RETURN TO OLDER WORKS
simbodies & nobodies, 2009
Details
Installation, all dimensions variable.
The Unknown Girl - Installation; plaster cast, plaster & silicone mould
SimBaby - Single channel digital video projection, 8 min looped
SimBodies - Six medical demonstration manikins, six plaster casts under glass domes, six circular plinths, six plaster and silicone moulds
Nobodies (see below) - Six digital videos of SimBodies heads, flat-screen monitors, various lengths, looped
Photography: Ruth Clark
DESCRIPTION
SimBodies & NoBodies is a presentation of new work by Christine Borland at the Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast. In this exhibition the artist continues her exploration of medical practice, proposing new relationships with the systems and processes that shape our society and define our lives and deaths.
Christine Borland’s work has examined the relationship between medicine and performance, with a historical focus on the Anatomy Theatre and the Operating Theatre. For ‘SimBodies & NoBodies’, Borland has taken as her starting point the paradigm of learning by simulation in practical, clinical situations. In replica teaching wards and emergency rooms, a cast of simulated patient manikins can be programmed to recover if given the right treatment, or to die if their care is incorrect.
Through video work, sculpture and installation, using characters that include Choking Charlie, Mr Hurthead and Airway Larry, Borland quietly draws the viewer into the world of the SimMan. SimBodies & NoBodies reanimates these beings by introducing aesthetics and ambiguity to an arena dominated by function and objectivity. Crossing the imaginary line dividing the body from the self, the specimen from the individual, the doctor from the patient, this exhibition attempts to recuperate something of the essence of being human.
Extract, SimBodies & NoBodies Press Release
NoBODIES VIDEOS
Six digital videos which are played on wall-mounted flat screens; these NoBodies films document the process of each plaster SimBodies head cooling and condensing under glass domes just after they are pulled, still hot, from their plaster and silicone molds.