Medical Experimental – 28 May 19.15
100 min - E*Cinema
19:15 EYE
IJpromenade 1, 1031KT Amsterdam
program
Participants: Nil Baskar, Christien Bax, Hannah Carpenter, Chun-Han Chiang, Yvette Granata, Yuliya Gulyan, Krista Jamieson, Bogna Konior, Light Show Sphinx (Piet Koster and Sjaco Karmelk), Silvia Martes, Milena Naef, Eoin O'Donohoe, Renato Osoy Menard, Alina Ozerova, Alex Peringer, Hannah Polak, Smári Rúnar Róbertsson, Sophia Satchell-Baeza, Elena Taylor, Jessica Tucker, Travis Werlen, and Baha Görkem Yalim.
Historical clips from the EYE collection, juxtaposed with new works made by VAV students, exploring the idea of experimentation in science and beyond. An examination of the technologies of the visual in surgery as well as in cinema, and of medicine’s promise and peril as portrayed via the medium of film. Presented by the Rietveld Academie and the Universiteit van Amsterdam’s master Presentation and Preservation.
Health, sickness, and the human condition. Tonight's programme provides an artistic interpretation of archival material in an attempt to portray society's relationship with the realm of medicine. Here we show patients as performers, storytellers, works of art, and objects of voyeurism, as both fiction and fact. By creating new and reusing old materials we question the stability of truths in medical cinema. The surgeon’s cut through the body mirrors the filmmakers cut through moving images. Films once produced to discipline human bodies within the institutional framework of Western medicine, to educate and transmit medical knowledge now emerge within a larger framework of storytelling, art, truth and falsification.
By creating new and reusing old materials we question the stability of truths in medical cinema; we reconstruct the already constructed. No other artistic activity mirrors so faithfully Dr. Frankenstein’s obsession with creating new life from forms previously considered finite in their purpose. Under the inhuman eyes of the camera - the tool of surgeons, magicians, soldiers, scientists and artists alike, borders can be blurred. It is an experiment in itself, and editing is its surgery. The films demand a reevaluation of the doctor/patient relationship and ask for a redefinition of the politics of the human body.
Perhaps the next time you find yourself sitting in the waiting room, thumbing through an old magazine, you will recall some of the images from tonight. After the screening we invite you to join us in a discussion with the artists.
