Screening the Body

August 15, 2011:

Vienna/London – planned presentation with Lisa Cartwright, Professor of Communication at the University of California at San Diego and author of the book Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture (University of Minnesota Press), at Whitechapel Gallery in London, invited by Clod Ensemble. Moving images are used as diagnostic tools and locational devices every day in hospitals, clinics and laboratories but how and when did such techniques come to be accepted sources of knowledge about the body in medical culture? For this event, Lisa Cartwright traces the unusual history of medical imaging during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, presenting material that is at once disturbing and engrossing and artist Christina Lammer presents her work on interventional radiology and digital fluoroscopy imaging. In her video screening she will address issues of diagnosis and treatment of the blood flow as exemplary medical technique that shapes the ways of how we experience our bodies. Event: 19-11-2011, 2 pm until 3.30 pm Whitechapel Gallery, London For the screening at Whitechapel Gallery I will continue a study that was already performed in interventional radiology a decade ago. I will take the opportunity to spend one day in the operating theatres at the Department of Interventional Radiology and Angiography at Medical University Vienna (MUV), oberserving interventions with the help of video. In addition, I will video interview the head of the department, Johannes Lammer (not related by blood), about new innovations in his particular field of medical practice. The outcome of these investigations shall lead to the development of a video installation. Photograph: Christina Lammer, 2011