What is Pain? Pain-as-symptom, pain-as-metaphor, pain-as-event... What does it mean to be 'in pain'? How are we affected by the pain of others? How do we respond to our own and someone else's histories of suffering?

 In this research group, we read, discuss, and share knowledge about pain. As a group, we tackle making sense of pain that does not necessarily show visible signs of bodily injury. While conceptualizing pain, we consider embodied knowing crucial in reading and formulating pain narratives. How is the individually felt pain made visible and known to others? How do we share our experiences of pain? Drawing together diverse life experiences and wider understandings of pain, we seek to make sense of pain as a concept and a lived reality.

The Reading PAIN group aims to bring together researchers and early career scholars across visual arts, artistic research, art history, and cultural analysis, who are interested in thinking collectively about various dimensions of pain. In our meetings, we envision focusing on the issues including (but not limited to):

• Artistic mediation and aesthetic transformation of pain;
• Irrepresentability of trauma;
• Ethical challenges regarding the pain of others;
• Colonial extractivism and environmentally caused illnesses;
• Gendered experiences of pain;
• Potentialities of ‘empathic vision’
• Practices of care and ‘staying-with’

If you would like to join the group, please contact Dr Assel Kadyrkhanova at a.kadyrkhanova@uva.nl or Tanja Konstenius at tanjakonstenius@gmail.com