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Anatomy Live. Performance and the Operating Theatre
... While the plastinates are posed to suggest movement or activity, they are in fact eternally static, merely mimicking vitality. Their serene faces highlight the absence of any connection between movement and feeling, a connection which, on some accounts, is essential to what bodies are (Bleeker 2008c). In this "post-biological existence," plastinates are "condemned to a synthetic afterlife, unable to ever attain organic death or incorporeal resurrection" (Lizama 2009, 26). ...
... The depersonalising process, in particular the removal of the skin and hair, "erases prominent features of embodied presence" (Bleeker 2008b, 17), stripping the body of its identity, leaving a generalised and idealised human body (Goeller 2007, 285;Bleeker 2008b;Maxwell 2008;Desmond 2010). Racial markers have been removed, the age of the donor is relatively indeterminate, and all the bodies are lean and appear muscular. ...
Accounts from the humanities which focus on describing the nature of whole body plastinates are examined. We argue that this literature shows that plastinates do not clearly occupy standard cultural binary categories of interior or exterior, real or fake, dead or alive, bodies or persons, self or other and argue that Noël Carroll's structural framework for horrific monsters unites the various accounts of the contradictory or ambiguous nature of plastinates while also showing how plastinates differ from horrific fictional monsters. In doing so, it offers an account of the varied reactions of those responding to exhibitions of plastinated whole bodies.
... The autopsy has a long history entwined with knowledge production. It is premised on a thorough scientific examination of a corpse to determine the inner workings of bodies (Foucault, 1963(Foucault, /1975, and it is also associated with dissection and scrutiny which is produced through a particular epistemological occularism (Bleeker, 2008;Sawday, 1995). We draw on that history to position autopsy as a site and mode of inquiry in examining how bodies and bodies of knowledge, themselves, become a corpus which defines and frames social science research methodology more widely. ...
For centuries the autopsy has been a key technology in Western culture for generating clinical/medical as well as cultural knowledge about bodies. This article hails the anato-medical autopsy as a generative trope and apparatus in reconfiguring Western humanist knowledge of bodies and bodies of knowledge and takes up the possibilities of working with the concept of autopsy in disrupting qualitative research methodology. In doing so, the article outlines and returns (to) a series of research-creation experiments assembled at an academic conference, which engaged with the challenges for social science knowledge laid out by Law’s (2004) After Method book. Our research-creation experiments centred autopsy as a theoretical-methodological gaze and apparatus for de-composing qualitative research methodology by engaging with post-humanist and new material feminist thinking.
... In staging a "laboratory" in an art gallery, OTE fits within the twenty-first-century trend toward the dramatization of science described in the context section above (for further examples, see Shaughnessy 2013;Kirby 2010;Bleeker 2008). Svetlana's observations suggest that viewers have become accustomed to the interpenetration of science and art. ...
As a citizen I have limited understanding of the large-scale data gathering performed through the Australian Government’s Data Retention Act, with which most of us are, perhaps unwittingly, involved. This sense of collective complicity was the main impetus for the research project Only the Envelope, which combines research methodologies to investigate the ways in which we share personal information in the public sphere. The performance stage of the project was a work of live art that offered visitors the intimate experience of viewing an original video while being monitored by a “scientist”—both performer and research assistant—who invited viewers to be involved in an “experiment”: viewing a video while wearing a wireless eye-tracking device. Only the Envelope offered a recursively playful performance of faith in “science” that troubles a distinction between the apparently private experience of viewing art with the apparently public experience of being surveilled. I hoped to invite resistance or reflective decision making, to create a space in which participants could try out different ethical positions—be more or less compliant—as a way of discovering their own feelings on the matter of data retention. There was little evidence of resistance among those who gave their consent to participate in the work, though a greater freedom of response was observed among those who implicitly participated by observing the work or refusing to be involved. I will interpret responses to “participation” and “consent” in Only the Envelope’s performance of “science” and suggest that the process of gaining “informed consent” is associated with a loss of power and knowledge. The work may serve as a timely reminder that refusing to comply by opting out of digital surveillance is extremely difficult to accomplish; raising awareness around the illusion of choice and the facts of digital surveillance is a more realistic goal.
... This is a consequence of the surgical frame, which imposes a particular view upon those inside it, inviting them to compare themselves with other insiders but not to look beyond the frame itself. As with many experts, the practice of surgeons takes place within specific boundaries, furnished with and depending upon an insular body of knowledge (Atkinson, 2004;McConachie and Hart, 2006;Bleeker, 2008;Schechner and Brady, 2012;Williamon et al., 2014). Goffman sheds light on frames, kinship relationships and the formation of professional identity (Goffman, 1974). ...
This paper argues for the inclusion of surgery within the canon of performance science. The world of medicine presents rich, complex but relatively under-researched sites of performance. Performative aspects of clinical practice are overshadowed by a focus on the processes and outcomes of medical care, such as diagnostic accuracy and the results of treatment. The primacy of this "clinical" viewpoint-framed by clinical professionals as the application of medical knowledge-hides resonances with performance in other domains. Yet the language of performance is embedded in the culture of surgery-surgeons "perform" operations, work in an operating "theater" and use "instruments." This paper asks what might come into view if we take this performative language at face value and interrogate surgery from the perspective of performance science.
... What are needed are a theatre where the performance can be staged and an experienced interlocutor to choreograph the proceedings. As Jonathan Sawday (1995), Francis Barker (1995) and Maaike Bleeker (2008) have postulated, what is required is a theatre of anatomy and an engaging anatomist to transform tissue to text. ...
This article revolves around the long-term and ongoing research project on the role and the position of the dead in western society by Mobile Akademie Berlin. This nomadic platform, initiated by Hannah Hurtzig, has been experimenting with new forms of knowledge production and knowledge transfer over the last twenty years. This contribution surveys the performative and theatrical strategies developed by Mobile Akedmie Berlin over the years in various projects and how these are now embedded in their coping with the dead, as explored in their current project The Dead/The Undead.
The Covid‐19 pandemic has challenged medical educators internationally to confront the challenges of adapting their present educational activities to a rapidly evolving digital world. In this article, the authors use anatomy education as proxy to remap and reflect on the past, present, and future of medical education in the face of these disruptions. In doing so, the authors highlight three tensions surrounding the present of anatomy education: organizational, educational, and cultural. In addressing these tensions and inspired by the historical Theatrum Anatomicum (Anatomy 1.0) the authors argue replacing current (Anatomy 2.0) anatomy laboratory dissection standards with a prototype (3.0) anatomy studio. In this studio, anatomists are web‐performers who not only collaborate with other foundational science educators to devise meaningful and interactive content, but who also partner with actors, directors, web‐designers, computer engineers, information technologists, and visual artists to master online interactions and processes, thus optimizing students` engagement and learning. This anatomy studio also offers students opportunities to create their own online content and thus reposition themselves digitally, a step into developing new competency of stage presence within medical education. So reimagined, Anatomy 3.0 will launch students into evolving new era of tele and digital medicine as it helps to foreshadow forthcoming changes in medical education.
Contemporary theatre, like so much of contemporary life, is obsessed with the ways in which information is detected, packaged and circulated. Running through forms as diverse as neo-naturalistic playwriting, intimately immersive theatre, verbatim drama, intermedial performance, and musical theatre, a common thread can be observed: theatre-makers have moved away from assertions of what is true and focussed on questions about how truth is framed. Commentators in various disciplines, including education, fine art, journalism, medicine, cultural studies, and law, have identified a 'forensic turn' in culture. The crucial role played by theatrical and performative techniques in fuelling this forensic turn has frequently been mentioned but never examined in detail. Political and poetic, Theatrical Performance and the Forensic Turn is the first account of the relationship between theatrical and forensic aesthetics. Exploring a rich variety of works that interrogate and resist the forensic turn, this is a must-read not only for scholars of theatre and performance but also of culture across the arts, sciences and social sciences.
This book examines the confusions and contradictions that manifest in prevalent attitudes towards the body, as well as in related bodily practices. The body is simultaneously our reference for the certainties of nature and the locus of a desire for transformation and reinvention. The body is at the same time worshipped and despised; an object of desire and of design. Francisco Ortega analyses how the body has become both a screen for the projection of our ideas and imaginings about ourselves and conversely an object of suspicion, anxiety, and discomfort. Addressing practices of corporeal ascesis (such as bodybuilding and dietetics), medical technologies, and radical anatomical modifications, Ortega documents the ambiguous legacy of a western theoretical tradition that has always despised the body. Utilising a theoretical framework that is mainly informed by the phenomenology of the body, feminist theory, disability studies and the thought of Michel Foucault, Corporeality, Medical Technologies and Contemporary Culture address several ethical and psychological issues associated with the experience and perception of the body in our cultural landscape. Drawing on these diverse areas of philosophical and analytical work, this book will interest those researching Law, Medicine, and Sociology.
Dedicating objects to the divine was a central component of both Greek and Roman religion. Some of the most conspicuous offerings were shaped like parts of the internal or external human body: so-called ‘anatomical votives’. These archaeological artefacts capture the modern imagination, recalling vividly the physical and fragile bodies of the past whilst posing interpretative challenges in the present. This volume scrutinises this distinctive dedicatory phenomenon, bringing together for the first time a range of methodologically diverse approaches which challenge traditional assumptions and simple categorisations. The chapters presented here ask new questions about what constitutes an anatomical votive, how they were used and manipulated in cultural, cultic and curative contexts and the complex role of anatomical votives in negotiations between humans and gods, the body and its disparate parts, divine and medical healing, ancient assemblages and modern collections and collectors. In seeking to re-contextualise and re-conceptualise anatomical votives this volume uniquely juxtaposes the medical with the religious, the social with the conceptual, the idea of the body in fragments with the body whole and the museum with the sanctuary, crossing the boundaries between studies of ancient religion, medicine, the body and the reception of antiquity. © 2017 selection and editorial matter, Jane Draycott and Emma-Jayne Graham.
The aim of the conference of which we are here publishing the proceedings, held in Rome at Sapienza-University in 2013, was to valorise the specific museological heritage of Italian Universities, in relation to analogous European and non-European Museums of Anatomy and Pathological Anatomy. A particular attention has been devoted to highlight the history of the origins and evolution of specific museological collections in order to focus reasons and circumstances of their foundation through the analysis of the signifcances, finctions and uses of anatomical parts or artifacts in different cultural contexts.
In a recent symposium I attended examining why performance matters in the current cultural landscape, performance and black studies academic Fred Moten suggested that endurance can be seen in forms of life characterised by suffering. This point seems an appropriate way of thinking about my recent research project which culminated in Bodily remains, the research, (although not necessarily initially) in part was concerned with the convergence between the individual condition of an artist?s body and their body based practice. My own practice offered a suitable terrain for investigating this, in that I have a body based practice concerned with endurance and the condition of my body is an important consideration and even departure point when making work. As a body with a severe chronic disease, Cystic fibrosis, which has large implications on my daily life I could be considered by Moten as one whose life is characterised by suffering. Moten continued to propose that endurance offers a new meditation on life by asking if there is a contemplative value in suffering. My practice based research was more than the performance- Bodily Remains, it was concerned with process and the preparation needed for performances with strong elements of endurance, using techniques leading to immersion as ways of devising endurance work. Considering this aspect of my research, this project offers an optic for considering Moten?s claims. Is there a contemplative value in suffering? And what is the relationship between endurance in performance and a life characterised by suffering? This essay disseminates my research which considers endurance in performance and daily life, considering the body in each and deliberates what is the convergence between the condition of an individual body (as in daily life) and a body based performance practice.
This paper discusses a novel approach towards socializing non-anthropomorphic robots, which harnesses the expert knowledge of dancers to develop abstract robot morphologies and their capacity to move in affective and expressive ways. We argue that movement offers a key to socializing non-anthropomorphic robots. Our Performative Body Mapping (PBM) method investigates the possibility of teaching a non-humanlike robot to move and interact by human movement experts. The paper outlines the conceptual framework of PBM and discusses an ongoing pilot study that engages professional dancers to study the relationship between abstract, simple morphologies and their potential to move in expressive, socially encoded ways.
This paper describes the concept and development of the interactive installation "Pre-Choreographic Movement Kit". It utilizes a dance concept as a starting point to use physical objects for generating movements, using sensor-based motion tracking. The "Pre-Choreographic Movement Kit" is part of the interdisciplinary research project"Pre- Choreographic Alphabet", initiated by Bertha Bermudez and Emio Greco, ICKAmsterdam (International Choreographic Center in Amsterdam) joined by Chris Ziegler (School of Arts Media Engineering ASU, Tempe) for design and development under LABO211. The objective of the research project, is to reflect upon previous artistic work, define methodologies for the articulation of dance experiences using interactive environments for transmission and dissemination of knowledge. Choreographer Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten have developed over many years an understanding of dancer's technologies to generate movement material for dance creation. Chris Ziegler cites the idea of "art in a box" first developed by George Maciunas "Fluxkit" (1964), by designing a playful environment for dancers and non-dancers alike. The "PreChoreographic Movement Kit"proposes interactive Objects, generating a physical encounter to"Pre-choreographic Knowledge" of thinking and performing movements.
Cognitive neuroscience is an area that helps us to enlarge our knowledge of how movement is perceived and how we can understand the process of kinesthetic empathy. In this article I will analyze the connections between the visual input while watching a dance performance, the motor memory, the awareness of movement sensation, and emotional experiences. Experiments done on monkeys by Rizzolatti et al. gave insight in the working of the brain while watching dance. He discovered activity of neurons, which he called mirror neurons. Many experiments followed by neuroscientists and psychologists like Keysers, Bekkering, and Calvo–Merino. In this article I will use research results from neuroscience, as well as results from my own empirical studies. Those results give us more insight in the mechanisms active in the process of kinesthetic empathy, which can be helpful for choreographers interested in involvement strategies on a movement level.
The thesis researches the implications of the use of live spoken language in dance performances in which both disciplines (language and dance) are non-hierarchically organized for the process of meaning ascription.
The correspondences and disparities between how artists and anatomists view the body have historically been a source of creative collaboration, but how is this imaginative interdisciplinarity sustained and expressed in a contemporary context? In this review I suggest that contemporary artists engaging with the body, and the corresponding biomedical and architectural spaces where the body is investigated, are engendering innovative and challenging artworks that stimulate new relationships between art and anatomy. Citing a number of examples from key artists and referencing some of my own practice-based research, I posit that creative cross-fertilization provokes a discourse between mediated public perceptions of disease, death and the disposal of morbid remains, and the contemporary reality of biomedical practice. This is a dialogue that is complex, rich and diverse, and ultimately rewarding for both art and anatomy.
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