Watch and find out more about my short animation film, Becoming. I’d reccomend watching in full screen with sound!
This new moving image animation artwork by Genevieve Rudd has
been informed by her Acquired Brain Injury, neurosurgery and long
hospitalisation experiences as a rebirth of her arts practice filled
with life following ABI (Acquired Brain Injury).
BECOMING is an acknowledgement that whilst brain injury
disability is imbued with endings, there is also potential and
possibility for new evolving opportunities and living. Grief and
evolution are entwined together; using the fragments of the old life
to build a new one.
The overall feel of the film is disorientating and multi-layered,
showing grappling with an old and new life layered amongst the
litter of clinical experience.
The work is threaded with deep personal symbolism, including
these, listed as a fatigue/energy-management strategy & log of the
work, to aid presentation…
Glossary of symbolism in the film:
• Medical blue gloves performing actions across the scene, this
time worn by Genevieve making the actions, as she felt
smothered and confused by them worn by clinicians as an
inpatient.
• Dark green TED compression stocking worn on her arm
was a memento from one of her neurosurgeries.
• Hand actions of tapping, pinching and slow flipping actions
have been inspired by her OT/physio upper limb rehabilitation
for her hemiplegic spastic (paralysed) left arm, which is
glimpsed in the film hanging down by her body and in one
moment is guided like the passive movement rehab exercises
by her right blue gloved hand to collect a paper dot.
• Repeated circular forms/dots & circles are inspired by the
ovoid giant aneurysm which started her ABI, and the dotperforated
texture of her cranioplasty skull plate and the
hospital ceiling tile pattern she spent weeks and months laying
under.
• Natural objects show the sensory experience of being
reintroduced to the living natural world outside of clinical
settings. All of those used in the film were gifted to her during
her inpatient rehabilitation over half a year,
• Repetition is key to neurological rehabilitation where the brain
is being re-wired through neuroplasticity. New neural
pathways form and work around the damaged brain matter.
Scenes reflect each other through the film and use the same
forms in new ways.
• Mirrors fragment her physical form as a visual metaphor for
the disturbing effects of ABI and long hospital stays, in
particular the confusion of delirium/hallucinations and intensive
care.
• The ghostly effect repeating some of the film to the left
mimics the prism lens Genevieve wears to compensate for her
left-sided hemianopia sight loss caused by the ABI.
• The spoken word poem audio was written by Genevieve
during a winter spasticity flare-up whilst the trees were bare
outside. With references to earth “mulch” mirroring the
experience of being under hospital linens. Bent bare trees
appear in the work.
• In some of the scenes, the background is misprint cyanotype
photographic prints from her pre-ABI arts practice, with new
narratives layered over.
• The audio is her own voice – showing her dysarthric speech
disorder speaking her own words.
• The other audio is both hospital ward sound clips
(Addenbrookes Hospital & Colman Hospital neuro wards) and
of the sea near her home in Gorleston-on-sea – postcranioplasty.
As when the plate settles, the CSF
[CerebroSpinal Fluid] can be heard in the brain, splashing,
whooshing and moving like being on the coastal edge, it also
calls back to her previous life leading coastal community
projects.
• The combination of sea (waves sounds and collaged
material describes the flotsam and jetsam of hospital debris
which collects around the patient in bed).
• The small piles of sand also allude to her previous coastal
work and “grit” to survive this scenario – the sand was eroded
cliff sand collected on a long walk between Gorleston and
Lowestoft in the lead up to her brain injury and hospital
experiences.
• The sketchbook was work done during a neurosurgery
inpatient stay in October 2024 for cranioplasty surgery, with art
materials loaned from the Addenbrookes Hospital art
department.
• The hospital blankets shown were from an emergency visit
for a seizure, picking up on the bedding mentioned in the
poem, after being non-walking bed-ridden for 7 months in
hospital beds.
Pre-published viewers of the film described it as an “intertwining of
connected cycles”, and “captivating”.
BECOMING Genevieve Rudd 2026
Technical support, mentoring & editing: Helen Wells
www.helenwellsmultimediaartist.com
Supported by First Light CIC Artist Development Bursary in 2025/6
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view this interprepation as a pdf document.
venues/events to view the artwork in Spring 2026:
- March (27th & 28th March & (10th, 11th, 17th & 18th) April 2026: Lowestoft @ The Battery of Ideas: Facebook event,
- 27th March: Headway Norfolk & Suffolk @ the Great Yarmouth hub ‘open day’.