This is at the core of what I’m working on. 

Jenn Ashworth proposes the idea of apopheny vs epiphany in her 2019 memoir Notes Made While Falling. In the book, she describes a traumatic birth followed by a mental and physical unravelling. Part of this is apophenia – a kind of logic that connects patterns; names; numbers; anything, which consensus reality would say is not actually connected. Most often it’s applied as a pathology, often in reference to conspiracy theories. Jenn says ‘I can’t stop connecting things’, and rather than self-pathologising, sets this beside her religious background to think about this experience of apopheny alongside the experience of epiphany – the realisation of a profound and real truth. But how do you know which is happening within you?

This idea has been on my mind since I read the book (and reread it, and reread it), and it’s the heart of the work I’m making for Vital Capacities. The work I make here will also feed into a solo show of mine opening early next year, so it’s really good to be able to delve in deeply in this public way – a rare chance to be able to share the intricacies of a looottt of research, experimentation, and thought.

Image Credit: This image is featured on the front cover of ‘Notes Made While Falling’ More info: A woman’s pelvis after a pubiotomy – to widen the birth canal for a vaginal delivery of a baby. Collotype by Römmler & Jonas after a radiograph made for G. Leopold and Th. Leisewitz, 1908.

Image Description: It’s a ‘collotype’, which basically looks like a fuzzy x-ray, of a pelvis. Smudgy black and white, it’s not immediately obvious to non-medically trained eyes what we’re looking at, but after a while it seems that it’s upside-down, with the little tail bone sticking upwards, hips curling inwards.