. Addressing a rich range of wearable artefacts, from mobility aids and prosthetics to clothing and accessories to digital health tracking devices, its themes include care and cure; wellness culture and the commoditization of health; and the complex interactions between (human) bodies and (non-human) objects. With a theoretical framework inspired by the work of materialist thinkers including Sherry Turkle, Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett, and bringing the disciplinary fields of fashion studies, art and design practice, and medical and health humanities into dialogue for the first time, this volume draws attention to the complex agencies entangled in the things we wear, and situates fashion and art in relation to broader cultural and historical contexts of health, illness and disability.
Editors Dawn Woolley, Fiona Johnstone, Ellen Sampson and Paula Chambers will be joined by contributors Anna Jamieson and Jana Melkumova-Reynolds, and series co-editor Suzannah Biernoff, for a discussion of the themes of the book and a wider conversation about new visual and material approaches to the critical medical humanities.
Contact name:
Suzannah Biernoff