The Theatre of Our Bodies
- Submitting institution
-
Goldsmiths' College
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 2769
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
-
-
- Location
- -
- Brief description of type
- Interactive website, production archive, talks series, art book, research essays
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2018
- URL
-
http://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/24573/
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
T - Theatre and Performance
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This portfolio curates an interdisciplinary project conducted over four years, originating in three commissions and one residency. Different audiences were engaged live and online in a range of modes including a live production, interactive digital artwork, one public talks series, five workshops, an art book, a keynote address, three talks, theoretical writings and four conference papers: http://www.iamnotapieceofmeat.com. Extensive, complex Practice Research included analysis of cultural and medical history and how anatomy and culture overlap; collaboration with museum directors, producers, festivals, venues, composer, technicians, scenographer, filmmaker and a digital design artist; and fieldwork with medical professionals and arts and health workers.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This is a multi-faceted exploration of how anatomy (what bodies are made of) and culture (what bodies mean) overlap, confronting the anxiety and disavowal of mortality that visceral materiality conjures. Research has engaged with dissection historically, culturally and as taught in medical schools. The impact of the opened, parsed body on the public imagination deeply affected Renaissance culture, whilst today public anatomy prevails, re-invented as sensationalist spectacle (https://bodyworlds.com/) or controversial online tools (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/visible_human.html). _x000D_
_x000D_
I investigate the layperson’s imaginative relationship to interiority, the corpse’s performativity, and how the cadaver (from the Latin ‘to fall’) has represented a moral object for science and society. I empower people to speak corporeally and to note emotions that arise when thinking from, into and through the lived body (Merleau-Ponty). Developing from my works on Assisted Reproduction (REF 2014), this research contributes innovative artefacts and discourses to the emerging field of performance and medicine. _x000D_
_x000D_
The doctor/patient ‘medical couple’ as a model of power/powerlessness manifests the biopolitical system (Foucault). In an increasingly technological clinical environment, taboo about the body provokes anxiety, augmenting medical authority and domination over an often bewildered and overwhelmed patient. Such impotence traverses the history of medicine. I propose the need to become proactive in our own welfare and healthcare. Knowledge promotes assertive collaboration with, rather than control from, experts. I address the postmodern experience of illness/wellness that begins when individuals recognise that felt bodily experiences extend beyond the medical story (Frank). I encourage an appropriation of medical narratives, and refusal to be reduced to clinical material, so that ownership of the lived body is restored._x000D_
_x000D_
This portfolio contextualises my interactive artwork comprising An Anatomy Act (production archive); Interiority: an exploration of the inward gaze (talks series); Corpography limited edition art book (digitised, and provided analogue); research essays.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -