Silver Tableaux: Memoir Vivant

Authors

  • Caitlin Mary Margarett Sørensdatter University of Wisconsin-Madison

Keywords:

pro-ana, memoir, performance studies, self-starvation, recovery, anorexia nervosa, anorexia, eating disorders, disordered eating, managing illness

Abstract

Drawing on personal experience in performative memoir practice, Caitlin Mary Margarett Sørensdatter discusses the redefinition of the self in the midst of anorectic suffering. While asserting that social media can be an extension of memoir development, she compares highly visible micro-celebrities who represent different aspects of the public's consumption of anorectic stories—the unrecoverable and the recovered. Refuting the damaging simplification of recovery narratives, this essay explores the inherent value of stories emerging from the crossroads of anorectic experience.

Author Biography

Caitlin Mary Margarett Sørensdatter, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Caitlin Mary Margarett Sørensdatter is an American artist working in performance and contemporary craft. Through the combination of antiques and handmade objects, CMM generates memoir and autotheory-based work that aims to invoke apparitions; that which cannot be recovered or fully known. By evoking nostalgia and solastalgia, her cyclical, symmetrical, and hyper-repetitive performative projects demand the analysis of our ties to place, ancestry, and future as we brace for the full impact of our climate crisis. She holds an MFA from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 4D, and a BFA in performance art and BA in art history from University of Northern Iowa.

​Her work has been shown throughout the Midwest; at 2022’s Fringe Arts Bath festival in Bath, England; at 2021’s Miami Art Week as a part of the PERFORMANCE IS ALIVE / Satellite Show that runs concurrent with Art Basel Miami; at Louisiana State University for the 2019 Queeramics Symposium; in Ceramics Monthly; Emergency Index Vol. 8 and Vol. 9; and Aesthetica Magazine.

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Published

2024-06-22

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 1-2 (2023): Hunger

Section

Self-Starvation

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Caitlin Mary Margarett Sørensdatter

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