MEDICAL EXPERIMENTAL

E*CINEMA ACADEMY PRESENTS

Medical Experimental

 Tuesday 28 May h 19.15, Cinema 2.

 Historical clips from the EYE collection, juxtaposed with new works made by Rietveld students, exploring the idea of experimentation in science and beyond. An examination of the technologies of the visual in surgery as well as in cinema, and of medicine’s promise and peril as portrayed via the medium of film.

Presented by the Rietveld Academie and the Universiteit van Amsterdam’s Media Studies department.

Health, sickness, and the human condition. Tonight’s programme provides an artistic interpretation of archival material in an attempt to portray society’s relationship with the realm of medicine. Here we show patients as performers, storytellers, works of art, and objects of voyeurism, as both fiction and fact. By creating new and reusing old materials we question the stability of truths in medical cinema. The surgeon’s cut through the body mirrors the filmmakers cut through moving images. Films once produced to discipline human bodies within the institutional framework of Western medicine, to educate and transmit medical knowledge now emerge within a larger framework of storytelling, art, truth and falsification.

By creating new and reusing old materials we question the stability of truths in medical cinema; we reconstruct the already constructed. No other artistic activity mirrors so faithfully Dr. Frankenstein’s obsession with creating new life from forms previously considered finite in their purpose. Under the inhuman eyes of the camera – the tool of surgeons, magicians, soldiers, scientists and artists alike, borders can be blurred. It is an experiment in itself, and editing is its surgery. The films demand a reevaluation of the doctor/patient relationship and ask for a redefinition of the politics of the human body. Perhaps the next time you find yourself sitting in the waiting room, thumbing through an old magazine, you will recall some of the images from tonight. After the screening we invite you to join us in a discussion with the artists.

Films:

Observation Observed, 10:00, Jessica Tucker, Chung-Han Chiang, Silvia Martes, Hannah Pollak

The Nature, 3:00, Alina Ozerova

A Perfect Cheesecake, 2:17, Milena Naef

Skammdegisþunglyndi (Seasonal Depression), 3:20, Smári Rúnar Róbertsson

Semiotics of Aliveness,03:40, Alina Ozerova

The Pharmacological Practice of Dr. Vanapuneberg, 5:00, Yvette Granata, Renato Osoy Menard

Between These Paper Sheets, 5:00, Hannah Carpenter, Elena Taylor, Christien Bax

Pas de deux , 5:00, Baha Görkem Yalim

190 E of Euphoria, 10:00, Nil Baskar, Sophia Satchell-Baeza, Travis Werlen

Participants:
Nil Baskar, Christien Bax, Hannah Carpenter, Chun-Han Chiang, Yvette Granata, Yuliya Gulyan, Krista Jamieson, Bogna Konior, Light Show Sphinx (Piet Koster and Sjaco Karmelk), Silvia Martes, Milena Naef, Eoin O’Donohoe, Renato Osoy Menard, Alina Ozerova, Alex Peringer, Hannah Polak, Smári Rúnar Róbertsson, Sophia Satchell-Baeza, Elena Taylor, Jessica Tucker, Travis Werlen, and Baha Görkem Yalim.

Special mention to Margriet Kruyver, Mariken Overdijk and Albert Wulffers (Rietveld Academie) and Manon Parry (UvA). Special thanks to EYE Film Institute Netherlands and Anna Abrahams, Anna Dabrowska, Jata Haan, Simona Monizza, and Rommy Albers.

 

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