Harriet Welch

'Chronic: on textures, illness, and the endless scroll’ is the culmination of developing ideas surrounding digital spaces, fluidity, meditations on aesthetics of social media, and the binaries of health and illness in the western world. ‘Chronic’ explores the capitalisation of ‘wellness’ and how we live under unescapable neoliberalism. The text draws on illness theory, womxn’s writing surrounding health, and the conflation and confusion of the states of health and illness. 

The project is something I currently consider a work in progress and has a basis in research surrounding sickness memoirs, eco-feminism, writing on clothing, and the body—‘Chronic’ takes the form of a series of essays that build on an understanding of the body as fabric and the skin as a permeable border. The text attempts to analyse autoimmune disease in the age of post-truth media through an examination of digital culture and textures through the lens of illness: ‘Chronic’ explores what it feels like not to know. 

For RCA2020 I have presented the project as a series of seven chapters of text alongside recorded readings and audio 'interruptions' based on mindfulness and digital mediation. As I wrote the final sentences of 'Chronic' (March, 2020) —the UK was beginning to deal with the spiralling reality of COVID19—and it seems like a very prescient time to re-examine the way we understand our bodies and the fragility of health itself. We are in sickness, we are in health, and we are in everything in between. 

Aside from this project, my practice has an enduring focus on materiality, post-digital worlds, writing on illness, the fabric of the body, and how clothing can relate to these ideas. I have also written around the subjects of radical publishing, printed matter, and the fetishization of the printed object. Working with text as material forms a fundamental part of my practice, as does the materiality of objects that individuals interact with, whether that be the movement of bodies through physical and digital spaces, woven cloth and fabric, printed publications, or viewing our own bodies as material themselves. Underpinning my writing is an aim to explore various formats and approaches: such as interviews, essays, audio, and exploratory texts sometimes drawing on a more fragmentary approach.  

'How can you be more beautiful, on the inside?' published in NOIT—5: on bodies as in buildings explores 'New Labour' optimism and the giant sponsored spaces of the new Millenium. Through 'Welcome to N1C' and 'Exercise is good' I developed thematics of the controlled body living under late-capitalism alongside notes on branding, aesthetics, and thoughts on digital ubiquity which also play into these texts. As does digital memory, or the lack of documentation of pre-internet objects—through my archival research into the short-lived 90’s publication Purple Prose and the tangible and intangible traces it left on the publishing industry. 'An interview with Ken Hollings: in ten parts' and one section of 'Chronic' titled 'An interview with Ane Graff: material bodies' are a return to my first desire to document through writing the practice of artists, writers, designers, and individuals.

Clothing, fabric, and material have often shaped my approach to text, and I have explored the intersection of these fields through a collaborative personal project titled ‘Pile of clothes’ with Goldsmiths' Arts and Politics MA student Ella Sweeney. 'Pile of clothes' will be a series of events, readings, and workshops that focus on thinking through, writing about, and living with clothes, fabrics, and bodies. Thinking through fabric and worlds, we want to explore how to write, read, and talk about these clothes that become part of us.

Please note for all of the projects below — open the images as individual files to read — and then use the carousel to move through.