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Debates in Aesthetics, 2021
The essay aims to examine possible readings of disability in the context of visual art, especially regarding bodies prosthetised in unexpected ways. To do that, I will analyse two performances, participated/created by Lisa Bufano and Aimee Mullins, which employ prosthetics that distance them from the mimicry of human limbs. I will briefly contextualize them in the history of prosthetics. I will observe how their peculiarity and non-human forms can serve aesthetic and destabilizing purposes regarding the contours of disability. I will especially mention their potentiality regarding disabled bodies’ mobility in space and their relationship with tools. The association between a disabled body and non-human traits carries several symbolic meanings and might also produce risks. Generally, they can update the perspectives on the crafting of creative assemblages that start from impaired bodies. In conclusion, I will observe how Bufano’s art entails more promises on an ethico-political level.
Embodied practices of prosthesis
Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 2021
While the prosthesis is often thought of as a technology or an artefact used to ‘fix’ or make ‘whole’ a disabled body, it has also become an important figuration and metaphor for thinking about disabled embodiment as an emblematic manifestation of bodily difference and mobility. Furthermore, the ambiguity and broadness of prosthesis as an object and a concept, as well as its potential as a theoretical and analytical thinking tool, show up in widely different areas of popular culture, art and academic scholarship. In this article, we explore the opportunities of the ways in which prosthesis might be a helpful and productive fi gure in relation to framing, analyzing and understanding certain healthcare-related practices that are not traditionally associated with disability. Our aim is to suggest new ways of building onto the idea of the performative value of the prosthetic fi gure and its logics as a continuum through which very different forms of embodied practices could be meaningfu...
“My Leg is a Giant Stiletto Heel”: Fashioning the Prosthetised Body
Fashion Theory: Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, 2019
Fashion and prosthetics may appear at first glance to be unlikely bedfellows. Yet a tiny number of pioneering fashion scholars (Vainshtein 2012, Hall and Orzada 2013) have begun to extend the concept of adornment beyond recognized forms of dress and examine items that were hitherto perceived as belonging to the medical domain. This paper embraces a similar outlook and expands upon the currently available research. It considers how the amputee body is incorporated into the visual mainstream through the use of new generation “fashionable” prostheses, and how – and if – such prostheses can help to disrupt dominant discourses of normalcy. To do this, we study visual representations of three amputee artists and public figures: British performer Viktoria Modesta, American athlete, model and speaker Aimee Mullins and Japanese artist Mari Katayama. We argue that the use of aesthetic prostheses de-medicalizes disabled bodies and instead constructs them as consumer bodies, granting them what disability scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson calls “the freedom to be appropriated by consumer culture” and “integrating a previously excluded group into the dominant order” (2004, 96). We then turn to the few images of disability that subvert such order, by engaging with prostheses creatively or by rejecting them altogether and celebrating unadorned stumps. KEYWORDS: fashion, disability, prosthetics, amputees, non-normative bodies
[0 Agency] Prosthetic pavilion Vol.3
Festival novomedijske kulture Speculum Artium, 2022
Prosthetic pavilion Vol.3 is initially established as an online curatorial platform for the 5th edition of The Wrong Biennial. The embassy/pavilion has brought together artists from around the world. As the platform title /zero agency/ insinuates, the rhizome-networked growth of the platform’s aesthetics and content has changed many shapes and forms, completely open to participant interventions. The summary of it will now be translated into a physical space. The aim is to create a physically immersive environment of labyrinth-like movement throughout the embassy space, from video, sound, and image to VR /360content – from hypertext and virtual x-y-z – to a curated spatial, and embodied experience. The pavilion spreads throughout two separate rooms (no tolerance hyper party, and 0 agency) connected via the portal for trespassing. _____ The first embassy iteration was presented at the Digital Big Screen segment of the Speculum Artium festival of new media culture in Trbovlje, Slovenia. _____ https://speculumartium.si/wp21/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/speculum\_artium\_2022\_katalog.pdf
Prosthetic limbs on display: from maker to user
Prosthetic devices have been used in museums to tell clinical, technical and personal stories. Here we reflect on the ways artificial limbs and their users were represented in recent museum projects at the Royal College of Surgeons of England and at National Museums Scotland. We consider how these meaningful artefacts illuminate three overlapping themes in museum scholarship and practice: the representation of disabled people and disability in museums; reflections on conflict-acquired limb loss; and the presence or otherwise of user or patient voice in interpretation. In working with and representing people who design and wear prosthetics we advocate a balance between narratives of technique and of use.