Body Utilization, Body Grief

Abstract

This interactive poster involves a shawl that participants are encouraged to put on to explore how the body is lost to different systems, especially public-facing, capitalist, work systems. It is easy to lose oneself to the larger institution and those who are served. In this poster, viewers will be encouraged to engage with the piece and even take it and wear it for a period of time to reflect on the loss of self to the piece. This interactive art piece is tied to an ongoing exploratory study to look at library worker’s bodies at work, which can be built upon to study issues like trauma in the library workplace.

The study asks participants to complete a draw and write prompt (Hartel, 2014; Hartel et al., 2018), which allows for explanation of the self beyond just the written or verbal. As the study focuses on the body both in drawing and words, the drawings will be added to this shawl to fully share the experiences and feelings that have been expressed. In having a tactile research output through the art of the shawl, readers and participants will be able to directly reckon with the drawings and the feeling of putting on the identities people assume while working at the library.