The Art of Recovery: Port-au-Prince 2010
Traumas elicit strong humanistic responses. Graphic and narrative representations and embodied performances of an aesthetic nature emerged immediately after the earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti on 12 January 2010. This study will first ground itself in a survey of humanistic aspects of past post-quake responses as well as clinical studies of post-disaster art therapy before examining the current Haitian tragedy. The result will be a stronger understanding of the role that humanistic activities play in post-catastrophe recovery as a form of place-making. The hypothesis is that humanistic activity imparts productive logos on destructive chaos by ordering and healing the mind to allow constructive action and to produce external representations that operate at a social level.
Mark Cruse, Assistant Professor, School of International Letters and Culture