Anthropology, Creative Practice and Ethnography The Loneliness Room

The loneliness room is a richly evocative account of loneliness as told through the photographs, videos, songs, poems, and writings supplied by its participants. This wonderful book made me rethink loneliness. Kath Woodward, Emeritus Professor, Open UniversityTo understand the intellectual reach of a creative ethnography read this book, but to explore the complexity of our lonely hearts and their generative potential, you need to sit with it awhile, take on the book’s rhythm, and then set aside space for hope.Helen Wood, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, Aston University Sean Redmond has here crafted a moving and innovative ethnography that gives shape and form to an ideology of loneliness that illustrates its broader connections to therapy culture, neoliberal capitalism, and the liquid speed of modernity. Brenda R. Weber, Provost Professor and Jean C. Robinson Scholar, Indiana University, BloomingtonThe loneliness room uniquely draws upon the art of ordinary people to explore and explain how and why they experience loneliness today. Refusing to hold to a single definition of loneliness, the book instead uses the metaphor of the loneliness room to enable people to submit artistic responses that are personal and political, and which often refute and resist the pathology that is attached to feeling lonely in the world. The loneliness room examines the art and media forms that so often are charged with representing loneliness, taking in photography, paintings, film, documentary, music and sound, and poetry and literature. The book powerfully shows how these representations create discourses in and around loneliness that lay its cause at the doors of individuals rather than the political and economic structures of neo-liberal capitalism. The book advances the tools and methods of audio-visual ethnography, showing how creative practice affords new opportunities for data gathering. As a book, it transforms not only the way we understand loneliness, but the practices we employ to better understand it. This remarkably unique book takes the conceit of the loneliness room to show how everyday artistic practice opens up loneliness to new definitions and new understandings. Refusing to pathologise loneliness, the book draws on the creative submissions supplied by its participants to demonstrate that being lonely can mean different things to different people in differing contexts. Filled with the photographs, paintings, videos, songs, and writings of its participants, The loneliness room is a deeply moving account of loneliness today.https://sredmond4.wixsite.com/lonelyroom