05/11/2021 Jarred Body Parts

*Please note that the dates may not line up as these texts were kept in a private document before publishing*

As part of my investigation into the feminine body, and its parts, I planned a trip to the Surgeons Hall museum in Edinburgh this week, to see lots of jarred body parts, and hopefully find out some new information about the past/future of the human body and its treatment.

I was right, there were lots and lots of jarred body parts. In the next week, I am wanting to take all this visual content I got to see and develop the abstraction of the body that I have been thinking about, to open it up and consider the internal and its presentations. I will say however, for all those many, many jars of parts, there were not many focusing on the biological female anatomy, these were all relegated to a small corner at the back of a large hall. Says it all doesn't it.

This aside, there was also a very interesting, new exhibition focussing on the future of surgery, where robotics, AI and cameras may start to play a bigger role in day-to-day medical practices. It gave off a simultaneous sense of an advanced hopeful future, with safer surgeries and even more advanced medical practices, but also a disconnectedness, a cold view of the body as something that merely needs repaired then once again sent out on its way.

I started to think about how strange this was, to go from literal physical body parts, to computer imaging, and how I can fuse these together through the sculptures I have been planning that combine physical works with moving image, old techniques with new to create a strange version of the body and its parts.

I was particularly interested in a table, the size of a surgery table, made up of screens with a body shown on it, to plan a surgery, being able to switch between layers of the body, from the skin down to the muscles down to the organs, making the journey below the skin to go in and fix or change an issue. I have a real fondness for a downward projection as it is, so I want to see how I could project a body onto a table and emulate this kind of imagery a disconnected physical body as it is there but not there all at the same time, a compromised physicality.

I wonder as well how a projected body changes the perception of it, that there is only the light making it up, that it cant be reached out and touched, which is a real turn around from the work I currently make which is very physical due to the nature of the textiles and sewing. Even if it was to be one of these sewn bodies photographed or filmed and then turned into a projected work, what does that say about the physicality and vulnerability of the body that I have so been interested in? Does it say that you may look with a clinical eye but not touch?

I’m becoming very conscious of the end of the semester and therefore the formative assessment is coming up very quickly (about 4 weeks) and so have plans for the next while to make the things I have been planning, to just do it. I aim that by the end of the next four weeks I will have a resolved work comprising both material and moving image to present for formative assessment.

This should be doable as I have already been creating the component parts just need to begin piecing them together, figuring out how they would be best presented.

I’ve shown here some working examples, developing these sculptural works, hoping to fully resolve these into pieces fit for exhibition: