Organised by Aura Satz

Spring Term 2006

The overall purpose of the seminars is to look at the anagrammatic metaphor as one that can be applied to neurological plasticity. Body-image is a malleable, vulnerable, anagrammatic, re-organisable structure, an adaptive phantom second-skin that structures our proprioceptive notion of body. At the same time, one can view anagrammatic thinking as characteristic of cross-disciplinary research, which scrambles and re-assembles traditional disciplines into new bodies of thought. As such, the seminars take a cross-disciplinary approach, looking at the themes of neuroscience, magic and art; pathological experience; phantom limbs; virtual limbs and real pain relief; tissue culture, bio-technology and genetic cloning; surrealism’s improbable anatomies; and photographic ventriloquism. The invited speakers come from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines, including neuroscience, magic, art history, cultural studies, and artistic, curatorial and performative practices.

Week One (9th Feb): Dr. Aura Satz: ‘I Am Anagram.’

Honorary Research Fellow at the London Consortium. Her recent performance project ‘I Am Anagram’, devised under the guidance of Chris Frith and Jonathan Cole, in collaboration with Scott Penrose, was premiered at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, in December 2005. Forthcoming publications include ‘Articulate Objects: Voicing and Listening to Sculpture and Performance’ (2006).

Reading:
Hans Bellmer, “A brief anatomy of the physical unconscious or the anatomy of the image”, The Doll (London: Atlas Anti-Classics 14, 2005) pp. 103-158.
S. Weir Mitchell, “The Case of George Dedlow”, Atlantic Monthly 18, no. 105 (July 1866), 1-11.

Week Two (16th Feb): Dr. Ken Arnold: ‘Drawing on Science’

Head of Public Programmes at the Wellcome Trust. Curated exhibitions include ‘Medicine Man: The Forgotten Museum of Henry Wellcome’, at the British Museum(2003), and ‘Treat Yourself’ at the Science Museum (2003). Books include ‘Cabinets for the Curious: Looking back at Early English Museums’ (Ashgate, 2006), ‘The Collectors Voice: Early Voices (1500-1750)’ (co-edited, Ashgate, 2000) and exhibition catalogues ‘Materia Medica: A New Cabinet of Medicine and Art’ (1995) and ‘Pills and Profits: The Selling of Medicines Since 1870’ (1994).

Reading:
Ken Arnold, ‘Between explanation and inspiration: images in science’. Chapter in Sian Ede, Strange and charmed:new science and the contemporary visual arts (Gulbenkian Foundation, London, 2000) pp.68-83
Ken Arnold, Introduction, ‘Cabinets for the Curious: Looking back at Early English Museums’ (Ashgate, 2006).

Week Three (23 Feb): Professor Chris Frith & Professor Jonathan Cole: ‘Virtual Phantoms and Real Pain Relief, Neurological Remapping and Virtual Reality’

Chris Frith: Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience and University College London. Chris Frith pioneered the development of functional brain imaging as an important technique in contemporary neuroscience. Classic publications include The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia (1992).
Jonathan Cole: University of Bournemouth (School of Design, Engineering and Computing), Southampton University and Poole Hospital. Publications include Pride and a Daily Marathon, About Face and Still Lives. Jonathan Cole is currently principal investigator in a Wellcome Trust funded project on Virtual re-Embodiment for Phantom Limb Pain.

Reading:
Chris Frith “The Pathology of Experience,” editorial in Brain 127 (2004), pp. 239-242.
Chris Frith et al. “Abnormalities in the Awareness and Control of Action” in Philological Transaction of the Royal Society London 355 (2000), pp. 1771-1788.

Week Four (2nd March): Dr. Andrew Patrizio: ‘Re-enacting the Strange Case of Ambroise Paré’

Edinburgh College of Art, writer and Curator. Andrew Patrizio is currently curating the forthcoming ‘Anatomy Acts’ for the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh City Art Centre. Previous curated exhibitions include Art Unlimited (1994), Giuseppe Penone (1999 and 2000), Transistors: new small sculpture from Scotland (1998)

Week Five (9th March): Dr. Marquard Smith: ‘Skin: Bodies, Bio-technologies, Interfacing’

Kingston University. Publications include Stelarc: The Monograph (edited, The MIT Press, 2005), The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future (co-edited, The MIT Press, 2005), and he is currently completing a book entitled ‘Moving Bodies: Perverse Visions of Prosthetic Culture.’

Reading:
Lennard J. Davis, ‘Stumped by Genes: Lingua Gataca, DNA, and Prosthesis’ in Smith and Morra, eds., ‘The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future’ (MIT, 2005)

Week Six (16th March): Dr. Simon Baker: ‘Deviations of Nature: Georges Bataille, Surrealism and the Human Figure’

University of Nottingham. Currently involved in preparing documentation for the forthcoming exhibition on Bataille’s ‘Documents’ at the Hayward Gallery. Simon Baker has also written catalogue essays for the Chapman Brothers and Julião Sarmento.’

Reading:
Georges Bataille, ‘The Big Toe’ & ‘The Deviations of Nature’ in A. Stoekl (ed.), Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-39 (Minnesota, 1985.)
Georges Bataille, ‘Human Face’ & Anon., ‘Man 1 & 2′, in G. Bataille et. al., Encyclopedia Acephalica, (Atlas Press, 1995)

Week Seven (23 March): Lindsay Seers: ‘I Saw the Light’

Artist, performer and lecturer at De Montfort University, Nottingham Trent, Royal Academy Schools. Recently toured solo-exhibition ‘I Saw the Light’ at Gasworks Gallery, London, Gallery of Photography, Dublin; City Art Gallery, Leicester; and the Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool.

Reading:
Toward a Philosophy for Photography, Vilem Flusser (Reaktion Books, 2000)
Burning with Desire, Geoffrey Batchen (MIT 1997)
Techniques of the Observer, Jonathan Crary (MIT 1992)

General Bibliography

Hans Bellmer, “A brief anatomy of the physical unconscious or the anatomy of the image”, The Doll (London: Atlas Anti-Classics 14, 2005) pp. 103-158.

S. Weir Mitchell, “The Case of George Dedlow”, Atlantic Monthly 18, no. 105 (July 1866), 1-11. Available online at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/693.

V.S Ramachandran & Sandra Blakeslee, Phantoms in the Brain: Human Nature and the Architecture of the Brain, (London: Fourth Estate, 1998)

Paul Schilder, The Image and Appearance of the Human Body (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1935)

Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra (eds.), The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future, (MIT, 2005)

Gail Weiss, Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality (New York and London, Routledge, 1999)

David Wills, Prosthesis (California: Stanford University Press, 1995)