TRACEY

Drawing||Phenomenology: tracing lived experience through drawing

Drawing||Phenomenology: tracing lived experience through drawing took place on the 19^th and 20^th September 2017 at Loughborough University. The conference aimed to investigate and consider the role of drawing as a means to explore and trace our lived experience of the world. The theme related to a growing area of research being undertaken by researchers within the Drawing Research Group at Loughborough University. This research stemmed from an interest in what many practitioners/theorists acknowledge as fundamental attributes of drawing: that it is an intimate and immediate process and medium capable of recording the trace of the drawer’s thoughts and bodily movements. The act of drawing is said to reduce the space between the drawer and the drawing, leaving marks on the surface regardless of erasure, subsequently creating a visible trace of both the process of making and the drawer’s thoughts. The conference aimed to discuss and debate these widely accepted attributes of drawing to question whether or how drawing really can be thought of as phenomenology.

The presenters responded to the following suggestions as starting points in the discussion, as possible themes, prompts and provocations:

• What is the relationship between the physicality of drawing and lived experience?
• When viewing drawings, is it possible to trace the movement of a drawer’s mind/body?
• Are all drawing processes phenomenological?
• How can drawing trace the physicality of spaces?
• What are the limitations of drawing?
• Is materiality a necessity in drawing the trace of lived experience?

Published peer-reviewed papers in this edition, evidence some of the discussion and propositions raised at the conference, alongside the addition of papers by invited authors interested in the theme.