Gross anatomy, the study of anatomical structures that can be seen by unassisted vision, has long been a subject of fascination for artists. For most modern viewers, however, the anatomy lesson—the technically precise province of clinical surgeons and medical faculties—hardly seems the proper breeding ground for the hybrid workings of art and theory. We forget that, in its early stages, anatomy pursued the highly theatrical spirit of Renaissance science, as painters such as Rembrandt and Da Vinci and medical instructors like Fabricius of Aquapendente shared audiences devoted to the workings of the human body. Anatomy Live: Performance and the Operating Theatre, a remarkable consideration of new developments on the stage, as well as in contemporary writings of theorists such as Donna Haraway and Brian Massumi, turns our modern notions of the dissecting table on its head—using anatomical theatre as a means of obtaining a fresh perspective on representations of the body, conceptions of subjectivity, and own knowledge about science and the stage. Critically dissecting well-known exhibitions like Body Worlds and The Visible Human Project and featuring contributions from a number of diverse scholars on such subjects as the construction of spectatorship and the implications of anatomical history, Anatomy Live is not to be missed by anyone with an interest in this engaging intersection of science and artistic practice.
Author(s): Maaike Bleeker
Series: Mediamatters
Edition: 1
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 271
Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgements......Page 8
Prologue Men with Glass Bodies......Page 10
Introduction......Page 12
Performance Documentation 1: Holoman; Digital Cadaver......Page 24
Digital Cadavers and Virtual Dissection......Page 30
‘Who Were You?’: The Visible and the Visceral......Page 50
Performance Documentation 2: Excavations : Fresh but Rotten......Page 68
The Anatomy Lesson of Professor Moxham......Page 76
‘Be not faithless but believing’: Illusion and Doubt in the Anatomy Theatre......Page 94
Performance Documentation 3: De Anatomische Les......Page 112
Of Dissection and Technologies of Culture in Actor Training Programs – an Example from 1960s West Germany......Page 114
Ocular Anatomy, Chiasm, and Theatre Architecture as a Material Phenomenology in Early Modern Europe......Page 130
Performance Documentation 4: Camillo – Memo 4.0: The Cabinet of Memories – A Tear Donnor Session......Page 148
Martin , Massumi , and The Matrix......Page 152
Performance Documentation 5: sensing presence no. 1: performing a hyperlink system......Page 166
‘Where Are You Now?’: Locating the Body in Contemporary Performance......Page 170
Performance Documentation 6: Under My Skin......Page 182
Anatomies of Live Art......Page 188
Performance Documentation 7: Crash......Page 206
Restaging the Monstrous......Page 212
Delirium of the Flesh: ‘All the Dead Voices’ in the Space of the Now......Page 224
Performance Documentation 8: Körper......Page 246
Operating Theatres: Body-bits and a Post-apartheid Aesthetics......Page 252
Index......Page 264
