The artist as surgical ethnographer: Participant observers outside the social sciences (original) (raw)
Related papers
Contemporary visual and performance artists have adopted modern medical technologies such as MRIs and computer imaging—and the bodily access they imply—to reveal their limitations. In doing so they emphasize the unknowability of another’s bodily experience and the effects—physical, emotional, and social—of medical procedures. In The Scar of Visibility, Petra Kuppers examines the use of medical imagery practices in contemporary art, as well as different arts of everyday life (self-help groups, community events, Internet sites), focusing on fantasies and “knowledge projects” surrounding the human body. Among the works she investigates are the controversial Body Worlds exhibition of plastinized corpses; video projects by Shimon Attie on diabetes and Douglas Gordon on mental health and war trauma; performance pieces by Angela Ellsworth, Bob Flanagan, and Kira O’Reilly; films like David Cronenberg’s Crash and Marina de Van’s In My Skin that fetishize body wounds; representations of the AIDS virus in the National Museum of Health and on CSI: Crime Scene Investigations; and the paintings of outsider artist Martin Ramírez. At the heart of this work is the scar—a place of production, of repetition and difference, of multiple nerve sensations, fragile skin, outer sign, and bodily depth. Through the embodied sign of the scar, Kuppers articulates connections between subjective experience, history, and personal politics. Illustrated throughout, The Scar of Visibility broadens our understanding of the significance of medical images in visual culture.
The arts and medicine: a challenging relationship
Medical Humanities, 2011
This paper discusses various justifications for including medical humanities and art in healthcare education. It expresses concern about portrayals of the humanities and art as benign and servile in relation to medicine and the health professions. An alternative is for the humanities to take a more active role within medical education by challenging the assumptions and myths of the predominant biomedical model. Another is to challenge quiescent notions of the arts by examining examples of recent provocative work and, to this end, the paper considers the work of performance artists Stelarc and Orlan who have subjected their bodies to modifications and extensions. Their work challenges, and potentially undermines, conceptions of the body, medicine, and humanity's relationship with technology. Similarly, other artists, working with biological cultures, have raised controversial issues. Recent work of this kind defies easy understanding and resists being pressed into the service of medicine and other health professions for educational purposes by opening up topics for exploration and discussion without providing unitary explanatory frameworks. The paper goes on to discuss the implications for medical education if this is the approach to the arts and humanities in healthcare education. It suggests that there needs to be a shift in the foundational assumptions of medicine if the arts and humanities are to contribute more fully.
Mildred Codding's Humanization of Surgical Art
Journal of the Surgical Humanities, 2019
The work of Harvard Medical School artist Mildred Codding (1902-1991) can be viewed as an example of twentieth-century illustration that endeavors to humanize surgical art by moving beyond merely technical portrayals of patients’ biological frameworks. Traversing the boundaries of anatomical renditions, Codding’s illustrations comprise a thoughtful, and at times deeply moving, consideration of humanities within surgery. Indeed, based upon Codding’s formal training under renowned medical illustrator Max Brödel at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, some of her technical work can, and should, be considered through an aesthetic lens. To demonstrate the point, Codding’s original sketches for Drs. Donald D. Matson and John Shillito Jr’s An Atlas of Pediatric Neurosurgical Operations (1982) are considered from a primarily aesthetic rather than technical perspective to demonstrate that her training under Brödel, and subsequent development as a conscientious artist-educator working under Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Harvey Cushing, “the father of modern neurosurgery,” unite to infuse a humanistic motif into her work. Close examination of her sketches for An Atlas of Pediatric Neurosurgical Operations reveals a fascinating “humanizing aesthetic” encoded into the paratextual materials designed for the publication.
ICONOGRAPHIES OF EMBODIMENT AT INTERSECTIONS OF MEDICINE AND ART
etd.ceu.hu
This work traces certain intersections of medicine and art to argue that an understanding of embodiment is always articulated at the nexuses of different practices. It starts out from a consideration of visuality as central to the modern medical paradigm, enhanced by technological modes of looking from the 19 th century onwards. The thesis considers photographic imaging, clinical medicine, and eugenics in conjunction to highlight some characteristic aspects of the late-19 th -century understanding of corporeality. It then proceeds to consider medical imaging technologies and links them to certain desires that were also at work in the photographs analyzed in the first chapter. Furthermore, contemporary art pieces are introduced in the last section to underline the ways in which the dividing lines between artistic and scientific epistemology have been subjects to constant change. The thesis ends with a consideration of contemporary artistic practices and biosocial identity formations in creating a new, experimental public around a medical interpretation of embodiment.
Abstract This Introduction and interview discusses the poetical and empathic insights that are a key to the effectiveness of contemporary artist Christine Borland's practice and its relevance to the medical humanities, visual art research and medical students’ training. It takes place in a context of intensive interest in reciprocity and conversation as well as expert exchange between the fields of Medicine and Contemporary Arts. The interview develops an understanding of medical research and the application of its historical resources and contemporary practice-based research in contemporary art gallery exhibitions. Artists tend not to follow prescriptive programmes towards new historical knowledge, however, a desire to form productive relationships between history and contemporary art practice does reveal practical advantages. Borland's research also includes investigations in anatomy, medical practices and conservation. Keywords: anatomy, medicine and contemporary art, sculpture, museum
Ambiguity, the disembodied self, and the performative, 2019
The human body is at risk to be disciplined and normalised through the medical gaze. Medical technologies are mapping devices and often considered as objective measures versus an unreliable, perceiving, non-conforming body1. Therefore, the body had to be disciplined as much as the images produced by the instruments. This essay will look at medical imagery as media culture, it's appeal to artists, and how it may challenge an embodied self when being exposed to the gaze. By placing this essay in context of art, I will review works of Helen Chadwick and how her residency at King's College informed her practice. My own MRI experience will be the base to question how screen-based imagery may challenge our perception of the body and how performative aspects of MRI inform a posthuman body image. My own practice is a visual reflection of this interrogation. This review will eventually challenge notions of objectivity and stability. Through an expanded perceptual space art can create aesthetic responses beyond conventional patterns of knowledge.