Re: [-empyre-] Re: Tina Gonsalves on "Bare Life"

[Tina Gonsalves <tina@tinagonsalves.com>]

Sorry Michele, this got a bit longwinded.

A major thread through my work is has always been intersections between 
medicine, art and technology. Like art, the practice of medicine is 
loaded with grief, intimacy, vulnerability and exposure. Sick people 
must bare their fragility, reveal intimacies of body and mind, The sick 
person is often in a dependent, apprehensive, vulnerable, and 
exploitable state. 

With the development of the Xray, the internal was externalised, 
revolutionizing science (and the way we looked at the world) with its 
ability to reveal what was invisible to the naked eye. It gave us 
insight into the workings our body, allowing us to build a more 
intimate relationship with it. But within the consulting room, these 
medical images are only briefly shown to the depicted indi­vidual and 
the practitioner rarely explains them. The doctor becomes the all 
powerful decoder. The patient’s view is rarely sought. There seems to 
be a one directional flow of information, with the medical professional 
as an active transmitter and the depicted individual as a passive 
receiver. To the patient, the medical images of their depicted selves 
can seem swathed in mysticism and mystery, holding an almost prophetic 
quality when it comes to detecting serious diseases. Does the image 
reveal life or death?

With 3 dimensional ultrasounds, expectant parents can purchase 
high-resolution video sequences of the foetus, as ‘foetal keepsake 
videos’. The diagnostic image is transposed to a recreational 
image.Beyond the purpose of ascertaining foetal well-being and 
promoting parental bonding, the technique changes the private 
experience of the mother and foetus into a public exhibit. Also, the 
advances in foetal imaging due to ultrasound impacted on society with 
its potential to underwrite anti-abortion arguments.

Mediating our inner body has also distanced us from it. The medical 
community is inclined to decode the diagnostic image rationally, 
objectively, and deny the patient’s sensory perception, often creating 
a discord between what is seen and what is felt. Often the body is 
rendered alien, as the doctor fragments the body, the patient becomes a 
specific illness, the dysfunction they suffer. I often wonder if the 
diagnostic image serve to distance the doctors from their patient’s 
often smelly, vulnerable and messy conditions? Has society has become 
far too sanitized or clinical and that people no longer engage with the 
messiness of being human? In the 16th Century, it is said the doctor 
would use all of his senses to diagnose, often tasting the patients 
urine in order to diagnose the disease.

As the body becomes mediated, the body is then being used as a 
commodity, a thing consumed. Our bodies unique biological 
characteristics have become commodities to be sold and traded. The way 
we smell, our eye structure, our fingerprints, our voice patterns and 
conversations, sweat, heart rate - are being mapped and digitized as 
part of a new industry.

In my work, earlier collage works were expressions of subjective 
emotional response to the beauty and com­plexity found in the 
‘medicalised’ images of the body, sort of more basic reinterpretations. 
Some of these questioned the ‘nature’ of communication, commenting on 
science and the medical profes­sion in often satirical, subversive, or 
ambivalent ways. I then started to use video to look at how the 
rational medical gaze separates images of the body from an awareness of 
other cul­tural, sensual, erotic, social, spiritual, emotional and 
historical conditions and contexts. A lot of earlier video work 
explored this fragmentation, and the angst this caused. Other video 
works, such as “Discharge” and “I Am You”, attempted to engage the way 
the contemplation of dreams, emotional states, spiritual awareness and 
notions of self can inform the artistic recon­struction and 
representation of modern diagnostic images. With “Loss Series” 2002, I 
began using my own emotions to create the work itself – to attempt to 
translate the emotional interiority of the body. I then attempted to 
mimick the technique, using technology to monitor the audiences’ 
emotional body to drive the emotional narratives.I then began to use 
wireless and intimate wearable technologies as biofeedback devices, to 
allow better relationships with our own bodies - Looking at the role of 
art experiences to create healing.

Ultimately, Through artistically reinterpreting the diagnostic images 
and techniques from a subjective and emotional perspective, my work 
attempts to emancipate the diagnostic image, imagining how emotionally 
and individually designed images could potentially play a role in 
future healthcare, by inserting the ‘lived’ body into the image. I 
imagined, by providing images that did not display solely factual 
information, this would pro­vide a basis to further inform 
complementary modes of communication between the practitio­ner and the 
patient in the future.

On 03/07/2006, at 9:15 PM, M White wrote:

> Ana's consideration of existence also reminds me of
> medical imaging issues--particularly as they relate to
> women. I wonder if Tina would comment on the ways she
> uses technologies that tend to image women but prevent
> women from seeing or having any control of their
> depictions? The ultrasounds that pregnant women
> receive are one of the few instances where women are
> allowed to see their own depictions. In most cases
> [other ultrasounds, CAT scans, MRIs…] the images are
> held back from the "patient" or technicians and
> doctors refuse to read what the individual is seeing
> on the screen. I requested to see a CAT scan and the
> technician wouldn't let me view it without my doctor's
> permission. What does it mean when we lose control of
> our bodies in such ways and can be seen by others but
> cannot "look" at "ourselves?" I am reminded of Roland
> Barthes' indication that other individuals can see us
> but we can never see the full view of self except
> through such mediating structures as mirrors and photography.
> _______________________________________________
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Tina Gonsalves
http://www.tinagonsalves.com