Christina Lammer
Austria (residence) °1968
en
CHRISTINA LAMMER
is a research sociologist, collaborative multimedia artist and lecturer based in Vienna. Her work combines sensory ethnography with video, performance and body art in hospitals and clinics to focus on embodied emotion and sensory interaction between patients and physicians during the course of medical treatment. In Features: Vienna Face Project (2009-2014), Lammer investigates the place of portraiture and the aesthetics of the smile in facial plastic and reconstructive surgery. Surgical Wrappings (2009-2014) explores the material culture of surgery. Works in the series CORPOrealities (2004-2009) considered empathy, somatic perception, and the role of touch and the hands in the use of techniques such as image-guided vascular surgery at the Medical University Vienna (MUV). Her most recent books are Anatomiestunden / Anatomy Lessons, edited together with Artur Zmijewski (Vienna, Löcker Verlag, 2013), Empathography (Vienna, Löcker Verlag, 2012) and CORPOrealities (Vienna, Löcker Verlag, 2010). Lammer holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Vienna. http://www.corporealities.org.
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Exposition: Anatomical Self-Portraits as Fieldwork: Observations, Improvisations, and Elicitations in the Medical School (01/01/2014) by Kaisu Koski
In her exposition Kaisu Koski transcends the boundaries between arts and medicine. She discusses the method of self-portraying in an unconventional way. Koski suggests a theatre and performance art approach in her explorations. This is particularly valuable in the context of teaching and studying anatomy in clinical education where performative or even choreographic aspects play a major role. The author works with improvisation, photography and video. She puts herself in the vulnerable situation of a patient, using anatomical models for the creation of staged sceneries in a clinical environment. Normative facets within the relationships between (potential) physicians and sick persons are addressed. Kaisu Korski writes extensively about her engagement with the research process. Thus I would like to discuss her idea of inviting “the anatomy models to ‘talk’ to me by setting my body in various positions and relationships to them.” I understand that the dialogue the artist/scientist aims to create with particular anatomical objects is not specifically referring to speech acts, however she uses voice recordings of her collaboration partners and informants at the hospital, but more to bodily or sensory implications, right? I would be interested in how Kaisu Koski feels and experiences the clinical situations and the interaction with these weird objects. What did these artificial bodies and its parts – in a metaphorical sense – 'say' to you? What did they do to you? Or to put it with Aby Warburg, what is the ‘afterlife’ of these uncanningly profane creatures and how can we perceive and make sense of it in ourselves?