Abstract

Introduction

The doctoral research from which this article was written produced current mappings of the occupational therapy interface with arts, the body, and culture by listening to 12 occupational therapists and mapping their trajectories, actions and mobilizations. Such mappings presented new issues, multiplied understandings and permitted a critical and contextualized reflection on the field today. This research integrated the pandemic as a crossing that inevitably impacted the field, reshaping some practices, mobilizing others and provoking new ways of thinking. The section of the research presented in this article sought to make some of these practices visible and, through them, analyze the contributions of actions with art and the body within the pandemic context the effect social distancing had on people’s lives.

The listening to occupational therapists was done through individual interviews. In the first semester of 2020, invitations were sent to the mailing list of the Human Activities and Occupational Therapy Research. Group (AHTO)^(c(c)Address to access the group mirror: dgp.cnpq.br/dgp/espelhogrupo/4883473894010050 ⁾. From an initial number of women who had their interviews scheduled, we perceived the need to broaden the profile, seeking greater diversity in relation to four aspects: regionality, approach to practices, ethnicity/race, and locations of work (university and field of practice). Thus, we expanded the invitation to groups of occupational therapists in social networks and thus we could enable new interviews. They were conducted between July and December 2020, along the peak of the pandemic and social distancing. All occupational therapists who accepted the invitation were interviewed through a virtual platform, which included listening to both the impacts of Covid-19 and their political-institutional management actions, in addition to the effects of their propositions on the people they assisted.

In line with the research questions proposed, we worked with cartography, a research-intervention method that implies the co-emergence of knowing, acting, and creating¹1 Pozzana L. A formação do cartógrafo é o mundo: corporificação e afetabilidade. Fractal Rev Psicol [Internet]. 2013 [citado 12 Maio 2021]; 25(2):323-38. Disponível em: https://periodicos.uff.br/fractal/article/view/4945
https://periodicos.uff.br/fractal/articl... . This method traces a plan of experience and monitors the effects of the research journey on the “object,” the researcher, and the production of knowledge.

The challenges of thinking about the present from present itself are many. Being closely tied to a disruptive and unthinkable event like the Covid-19 pandemic while conducting research that investigated the effect of this moment on the practices of occupational therapists posed the problem of being overwhelmed by emotions, hostage to opinions in progress, without any distancing that might allow for thinking about other things. But that is how a cartographic research¹1 Pozzana L. A formação do cartógrafo é o mundo: corporificação e afetabilidade. Fractal Rev Psicol [Internet]. 2013 [citado 12 Maio 2021]; 25(2):323-38. Disponível em: https://periodicos.uff.br/fractal/article/view/4945
https://periodicos.uff.br/fractal/articl...

2 Passos E, Kastrup V, Escóssia L. Pistas para o método da cartografia: pesquisa-intervenção e produção de subjetividade. Porto Alegre: Sulina; 2009.^-33 Tedesco SH, Sade C, Caliman LV. A entrevista na pesquisa cartográfica: a experiência do dizer. Fractal Rev Psicol [Internet]. 2013 [citado 27 Abr 2021]; 25(2):299-322. Disponível em: https://periodicos.uff.br/fractal/article/view/4944/4786
https://periodicos.uff.br/fractal/articl... is done: we understand ourselves as part of the process, even when deeply immersed, like in this case. Perhaps this is also a value: thinking from immersion in what is happening offers a situated perception, the atmosphere, and intensity of a moment and a perspective of the impact on the researched field.

An event of this magnitude is inseparable from layers of near or distant past, as it is a catastrophe long in the making — from past pandemics to genocides, to enslaving structures, the colonial project and its effects. Above all, it is inseparable from the advance of predatory capitalism, neoliberalism, and the development of modern Western thought that promotes the paradigm of the independent and self-sufficient individual, owner of goods, living at the expense of the exploitation of the planet. As a result of this complex arrangement of issues, we witness the emergence of new socio-environmental crises, global zoonoses, and irreversible climate changes⁴4 Parra HZM. Retomar o per-curso. Tramadora [Internet]. 2020 [citado 21 Ago 2020]; . Disponível em: https://www.tramadora.net/2020/08/02/retomar-o-per-curso/
https://www.tramadora.net/2020/08/02/ret... , among other things,

Thus, the pandemic has highlighted the biopolitical and necropolitical approaches that were already underway and which are currently intensified. Evaluating institutional policy in the pandemic context, drawing from Foucault and Espósito, Preciado⁵5 Preciado PB. Aprendendo do vírus. Rev Punkto [Internet]. 2020 [citado 20 Jul 2020]; edição 27. (Cad. 8). Disponível em: https://www.revistapunkto.com/2020/04/aprendendo-com-o-virus-paul-b-preciado.html
https://www.revistapunkto.com/2020/04/ap... recalled that all biopolitics is immunological and presupposes the establishment of a hierarchy among bodies: those exempt from taxes and those the community perceives as potentially dangerous. The latter are excluded in an act of immunological protection, and this is the paradox of biopolitics: every act of protection implies a definition that gives the community the authority to sacrifice some lives for the sake of its own sovereignty. According to Preciado, the state of exception is precisely the “normalization of this unbearable paradox”⁵5 Preciado PB. Aprendendo do vírus. Rev Punkto [Internet]. 2020 [citado 20 Jul 2020]; edição 27. (Cad. 8). Disponível em: https://www.revistapunkto.com/2020/04/aprendendo-com-o-virus-paul-b-preciado.html
https://www.revistapunkto.com/2020/04/ap... .

This is what we witnessed in Brazil in terms of the institutional political strategy to combat the pandemic. Under an authoritarian regime, it was asserted that many must die for others to survive. The discourse is not about the comprehensive protection of people’s lives; on the contrary, the president of Brazil at that time stated that deaths were inevitable in the name of the well-being of the country and the population. It is evident that when “inevitable deaths” are mentioned, it refers to the death of some, and the population groups followed by occupational therapy are especially affected, experiencing intensified states of suffering through this process.

According to Bardi et al.⁶6 Bardi G, Bezerra WC, Monzeli GA,NenhumNenhum Pan LC, Braga IF, Macedo MDC. Pandemia, desigualdade social e necropolítica no Brasil: reflexões a partir da terapia ocupacional social. Rev Interinst Bras Ter Ocup [Internet]. 2020 [citado 13 Maio 2020]; 4(2):496-508. Disponível em: https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/ribto/article/view/34402/pdf_2
https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/ribto... , the accentuation of contradictions in capitalism in this context, particularly the concentration of wealth on one pole and the expansion of misery on the other, impacts everyone but intensifies when considering issues of class, gender, and race. This one and other occupational therapy literature from this period denounced the necropolitics undertaken by the Brazilian state, neglecting the demands of the poorest populations and placing the responsibility on them for something of structural order.

Farias and Leite Junior⁷7 Farias MN, Leite Junior JD. Vulnerabilidade social e Covid-19: considerações com base na terapia ocupacional social. Cad Bras Ter Ocup. 2021; 29:e2099. doi: 10.1590/2526-8910.ctoEN2099.
https://doi.org/10.1590/2526-8910.ctoEN2... , for example, highlighted that social issues and structural inequalities are directly related to the development of the disease and how it affects different population groups. And Ambrosio et al.⁸8 Ambrosio L, Alves HC, Coelho FS, Cardoso PT, Silva CR. Reflexões para terapias ocupacionais do sul no contexto da pandemia: uma perspectiva crítica decolonial. In: Anais do XVII Encontro Nacional de Docentes em Terapia Ocupacional (ENDTO) [Internet]; 2020, São Carlos (SP). São Carlos: RENETO; 2020 [citado 9 Nov 2021]. p. 170-2. Disponível em: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Bp_o10espyT_8PiOJs6rOenaF4XB6OvK/view
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Bp_o10e... signaled that the pandemic, by exacerbating these inequalities, also increased violence and structural racism against women, black people, and indigenous communities. This scenario called occupational therapists to devise multi and intersectoral actions directed at the most affected groups against disinvestments in social security policies and for the guarantee of constitutional rights⁶6 Bardi G, Bezerra WC, Monzeli GA,NenhumNenhum Pan LC, Braga IF, Macedo MDC. Pandemia, desigualdade social e necropolítica no Brasil: reflexões a partir da terapia ocupacional social. Rev Interinst Bras Ter Ocup [Internet]. 2020 [citado 13 Maio 2020]; 4(2):496-508. Disponível em: https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/ribto/article/view/34402/pdf_2
https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/ribto... .

Especially during quarantine and the early months of the pandemic, daily lives were organized around this phenomenon. Professionals from different fields sought to respond to the challenges imposed in the time-space of everyday life. In 2020, the World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT) released a public statement emphasizing the role of occupational therapists in daily activities, with their meanings and purposes for life. The importance of constructing strategies to facilitate the development of these activities, considering adaptations according to needs, the dissemination of assistive technologies, and telehealth as a work format were emphasized⁹9 Malfitano APS, Cruz DMC, Lopes RE. Terapia ocupacional em tempos de pandemia: seguridade social e garantias de um cotidiano possível para todos. Cad Bras Ter Ocup. 2020; 28(2):401-4. doi: 10.4322/2526-8910.ctoED22802.
https://doi.org/10.4322/2526-8910.ctoED2... . Such positions highlighted the importance of people engaging in their occupations and daily activities, recognizing the change in access and way of performing them, seeking to maintain a balance between infection control measures and the need to take care of mental health¹⁰10 Arthur MA, Santos VS, Oliver FC, Souto ACF. As práticas de terapia ocupacional no primeiro ano da pandemia de Covid-19 – revisão bibliográfica. Rev Ter Ocup USP. 2022; 32(1-3):e205891. doi: 10.11606/issn.2238-6149.v32i1-3pe205891.
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2238-6149.... .

In Brazil, various initiatives were developed during this period in the fields of education, practices, and research to problematize and seek answers to the effects of this event on people’s lives and training practices^(d(d)See the supplement of the Brazilian Interinstitutional Journal of Occupational Therapy (RevisbraTO) dedicated to the pandemic, available at: https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/ribto/issue/view/1474/showToc ⁾.

It is understood that the Covid-19 event in Brazil accentuated the problems arising from a state of torpor and bewitchment produced by the neoliberal capitalist system, which reduces or hinders our ability to think and produce creative alternatives. Nevertheless, many occupational therapies seek to resist the “capitalist evil eye” by creating strategies for existence in a pragmatic way with the accompanied populations¹¹11 Cardoso PT. (R)existências afirmadas em terapia ocupacional: vestígios e fabulações [tese]. São Carlos: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Terapia Ocupacional, Universidade Federal de São Carlos; 2023.

12 Silvestrini MS, Silva CR, Almeida Prado ACS. Terapia ocupacional e cultura: dimensões ético-políticas e resistências. Cad Bras Ter Ocup. 2019; 27(4):929-40. doi: 10.4322/2526-8910.ctoARF1727.
https://doi.org/10.4322/2526-8910.ctoARF... ^-1313 Cardinalli I, Cardoso PT, Silva CR, Castro ED. Constelações afetivas: cotidiano, atividades humanas, relações sociais e Terapia Ocupacional entrelaçados à cosmovisão Krenak. Interface (Botucatu). 2021; 25:e210262. doi: 10.1590/interface.210262.
https://doi.org/10.1590/interface.210262... . Therein lies some of the initiatives by the occupational therapists accompanied by the PhD research. They sought to promote more than survival, ways of persevering in existence through the sustenance of collective spaces of care and creation, composed of resources from arts and the body, bringing two very important elements: affection and cooperation. For occupational therapists, it is important to seek treatments and vaccines, fight against attacks and disinvestments in public policies aimed at ensuring access to social rights, as well as developing strategies that produce life amidst this scenario¹⁴14 Quarentei MS, Paolillo AR, Silva CR, Freitas HI, Cardinalli I, Ambrosio L, et al. NÓS-EM-PANDEMIA: um ANTImanual do fazer em tempos de paradoxos na atividade. Rev Interinst Bras Ter Ocup. 2020; 4(3):302-17. doi: 10.47222/2526-3544.rbto34476.
https://doi.org/10.47222/2526-3544.rbto3... .

We present below the narratives of two of the interviewed occupational therapists^(e(e)The names used in the article are fictitious.⁾, highlighting some of their actions during the pandemic. They were chosen because they presented a significant difference in their practices: one worked in a single service, a municipal health unit of the Brazilian National Health System (SUS) exclusive to the city of São Paulo; and the other was involved in various fronts through institutional insertions and autonomous practices characterized by a hybridism of occupational therapy with arts.

Julia and the power of group dynamics

Julia told us that she has always worked with and been interested in working with groups from an interdisciplinary and heterogeneous perspective. This path also led her to be interested in and research institutional analysis and cartography. Currently, she carries out her actions in an Elderly Health Reference Unit (URSI)^(f(f)URSI is a secondary health care service exclusively for the municipality of São Paulo. The purpose of the facility is to provide comprehensive care for the health of the elderly, involving professionals from various fields (medicine, nursing, social work, speech therapy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, psychology, physical education, nutrition), prioritizing interdisciplinary action.⁾, where before the pandemic, 60% of her workload was dedicated to group practices which, in addition to her interest, revealed “an understanding that occupational therapy has potency in working with groups”. The groups were diverse, addressing issues of social interaction, cognitive, general behavioral and mood changes due to aging, “or simply the desire to explore new possibilities”.

In her initiatives with art and the body, she found it crucial to access the sensitive dimension of bodies, their “porosity”, creating conditions to experience an event and possibly be transformed by it. For Julia, it is precisely the actions with art that:

Julia recounts the significant transformations that the pandemic imposed on the service at URSI, displacing both the team and patients. The temporary suspension of group practices at the beginning of the pandemic caused the team to feel deprived of its central care device and reflected on how to continue with follow-ups and care. Initially, remote work seemed impossible in some cases — groups with more severe patients, for example, could not continue — but over time, the team devised possibilities of action with other patient groups. The idea was to promote quality of life, and the team understood that, according to Julia, “any small action was very important at that moment.”

URSI received reports that, for the most part, those under care had no other spaces for caring and social interaction, experiencing a significant impoverishment of routines and great isolation without the activities of the Unit. “It was then that there was an attempt to provide remote individual and group sessions”.

The manual work group, which already took place in person, was one of them. The first step was to choose the app where they would meet weekly, the criterion being that everyone could see each other on the screen. The image was crucial then, as it allowed people to see themselves and exchange among the group, as well as allowing the therapist to accompany how the participants felt according to their bodies, expressions and environments. After understanding the paths and “how to do,” the group had reading circles of literary works, creative writings triggered by these readings, and sharing of productions on the Whatsapp group. Additionally, they ventured on a bold proposal: to produce a joint work remotely for the CultivAR-TE Festival^(g(g)The CultivAR-TE festival is an UFSCAR extension project that proposed a virtual exhibition of productions and works created within the pandemic context, sent by artists and “non artists, with the main intention of attractic the mental health public. The Festival’s gallery is available at: https://informasus.ufscar.br/festival-cultura-cultivar-te/galeria-virtual/ ⁾, promoted by the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar). Julia reported that one participant made the base canvas where the work would take place and sent it to the coordinators in the service through her caregiver. Weekly, they met via the application and, through the relationship with the base canvas, thought about how to continue the joint production. Drawings, embroideries, and paintings were produced gradually and sent to the service, where they were added to the artwork. One day, they agreed to assemble it together, and:

The group took two months to produce the joint work and subsequently submitted it to the call for entries, which was also an event, as the form required describing the work and justifying its relation to the pandemic, demanding engagement, perseverance, and a significant time investment from the group. Julia said that the initiative “was something that seemed very small but very precious along the way, nothing I would have imagined or done outside of this context”.

The conditions imposed by social distancing and the commitment to maintaining lively and creative encounters generated inventions that surprised her. Her initiatives sought to support hesitant experiments in the institution that, no matter how precarious or small, were important.

Alice and the reinvention of means

Alongside her degree in occupational therapy, Alice also graduated in visual arts in São Paulo. “[...] since I graduated, I have had this studio here, and I think it was also forming and constituting itself with me and my trajectory, a possibility of experimenting with this hybrid practice...,” she said regarding the studio, which also served as a space for patient and group sessions. As an artist, she perceives her production closely related to occupational therapy practices: “For me, they are tools, both from one to the other and from the other to one,” mentioning that she has always had a relationship with experiments in arts and, therefore, with doings.

Alice told us that the pandemic had a strong impact on her role as an occupational therapist. Modulating the things she did in a more sensitive way through screens was one of the significant challenges. She realized that the bond created with many patients supported various adaptations of practices, as well as the remote period, but acknowledged that, despite the powerful discoveries during this period, certain interventions did not work in this modality.

We question how to proceed with actions that were so practical, and experimental in occupational therapy, and that invoke other languages beyond verbal communication, as many patients had difficulties in this dimension and sometimes intellectual disabilities. The corporal presence and the tools used in occupational therapy as artistic devices for recording and storytelling were fundamental to her, and during the pandemic she felt devoid of these resources.

Faced with such destabilization, she created new practices. In the Day Hospital for the Elderly where she worked, she experimented with creating podcasts providing guidance on self-care, engaging in physical activities, and triggering reflections on pandemic daily life within the institution. And in collaboration with the Group of Poetic and Political Sensible Experimentations (GEPPS)^(h(h)GEPPS emerged within the University of São Paulo (USP), in the context of the post-graduate Interunits in Aesthetics and History of Art (PGEHA/USP), with master’s and PhD students of Professor Eliane Dias de Castro, who was later emancipated from the university and is still currently active. Composed by occupational therapists and a writer and social communicator, the group seeks to create dialog and interaction between university; independent research in the fields of art, clinic and culture, and the needs of people in ordinary life.⁾, she recorded audio texts from the “Critical Pandemic” session of the publisher N-1 Edições and later made them available on the group’s website. These texts were written by philosophers, artists, environmentalists, and others from various parts of the world, critically thinking on the pandemic. Alice mentioned that the initiative was born from realizing that many of her fellow occupational therapists were overwhelmed with household tasks, childcare, work commitments, and the inability to take time to read a text, for example.

Seeking to maintain the dimension of affection and sensitivity in her reinventions, she mentioned two other experiences: sending letters to the elderly at the Day Hospital, containing flowers they picked during one of the group meetings just before the pandemic. The second was the “Letters from the Pandemic” project, created by GEPPS, which published on the group’s website: writings, images and poetic productions made and sent by a general public. These “letters” were made available in a single scroll bar, without identified authorship, as a “polyphonic letter” or a “common diary”, composed of many voices that expressed people’s daily lives in this context. The initiative was later published in Interface magazine⁽ⁱ(i)Available from: https://doi.org/10.1590/interface.200881.⁾.

Alice’s therapeutic sessions were also restructured according to the needs and possibilities of the moment. She teamed up with other therapists to create a variety of short-term groups with movie and music proposals, among others. She said she had to manage unexpected things in these initiatives.

For Alice, this moment maximized the exercise of plasticity and flexibility in dealing with different and problematic contexts, something she already saw as a component of her practice as an occupational therapist.

Accountability and care against capitalist witchcraft

Following the impacts of the pandemic on the practices of occupational therapists, we saw persistence and versatility in their commitments to caring for patients. They found power in the unusual, persisting in the importance of encounters, doing things together, taking risks and reinventing ways of acting, creating practices with resources they had at hand, or created circumstantially.

The actions were almost always described as a result of discomfort and restlessness in wanting to “do something” in the face of the pandemic experience. These were initiatives that emerged from a process of accountability and implication that responded to the call of shared care with the world. It does not happen by chance, but through concrete actions — since care in occupational therapy occurred through actions, doings, and activities. In other words, it made sense for occupational therapists to also respond to the event in this way.

Frédéric Gros, in his work “Disobey,” deals with different dimensions of responsibility, and one of them is precisely the “responsibility of the world: the idea that we are in solidarity with injustices produced everywhere”¹⁵15 Bensusan N. Alice no país da pandemia. Instituto Socioambiental [Internet]. 2020 [citado 20 Jul 2023]. Disponível em: https://site-antigo.socioambiental.org/pt-br/blog/blog-do-isa/alice-no-pais-da-pandemia
https://site-antigo.socioambiental.org/p... (online). We are in solidarity in the sense that it is not possible for such injustices not to concern us as there is always a nuance through which we are connected to them. Another dimension put forward by the author is called “infinite responsibility” or “responsibility of the fragile”. In this case, it is the vulnerability and fragility of the other that comes as a call for us to take responsibility for them.

In the process of accountability, there is a dimension of struggle that requires moving away from the position of a spectator and producing thought and action in the face of an event.

According to Guy Debord, the spectator is a deceived and manipulated being, someone who does not engage with the world and the event, but merely watches it, separates it from the context and concrete situations in which it is inserted, and virtualizes it. They observe, judge, generalize, and wait. Therefore, they are incapable of thought and action, becoming a figure of isolation and impotence¹⁶16 Fernández-Savater A. Pensar: uma necessidade contemporânea. URUCUM Novas Formas de Vida [Internet]Nenhum.Nenhum 2018 [citado 9 Mar 2021]. Disponível em: https://urucum.milharal.org/2018/09/23/pensar-uma-necessidade-contemporanea/
https://urucum.milharal.org/2018/09/23/p... .

Isabelle Stengers and Philippe Pignarre, in La sorcellerie capitaliste, shift and broaden this question by stating that it is not a question of lies or illusions, but of “witchcraft”. The term “witchcraft” is used to dramatize the capitalist enterprise that has intensified in recent decades. The authors warn that capitalism is based on the production of a power that numbs people and prevents them from seeing their own faces, producing impotence. It captures our capacity for imagination and blocks our power of thought¹⁷17 Sztutman R. Reativar a feitiçaria e outras receitas de resistência – pensando com Isabelle Stengers. Rev Inst Est Bras. 2018; (69):338-60. doi: 10.11606/issn.2316-901X.v0i69p338-360.
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-901X.... .

To disenchant ourselves, says Stengers¹⁷17 Sztutman R. Reativar a feitiçaria e outras receitas de resistência – pensando com Isabelle Stengers. Rev Inst Est Bras. 2018; (69):338-60. doi: 10.11606/issn.2316-901X.v0i69p338-360.
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-901X.... , it would be necessary to think of minority resistance modes that emphasize an active experimentation, open to the unforeseeable and the unpredictable, promoting concrete transformations of attention, perception, and sensitivity. This would mean resuming our ability to imagine, move without fear and create new struggles, making use of properly pragmatic devices

In the initiatives presented by occupational therapists here, we saw the agency of possible local and creative responses to the capitalist witchcraft that poisons life. These are experimental and situated practices, ethically and politically involved, seeking to reclaim the power of living, the meaning of encounter and collectivity. It is less on recipes or epic events, heroic gestures, and more on ordinary actions that promote subtle concrete transformations of lives, daily routines, and stories of any people. In these experimentations, there are essential elements mobilized by them.

In the counterspell of occupational therapists: body, art and group

Julia and Alice, in different ways, sought to produce relationships and reactivate the inventiveness and plasticity necessary for life, especially in states of exception produced by the pandemic. To do so, they established small communities of creation and coexistence in the virtual environment, using resources from the arts and the body, nurturing life and a daily routine impoverished of exchanges and relationships and often the desire to live. Faced with the weakening of vital potency and in a context of the radical isolation of the people they accompanied (the elderly and people with various psychological sufferings and disabilities), the occupational therapists sought to promote other forms of affection that may bring life back to itself and to others.

To experience a state of affection for the world and live experiences in it, they emphasized the importance of sensitizing bodies and subjectivities. According to Larrosa, experience is “what happens to us, what touches us”¹⁸18 Bondía JL. Notas sobre a experiência e o saber de experiência. Tradução: João Wanderley Gerald. Rev Bras Educ. 2002; (19):20-8. doi: 10.1590/S1413-24782002000100003.
https://doi.org/10.1590/S1413-2478200200... (p. 21); it carries the sense of experiencing, savoring life, and allowing people to be crossed by its potency. From the perspective of these therapists, aesthetic activities and artistic experimentation are ways of unclogging the “channels” of contact with what is external and activating a certain receptivity and availability to live and be affected by what is going on. When they referred to the “porosity” of bodies, they were talking about that degree of openness that makes bodies-subjectivities more or less sensitive and permeable to environments and events, allowing them to live an experience and come out of it transformed.

Thus, in their initiatives, aesthetic experiments were not aimed at producing works, despite there were works as a result, but served this process of sensitization and also the exercise of imagination. Such experimentations, in the environments created by them, stimulated unusual associations and activated the capacity for reinvention and fabulation, unlocking creativity for life to continue in new arrangements.

The aesthetic experience lived through the arts has a speculative function, the invention of what does not exist, the creation of worlds or the production of differences in certain worlds/realities. It is like a “minor gesture”¹⁹19 Manning E. Proposições para um movimento menor. Moringa Artes Espetaculo [Internet]. 2019 [citado 29 Abr 2019]; 10(2):11-24. doi: 10.22478/ufpb.2177-8841.2019v10n2.49811. Disponível em: https://periodicos.ufpb.br/index.php/moringa/article/view/49811
https://periodicos.ufpb.br/index.php/mor... whose power is to change the conditions of experience and guide processes to come. The “minor”, for Manning¹⁹19 Manning E. Proposições para um movimento menor. Moringa Artes Espetaculo [Internet]. 2019 [citado 29 Abr 2019]; 10(2):11-24. doi: 10.22478/ufpb.2177-8841.2019v10n2.49811. Disponível em: https://periodicos.ufpb.br/index.php/moringa/article/view/49811
https://periodicos.ufpb.br/index.php/mor... , proposes a variation in which the event may otherwise be fixed and can therefore produce gestures that inaugurate the new and activate a present futurity in act.

These experiences mobilized, displaced, and could promote the expansion, renewal, and constant creation of words, gestures, and matter. In this bet, occupational therapists also created spaces for sharing expressions and feelings that incited ways of elaborating the event through poetic inventions. Because of their ability to sustain and host the unspeakable, the arts enabled other forms of expression, not subjected to rationality, Cartesian systems, and grammars of thought and language. Therefore, they contributed in a moment like this. In search for discovering materials of expression and compositions of languages that favor the passage of intensities that traversed the bodies, the arts participated in the potentiation of desire in their capacity as creators of worlds²⁰20 Rolnik S. Cartografia sentimental: transformações contemporâneas do desejo. Porto Alegre: Sulina/Editora da UFRGS; 2007..

The experimentations with art and body promoted by these and other occupational therapists involved in the research invariably took place in groups. In these initiatives, we saw the group not as a priori, abstract entity that precedes its own functioning, but made up of lines of force that, in permanent tension, produced new subjective flows throughout processes. According to Benevides²¹21 Barros RB. Grupo: a afirmação de um simulacro. 3a ed. 2013. Porto Alegre: Sulina/Editora da UFRGS; 2009., the group devices altered hegemonic processes of subjectivation that referred to individuals, separating them from collective, social, ecological, technical movements etc. that produced them. Thus being a “machine that decomposes truths, conceptions taken as natural and universals, the group can activate confrontation between expressions of the prevailing individual modes²¹21 Barros RB. Grupo: a afirmação de um simulacro. 3a ed. 2013. Porto Alegre: Sulina/Editora da UFRGS; 2009.” (p. 325, our translation).

Through the time dedicated to being together in group settings, provisional common territories have been created, glimpses of a certain crowd, in which it has been possible to experiment with ways of relating and making agreements, experiencing frustrations, conflicts and joys, working out events together, among other things. In the continuous exercise of the group and in the experimentation of these experiences, relationships were produced and it was possible for bonds to be built. The bond is made through cycles of proximity and distance, creating emotional and somatic trails between one person and another, and each person is part of this system. When the bond is formed, the person becomes part of someone’s self²²22 Keleman S. Amor e vínculos. São Paulo: Summus; 1996..

In occupational therapy, group devices, mobilized around one or more activities, also offer the power of joint creation and collective inventiveness. In these experiences, each person brings their expression, their knowledge, their stories and their ways of doing things to the circle. This enriches the group, strengthens bonds, cultivates affections and produces new memories. Carrying out the activity on these occasions is like a thread that weaves through the meeting, attaching words to the gestures that compose the making, emotions to the forms that are created, and collective knowledge to the production.

Regarding the pandemic moment, the groups proposed by the occupational therapists made it possible to remove people from intense isolation by introducing some meaning, movement and creation into everyday life, offering the possibility of enjoying the conviviality that enriches life. Julia and Alice noted that these practices helped to provide companionship, support networks and a place to “breathe” in the face of the suffocation caused by the context

Considering the society of helplessness that we have become, rebuilding the bonds among people and strengthening the creative dimension of life are important actions to produce the other health that we need. A health connected to the needs of living people and the creation of unique and powerful existential territories, which are made and remade incessantly, dialoguing with the cyclical variations of a life, as well as with its storms.

Final Considerations

It is important to highlight two other components that permeated the practices of all occupational therapists interviewed in the research, not just those emphasized here: affection and cooperation. They expressed the need to position themselves in a “technical” but also affective manner, to develop actions that responded to the urgencies of our time and not just to the protocols set by the various institutions where they worked.

Affection is understood as a unifying element that tightens, nurtures, and warms (bodies, relationships, memories). According to Junior and Arán²³23 Peixoto Junior CA, Arán M. O lugar da experiência afetiva na gênese dos processos de subjetivação. Psicol USP. 2011; 22(4):725-46. doi: 10.1590/S0103-65642011005000032.
https://doi.org/10.1590/S0103-6564201100... affection, like emotion and passion, goes beyond will and consciousness, not under the control of our intentions and desires. “Affection” is the past participle of afficere, indicating the passive nature of the subjective experience in question, something experienced and suffered. It is a nascent subjectivity present “in dreams, delirium, creative exaltation, in the feeling of love”²³23 Peixoto Junior CA, Arán M. O lugar da experiência afetiva na gênese dos processos de subjetivação. Psicol USP. 2011; 22(4):725-46. doi: 10.1590/S0103-65642011005000032.
https://doi.org/10.1590/S0103-6564201100... (p. 728), as well as in caregiving practices.

And cooperation was more intensely activated among occupational therapists and their colleagues during this time, to sustain their proposals and their care toward themselves and their colleagues. Faced with overload, fatigue, grief, and illness, they created new working partnerships and proposed actions involving a larger number of people in coordination. Some also mobilized listening spaces and experimentation with activities such as music, yoga, breathing, and integrative care practices among colleagues.

The experiences of cooperation and collaboration took into account the fact that we are interdependent and relational beings. Therefore, it is a human need, especially in current times, to rediscover ways of living together. Cooperation implies the growth and maturity of bodies; a mature adult body seeks to connect and cooperate (with environments and other bodies). According to Regina Favre²⁴24 Favre R. Um corpo na multidão: do molecular ao vivido. Interface (Botucatu). 2011; 15(37):621-8. doi: 10.1590/S1414-32832011000200025.
https://doi.org/10.1590/S1414-3283201100... (p. 626), “connection, in its adult condition, occurs through the cooperation of bodies.” Cooperating, according to the author²⁴24 Favre R. Um corpo na multidão: do molecular ao vivido. Interface (Botucatu). 2011; 15(37):621-8. doi: 10.1590/S1414-32832011000200025.
https://doi.org/10.1590/S1414-3283201100... , means only to recognize themselves as part of larger processes and acting as such.

Doing things together and cooperating is challenging in an individualistic society like ours, but allowing us to be surprised by finding unknown or forgotten skills in ourselves and in others is a way to promote mutual support, which is essential for sustaining personal lives and collective life. Precisely because the pandemic has imposed the need for social distancing, the importance of living together and creating solidarity networks everywhere has become even more evident.

Finally, we cannot deny the violence of an event such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the different approaches taken by each country. However, it is worth noting that such an event became an opportune occasion for certain types of practices to gain visibility, practices that seemed insignificant before, as was the case with some actions of occupational therapists. As they were practices that, no matter how small, reactivate necessary dimensions for living and responding to crisis situations — such as inventiveness, creation, bonds, affection, cooperation — what these occupational therapists did became evidently powerful in an extreme situation of disruption to life and relationships. Focusing on actions that sought to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on people’s lives, we also started to see who is behind these actions and through which paths of thought they did so.

Aknowledgements

To all the occupational interviewed therapists interviewed for my doctoral research

References

Publication Dates

History