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Events
Seminar Day 1 03 | Seminar Day 2 03 | Seminar Day 3: Contexts 04 | Dissection 04 | Seminar Day 4 05 | Research Seminar Series 05
'Dissection'
Friday September 10th, 2004
Anatomy Theatre in the Cellular Biology Dept. of the Medical School
Organised by:
Gabrielle Baker: bakerg@unimelb.edu.au
Julian Savage: j.savage1@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au
Gary Willis: gwillis@alphalink.com.au
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In this ongoing interrogation of the theory / practice nexus the SCAtharsis
committee have been searching for a suitable location to present the corpus of
the SCA Post Graduate creative work. We have found a site to inspire a different paradigm
to the one usually evoked by the traditional university lecture theatre/art space .
Although it is not quite the operating theatre pictured to the left, it is in fact one of a similar genre.
It is a postgraduate anatomy theatre which is about to be decommissioned.
It is in the Anatomy and Cellular Biology Department above the New Medical Museum
in the Medical School of the University. |
| The theme of “Dissection” not only addresses the context in which the works are to be
presented, but also provides for a range of creative and theoretical interrogations including
analytical methodology or “operations”, genetics, cloning, embodiment and the anatomy of art.
The plan is to follow the creative presentations with an open panel discussion that puts our
art “under the scalpel”. |
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Synopsis:
Ricci-Jane Adams: VIVISECTION - The act of dissecting a living body
This is a hacked up and bloody messy presentation of the living body of
three of my plays in different stages of vivisection - one, already staged
but being rewritten, one awaiting staging and out of my butchering hands,
and the last bloodiest and messiest of them all, still on the table and
desperately seeking its own end.
All three shall have the juciest moments sliced out, which will then be
lovingly stichted together, in cross stitch perhaps, still moist at the
seams and dripping at the wounds, and forced into life before your very
eyes, in the body of a single actor.
Gabrielle Baker: untitled [audio/visual presentation]
The cloner removes a nucleus from an egg. She removes the nucleus
from a somatic cell, say a skin cell, from the DNA donor - a pig, a cow, or
a human. The nucleus is next placed in the enucleated egg. The
genetically modified egg is then subjected to an electric current. If it
works, an embryo of the mammal being cloned comes into being
asexually, and begins embryonic division in the same manner as a
"natural" embryo. If implanted and gestated, and all goes well, it will result
in the birth of a cloned piglet, lamb, or baby, as the case may be.
Tim Barrass: somAnts: five dry minutes
My work is indebted to centuries of vivisection and necrotomy that led
to contemporary theoretical models of nerve systems. In contrast with
this wet past, my creative practice at university is very dry. All there
is to see at this stage is a series of tests which put recent neural
network theory into practice in an arrangement that generates images for
visual/aesthetic engagement. The process I am using has always
reminded me of setting up biological cultures in petri dishes and coming back the
next day to see what happens. So far, I can only guess how the results
relate to my efforts to shape them.
Alyson Cambell: A dotted line on the throat CUT HERE
Sarah Kane's 'middle' play Cleansed is set in a concentration camp/university and involves a fair bit of slicing and dicing: tongues, hands, genitals come under an unwieldy knife in a physical dissection. Her final play, 4.48 Psychosis, enacts a similar dissection, but this time it is a linguistic autopsy on a mind that's heading for death but not dead yet.
Luke Mullins will perform fragments of the 'bewildered fragments' that form 4.48 Psychosis.
Anne Daly: The Kitchen Sink
On the floor lies a smashed bottle, its remains held together by the manufacturers label. A knife rests in a drawer. Fingers tap on a table. (“ Damn fingers. Run me mad.”) A relative returns. Moans and screams are heard from next door. (Mrs. May cried with fright when she saw “…the bloody stumps blotted with cotton wool and tape.”) The back of a gloved hand wipes a forehead.
To be read by Michelle Aung Thin.
Julian Savage: Beyond the Naked Eye [a short video experiment]
What can we really see? Our sight (unaided) only allows us access to ten per cent of the the entire electromagnetic light wave spectrum. In Beyond the Naked Eye a scientist develops a serum, which, by accumulative effect, allows him to see outside of the range of the visible spectrum. The body becomes a site of palpable knowledge as the scientist’s sight adjusts to x-ray, infra-red and begins to approach the grand myth of our time: the perception of deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA. To see the imprint of life itself is a deluded conceit. The mad scientist is mad only insofar as being the one who fails to find a solution or who goes insane in the attempt. Technology can only give us an impression of what something might be like to look at – this goes for microscopes as for telescopes, x-rays, cat-scans and so on. The power of this vision, as abstract as it is, is to aid in the analysis or dissection of matter, to search, in engaging science’s metaphysical motif, for those ineffable essences. The film is an experiment, conducted in the ‘pure’ sense, following through its hypothesis to the end. It is only science in the sense that it is fiction as well. Equal parts retro-styled science education film, sci-fi schlock and visceral shock montage, Beyond the Naked Eye confronts the act of vision itself. Inspired by: Georges Bataille, Luis Buñuel, Roger Corman, David Cronenberg, José Marins, Andreas Vesalius.
Maxienne Tritton-Young: Homage Au Lautreamont
Comte de Lautreamont was a name that infiltrated my attempts to freely experience of taking part in the dissection tour of the site.
The poet henceforth flavoured my free word flow due to my emersion in all that is surreal in my research. Therefore my dissection will join the cue of those who have payed homage to his ‘chance meeting between an umbrella and a sewing machine on a dissecting table’.
‘Homage Lautreamont’, will be a 15 minute performance. The performance will start at the given time and will unfold as it happens using objects from my word flow. It will end when the designated time has runs out.
John Waller: Entity [a work in progress]
‘entity’ is an interactive, somewhat autonomous, somewhat abstract, somewhat alien, somewhat familiar, 3D, computer animated character. You can tickle it. You can punch it. And you can massage it.
‘entity’s responses depend on its emotional state - which depends on how you have been treating it...
Gary Willis: World Forming
The point of this operation is not so much to cut deep, into the bare bones of the matter, as much as to open up a seam; to clear a space for an expanded field, a multi-valent molecular structure. To share some thoughts, to draw out a diagram, as if we could, share a virus or engender a mime. A dynamic molecular structure capable of sustaining us for this experiment. This performance will be a two-word, three-syllable charade of - 'sounds like' - 'looks like'. Fishing for a punctum not referenced in the King James. Derrida expands his yiddish unease while Martin Heidegger awkwardly paces around the idea - our 'Zeitgeist'.
'Stone' they remind us is without world, while Man is 'World-Forming'.
Pictures of the venue:
Although this theatre is small we believe it should be big enough to facilitate the close
examination of our creative work amongst our peers. The room is intimate in scale; it has steeply
raked seating for 28, a thin walk way between a black board and a raised semi-circular display
table and a hand basin. Curtain and/or screens are possible to erect and SCAtharsis expect
to have all the appropriate audio/visual equipment available on the day.
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Helpful Hint #2:
As a postgrad at the SCA you are allocated online hosting of a personalised
webpage. This is intended as a one-page overview of your academic profile and can
be easily stored in your personal folder on the School's server for uploading
by the IT Co-orindator. Such a page on the university web is an excellent way for people
who search the web for you or on topics you are researching to find your page, it offers a great opportunity for
making yourself known, and faciliates feedback from interested parties. See Dennis Claringbold
for details on how to set this up: 8344-8384, Rm: A220, d.claringbold@unimelb.edu.au
Helpful Hint #1:
Did you know that as a MCA and PhD
researcher you are allocated $300 and $500 respectively every year for buying books,
conference fees, purchasing art materials, whatever?! Ask your supervisor for details.
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