Body and Soul

These could by described as photographic drawings; a collaboration between Croix Gagnon and Frank Schott. To create these images the image sequence of the Visual Human Project played on the screen of a laptop while being photographed. This is achieved by extending the exposure time of the photograph to give them time to move the laptop around the picture plain.

The image becomes stretched or condensed during the photograph through the movements of the artist. Here it captures a wispy free form of the body as it is fluidly and seems to softly reconstruct the body from head to toe.  I am guessing they saw or proposed the outcome and persisted with it, as it developed they then decided upon the backgrounds and how they wanted the images to be dictated; to this idea of making a soul/ghost- like cliche from the raw bodily data of the Visible Human Project as a good crossover of this long debated philosophical argument, between tangible and ephemeral, body and soul.

http://www.project1231.com/#1196390/Process

I saw your body in four halves

Absolutely beautiful illustrations of the cross section of the body by Christian Wilhelm Braune (1831 - 1897). These soft detailed drawings briefly distract me from the thought that it must have been quite a feat to saw this body flat down the Saggital plane of the body as they did. This was in order to study the centre(s) of gravity upon the human body; I also recall reading that prints would then be made of its basic contours to aid the drawing by placing the paper on the freshly cut plane.

The Meta-Medical Problem

Here is an extract from an artistic project in progress. In this case, I can add scope by entering text alongside the extra-ordinary illustrative situations. To etch out these thoughts as I would a drawing or sketch. Descriptive and fictive devices provide a freedom while still remaining a recognizable formal framework. Every drawing, sculpture, painting and so on enter to this, becoming relevant toward this momentum, no matter how minuscule the entry may at first seem. Beyond the sum of its (/my) parts.

(P) Doctor: “Patient Behaviour”.

Patients with terminal conditions display many different behavioural patterns. Not all are negative, many patients exhibit extraordinary new attempts at friendship, enticing new friends and reuniting old ties, freshening up on moist reconciliation. The doctor restrained himself from noting: so that more people show up at the funeral.

~

The patient seems to want to tell someone something

The patient naturally fights and revels in wanting to tell someone, yet this proves the hardest transition to make emotionally. Intellectually difficult emotions. The words are predictable, the order of them is not. The sympathetic ear hears these difficult words, the impossible words nonetheless, (p) unsatisfied with the words changes their order and repeats; 1. catastrophic emotion hinders any further access to the true thoughts, this will be the first time time is wasted. This is another version of the mini-death, a relief ultimately played out as a disappointment to have been excreted out this mouth at all.

Prescription to situation:

(P) holds onto tension,

Tension and the life force are connected,

Either consciously or unconsciously,

Must be taken four times a day?

Fatigue ensues.

Stop the Operation!

Stop That Bleeding! Whenever you encounter massive bleeding, the first thing to remember is its not your blood.' This is one of many unexpected phrases I found within a medical book on traumatic surgery. The book is geared towards teaching the surgeon to deal with intense and unpredictable situations.  They are encountering multiple wounds, a lot of blood, hidden ruptures.. all at once with little time to spare, while mobilizing the team and formulated decisions to be put into action. The surprises come with the  writing style in the medical journal here - I am imagining most of you, like me do not read surgical textbooks all that often..

'Bleeding control is not about mastering some cool moves'.

'Don't fiddle - be a rock.'

‘Opening Pandora’s Box: Think twice (and possibly three times) before deciding to mobilize the liver in a patient with thoraco-abdominal injury. You may be blowing the lid off Pandora’s box. (…) If indeed you are dealing with a contained retrohepatic caval injury, you will lose containment, converting the situation into uncontrolled venous hemorrhage. Very rapidly you will find yourself trying to squeeze the toothpaste back in the tube.’

‘Every bullet tells a story’: ‘You maybe surprised to learn that the trajectory of the bullet can help you make an early decisions to bail out.’

The medical illustrations alongside the botanical illustrations is the source material for these drawings.

Where is your source material? Whether it is in life or in death.

The initial start of an art work is often in the route of the work, of its subject. Such as here, in these anatomical textbooks concerning the area I think about with an anthropomorphic take on the natural world- namely, that of human and/or ‘its’ potential manipulations on the body.. These inspirations converted into action range from mere interests, to the undeniable ideas which simply have to attempted. It is funny that often it doesn’t matter what anyone says to you about an idea, if you really want it, or it really hits home within you- you are going to make it. These drawings are in a roundabout way very personal to me, though they continue the somewhat fantastical-medical related themes in my work, they touch upon my very current brush with a premature bought on the surgical table.