Threshold experiences before the image: brief considerations for Occupational Therapy.

Abstract

Within the practices of Occupational Therapy, the dialogue with art and philosophy is an important dispositif. The proposition of writing to images is a compositional strategy which encourages the emergence of events capable of serving as evidence of a mode of working in Occupational Therapy. Mediated by artistic, embodied and cultural activities, looking to increase the potential of creative and expressive dimensions of life, this practice pursues a different line of generating knowledge other than representation and the normalization of bodies. It is a practice that composes itself through the rendering-possible of the proliferation of meaningful and communicable experiences which nowadays are increasingly becoming scarce. In coming to understand this knowing-doing, we are interested in exploring the concepts of the threshold and the remnant which allow us to think the notion of “threshold experience” within Occupational Therapy. This essay is derived from our doctoral research whose empirical field is the clinical and teaching experience of the researcher-therapist at the intersection with images of artworks. When we associate our practices with art and the resulting images that befall us, it becomes possible to bring to light new visualities and legibilities within Occupational Therapy that go against the grain of official biomedical history. In this way, we seek the consolidation and unfolding of conditions not only of knowledge but of new relations towards the possibility of new pathways for the profession.