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Файл:Ординатура / Хирургия / Библиотека им академика М.И. Перельмана / Книга_5553_Библиотеки_им_академика_М_И_Перельмана
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this bodily envelope in order to supplement or strengthen the body.
As a device, the stand reflects a very specific conception of the
body, which is quite different, for instance, from that of traditional
Chinese medicine, where the body is thought of more in terms of
energies and points of puncture, rather than tubes and fluids. When I
consider Primordial Preservation from the point of view of a historian
or anthropologist of medicine, this work immediately suggests
something that is connected to a specific body in a specific space. I
also interpreted the green velvet shape as a snake. Beyond its rather
obvious symbolism related to the medical world, it further evokes the
animal world in general. In a certain sense, it acts as a kind of
counterpart to the stand signaling “health,” since the snake can
present a danger. If the snake were to bite me, its venom would
enter my blood and make me sick. In that sense, this object seems
very ambiguous, as it oscillates between health and toxicity. It also
fluctuates between the animal and human world, the technical and the
natural.
JILLIAN CROCHET It is interesting what you say about the ambiguity
of the work, since dirty water is not what one would want pumped
into their body at the hospital. Typically, an fluid would be sterilized,
kept separate from the body, and handled with gloves and masks in a
sterile environment. Obviously, the algae water is not sterile at all. A
family member caught a flesh-eating disease from falling into the
swamp water. Concerning the animal world versus the human world,
it is interesting that we as humans are also an animal but think that
animals are completely separated from us (Taylor 2017). Similarly,
the distinction between clean versus dirty is not as clear-cut as we
may think.
CHARLOTT E MAT T ER I was intrigued when you mentioned the
materiality of plastic, especially in combination with water. The liquid
in Primordial Preservation appears contaminated because it is not
pristine but tinted, and because the caption informs us that it contains
algae.
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FIG . 4
FIG. 4 Detail of Jillian Crochet, Primordial Preservation, 2019, yellow-green algae
liquid in the bag
But then there is also the fact that plastic, the container’s material,
itself contaminates water by cluttering up oceans and leaching
endocrine disruptors that enter and modify our bodies without us even
realizing. “Plastics and their chemicals,” as Max Liboiron observes,
“defy containment, a hallmark approach to industrial waste
management, as they blow, flow, and off-gas so that their pollutants
are ubiquitous in every environment tested” (2021, 17). This creates a
tension between the visibility and non-visibility of toxicity. Returning to
the notion of human and more-than-human worlds, you could almost
say that plastic has a kind of agency in the microcosm of this work—
for better or worse. It’s as if you’re inviting more porous definitions of
these different entities. I also found it interesting how Vincent
responded to the velvet object as something menacing, whereas you
were suggesting that it could have a soothing effect.
JILLIAN CROCHET I enjoy dealing with dichotomies and mixing things
up because nothing is black and white, and everything is living in
discordance. My doctor was talking the other day about the beneficial
impact of certain foods and changing one’s diet, but she also pointed
out that a number of chemotherapies are based on toxic plants.
LAURA VALTERIO There is an interesting ambiguity in your work
between what heals us and what harms us. Vincent read the velvet
object as a threatening, snakelike form; however, in Western culture,
snakes have historically also symbolized the process of healing. The
serpent entwined around a rod was a traditional attribute of the
Greco-Roman god of medicine, Asclepius, and is still used today as a
symbol by medical institutions, hospitals, and pharmacies. This
semantic ambiguity is deeply rooted in the Greek term pharmakon
and the Latin medicamentum, which carry the double meaning of
“poison” and “medicine.” This polysemy, famously explored by the
French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1981, 61–171) in his essay
“Plato’s Pharmacy,” locates toxicity not in the substances themselves
but in their use.
2
The Body Reclaimed: Contending with Medical Representation
and Objectification
CHARLOTT E MAT T ER Speaking of indeterminacy in terms of remedy
and poison, let us consider the use of X-rays in art with a series of
works from the 1970s by Italian artist Ketty La Rocca (1938 –1976).
La Rocca had been mostly working with collages, combining text and
images, and had also experimented with video, sculpture, and
performance when she began using X-rays in the early 1970s. By
then, she had been diagnosed with cancer and would later die of a
brain tumor. In a series called Craniologie (1973), La Rocca
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superimposed X-rays of her own skull with photographed hands and
handwritten text.
FIG. 5A Ketty La Rocca, Craniologia 1, 1973, lightbox, 2 parts overlapped, X-ray
and handwriting on plexiglass, 70 × 50 × 15 cm. Courtesy of Archive Ketty La
Rocca | Michelangelo Vasta and Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf
FIG . 5A, 5B, 5C
FIG. 5B Ketty La Rocca, Craniologia 5, 1973, lightbox, 2 parts overlapped, X-ray
and handwriting on plexiglass, 70 × 50 × 15 cm. Courtesy of Archive Ketty La
Rocca | Michelangelo Vasta and Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf
FIG. 5C Ketty La Rocca, Craniologia 12, 1973, lightbox, handwriting on X-ray, 70
× 50 × 15 cm. Courtesy of Archive Ketty La Rocca | Michelangelo Vasta and Kadel
Willborn, Düsseldorf
She traced new lines on top of the X-ray, reading “you you you you
you,” repeated like a mantra on top of her cranium. La Rocca thus
appropriated and indeed reclaimed the medical display of her body.
The medical image is overwritten and thereby transformed by the
artist’s own handwriting; it is further overlaid with photographs of a
hand. Depending on the gesture, the hand appears in some works
like an intruding element, evoking a kind of sexual penetration, while in
other works it suggests a thing that has grown and nested inside the
body, an embryo, perhaps, or a tumor. The hand is external, like a
scolding finger or a groping hand, but it has also been internalized,
literally and metaphorically. Both the word “you” and the X-ray serve
a similar purpose, which is to signify a kind of oppressive violence
through a self-portrait that reproduces an image of oneself imposed
from the outside and informed by normative conventions—be they
linguistic or medical. In a text titled “You, You” (1972–1973), La
Rocca explained her repetitive invocation of the second person
pronoun as such: “‘you, you’ tries to hamper the visual and mental
process / and to reduce the language to a simple bit of information /
and to make immediately clear the asymptote of alienation” (La
Rocca 1974). The process of “alienation” described by La Rocca is
tied to the experience of a gendered and medicalized body. In her
Craniologie, however, the ascription of what it means to be a woman,
and more specifically a sick woman—the “you” forcefully assigned by
medical imagery and societal expectations—is disrupted by a radical
subjectivity. The last aspect I want to mention is that La Rocca used
to work as an assistant radiologist in the late 1950s, before turning to
art, which means that the technique was known to her. In more than
one way, she had an intimate, embodied relation to these images:
they related to her past, to questions of labor and financial livelihood,
to caregiving, as well as to her present and insecure future in light of
her illness. Some have also speculated that her cancer may have
been related to her exposure to radiation from her work with X-rays.
VINCENT BARRAS This work was shown five years ago in an
exhibition titled Sublimi anatomie (Sublime Anatomies) at the Palazzo
delle Esposizioni in Rome. I also participated in this exhibition with a
performance-lecture that lasted a couple of hours, during which I
talked about everything we can imagine, know, and say about the
body—in fact, “The Whole Body” was the title of my performance. I
remember that many artists exhibited works that showed views of the
body, but also their views of the body. La Rocca’s multilayered
object, made up of X-ray, plexiglass, and ink, contains so many
biographical layers but also technical, historical, and medical aspects.
Oncology and radiology are indeed deeply intertwined; many of the
first radiologists at the end of the nineteenth century and the early
twentieth century almost all died of cancer because of their exposure
to radiation. Technology and safety precautions have now evolved, so
we know more about how to prevent this type of exposure for
radiologists and technicians, but it remains a very dangerous
workplace. On the other hand, these technologies obviously help to
save many lives. If you discover a tumor early enough, you can save
a patient’s life. Even today, the most efficient way to do so remains
working with X-rays or advanced techniques of radiology like or
scans that help locate hidden tumors. So again, these images of
3
medicine are very ambiguous, as they can save lives, but at the same
time X-rays are carcinogenic and may have caused La Rocca’s
cancer. We can reasonably suspect that she was affected by
radiology when working as a technician. The skull in her works also
functions as a vanitas, a reminder of our mortality. In fact, this relates
to the materiality of the work too, since we can observe a material
decay in old X-rays. You can’t find the plastic films that La Rocca
used anymore. In the archives of the hospital where I work as a
historian, tons and tons of this old material are now disintegrating. In
this way, the materiality of these images is very interesting because
the material is disappearing on its own.
JILLIAN CROCHET The question of material dissolution, or
dematerialization, is also intriguing because most of these image
procedures are nowadays digitalized, which is not to say they are not
material, but they have a different physical presence. I must get a lot
of MRIs and the more you expose yourself, the more dangerous it is
in potentially causing cancer. It can affect you, but you need it in
order to be treated or to make sure that you do not die from some
other reason. A potentially dangerous diagnostic tool is an ambiguous
and troubling thing. When I see an X-ray of my body, it looks very
foreign—almost unnatural—it is a part of your body, but it is not
recognizable. It skews your perception of self and identity. Thinking
about the medical field where the patient is kind of objectified, this
objectification steps further and further away from the self. You’re a
thing to be studied and experimented on. One doctor will only look at
your arm, but the other doctor will only look at your brain, so I think
maybe that separation of the whole—the self—is what’s happening
with the superimposition of the skull with the hand.
CHARLOTT E MAT T ER When considering the artistic interest in X-rays,
it is indicative to note that these images were conceived and
perceived in aesthetic terms from the outset. The technique of X-ray
images, which Wilhelm Röntgen purposefully did not patent, was
almost immediately experimented with as an artistic medium. La
Rocca’s Craniologie must thus be considered in light of a larger
history of the use of X-rays in art, which still needs to be written, with
numerous artists having explored their materiality and meaning, both
before La Rocca and after, including Meret Oppenheim (X-Ray of My
Skull, 1964), Barbara Hammer (Sanctus, 1990), and Donald Rodney
4
(The House That Jack Built, 1987; Britannia Hospital, 1988), who
addressed questions of race, diaspora, vulnerability, and chronic
illness, drawing from his own experience of sickle cell anemia (see
Hutchinson 2018; Chambers 2003; Das 2019; Marano, Matter, and
Valterio, 2024).
3
Do Not / Fit into the Mold: The Politics of Care and the
Subversion of Bodily Norms
LAURA VALTERIO Let us now discuss another material related to the
world of medicine and art, namely plaster. Between 1950 and 1951,
Mexican artist Frida Kahlo painted some orthopedic plaster corsets
that she wore during an extended period of hospitalization. Kahlo’s
youth was marked by a traumatic accident that left her with a broken
spine, pelvis and foot injuries, and later affected her mobility and
reproductive life. Throughout her life, she relied on corsets of various
shapes and materials to support her body, some of which are now on
display in the Museo Frida Kahlo in Mexico City. Interestingly, Kahlo
staged the working of the plaster corsets in a series of photographs
that show her lying on a hospital bed while painting the surface with
the aid of a mirror, as she could not directly see the traces of the
brush.
FIG . 6
FIG. 6 Juan Guzmán, Frida Kahlo in Hospital Painting Cast, 1950s, gelatin silver
print, 23.5 × 18.4 cm, Copyright Phillips Auctioneers
These images challenge the association between the horizontal
body and unproductivity, reframing painting from a predominantly
visual art to a form of movement, just as the artist’s body was in a
state of immobility. One of the corsets bears the image of an unborn
child at its center underneath a red hammer and sickle, the symbol of
the Communist Party, of which Kahlo was a member. The painted
corset stands out as a critical stance on the artist’s lived experience
of hospitalization and disability, addressing her dependence on
medical care. The image of the unborn child is derived from an
anatomy book (Kraus 2010, 57). After experiencing her first
miscarriage, it seems that Kahlo was not allowed to see the fetus she
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