Therapeutic Aesthetics: Performative Encounters in Moving Image Artworks

Over the last century, society has witnessed a dramatic shift away from industrial employment, where profit was largely achieved via physical labour to that in which money is made from mental exertion. In this original and provocative book, Maria Walsh contends that modern neo-liberal conditions have created a world of precarity, in which labour is expendable, material success is essential and technology means that the old work-life balance no longer exists. Even artists, she argues, who previously believed themselves to be removed from the commercial realm, have found themselves labelled as commodities whose work can be marketed for financial gain.

In order to process their trauma, and that of the precariat at large, Walsh asserts that moving-image artists have created a slew of works that perform therapeutic techniques such as REBT (Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy) and VRET (Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy) that allow creators and viewers to acknowledge and surmount the increasing cases of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder that precarity and instability have wrought upon modern life. Walsh's case studies ensure that this book is useful for students and scholars in the areas of art, philosophy and aesthetics, or those studying the therapeutic qualities of art.