Paper short abstract:

Examining the collage as an interdisciplinary, international, and intermedia tool in the wake of COVID-19, this collaborative and experimental paper analyses the collagic process in the context of pandemic-related trauma, as well as artistic and anthropological practice.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is the result of an experiment undertaken by Cody Bock (University of Oxford) and Laura Bergin (University of Oxford) to examine the collage as an interdisciplinary, international, and intermedia tool in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic (Davis and Butler-Kisber 1999; Butler-Kisber and Poldma 2010; Holbrook and Pourchier, 2014; Butler-Kisber 2017; Vacchelli, 2018). Additionally, this project investigates the viability of collagic-elicitation as a means of exploring the deeply personal, therapeutic and empowering processes of making, discussing, and analysing collage.

Bock, a social scientist, and Bergin, an anthropologist, devised two prompts each, inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, grief, memory, and art (Chilton and Scotti, 2014). They then individually created a collage inspired by each of the four prompts: Bock practicing manual collage, and Bergin digital collage.

At the conclusion of the making process, Bock, located in the United States, and Bergin, living in the United Kingdom, utilised digital technologies to collaborate, contemplate and analyse differences in content, interpretation, media, methodology, and style of the eight collages (Stevens, 2012; Walton, 2016; Laine, 2018).

The project employs collage as a tool to bridge worlds geographically, academically, and experientially disparate (Clifford, 1988; Foster 1995; Vaughan, 2005). The making process is analysed as a profoundly personal and therapeutic exercise for jointly unpacking pandemic-related trauma, while the elicitation evoked through discussion seeks to further illuminate the significance of the medium within artistic and anthropological practice (Yuen 2016).