- Research Images from the Anatomy lab and studio
- Learning the Body ( images )
- The Eye of the Beholder ( images )
- Making Introductions ( images )
- Formal Interactions with Students
- Informal Interactions with Students
- Learning the Body continued...
- Hands in History I and II ( About the project ) ( images )
- Hands of the Healer ( About the project ) ( images )
- Figuring the Ground ( About the project ) ( images )
- Tools of the Trade ( images )
- Drawing on the Body ( images )
- Table of Phobias
MENDING the Invisible Wound:
2 doctors, and artist, and a video on survivors of sexual abuse
Background
The Project Description
Description of the Proposed Video
Excerpts from the Script
Selected stills from the video
* Please sign our guestbook and read comments from the Artist.
©The copyright on all visual and written material in this report is held by the Artist.
Canada Council Report
Staying On... An Artist in the Halls of Science
February 1998- March 1999
A Report to
The Canada Council Artists in Communities Pilot Program
and
The Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University
by
Pam Hall
Artist-in-Residence
Faculty of Medicine
March, 1999
Background to the Artist-in-Residency
In 1992, following an encounter with surgery, I became interested in medicine, the body and how they encounter one another. As a normal part of my artistic research, I audited first year medical school, attending classesfor about three days a week for a year, in the company of an amazingly generous community of medical students and their teachers. One thing leads to another
In January, 1997, I began my tenure as the first Artist-in-Residence in the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland . This was a one year, part-time appointment co-sponsored by the Medical School and the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador.(AGNL) Both partners shared funding for the artist's salary and the Medical School provided office space and a variety of in-kind support services. The AGNL contribution to the residency was supported by The Canada Council for the Arts.
The objectives of the residency were three-fold, and emerged from the "partnership" between the "stakeholders" in the project:
The residency in its first year was based on my presence in the school for 1.5 days per week, (or the equivalent) and included the following "duties" or expectations:
1. formal teaching and group discussion leadership within the context of the Ethics and Humanities course for first and second year students
2. full participation in the interdisciplinary committee which was developing the new curriculum for the above-mentioned course.
3. informal and/or formal interaction with medical faculty where appropriate.
4. art practice ... developing and producing art works and projects which continue and extend my interest in issues of the body, of the gaze and of medical education and clinical practice.
5. presentation of any completed or in-progress works produced during the residency, to the medical education community, the clinical community and the general public, where appropriate.
The First Year/ 1997-1998: Highlights
Even though the first year of the residency limited my time at the school to 1.5 days a week, or the equivalent, significant ground was explored in all three areas of my primary involvement. My participation in the Ethics and Humanities curriculum included small group teaching, curriculum development, and the preparation of course material on the medicalization of the body, empathy and imagination. My photographic research began in the anatomy labs where preliminary imagery was gathered for later use, and three major projects were undertaken to explore aspects of the medical education and clinical community. (Research Images)
Learning the Body, was begun with 12 first year medical students who agreed to be interviewed and photographed throughout their educational process to enable me to investigate how young physicians learn to see and touch the body. While no intentions were embedded in this project, it proved to be the most provocative and inspiring source for a great deal of the work that followed, and indeed, still continues. The imagery collected at each interview session, formed the basis of a variety of works, and students still, after three years, maintain their commitment to the project. (GO to Images)
The Eye of the Beholder, a multi-panel photographic installation was created and installed in the corridors near the interdisciplinary labs where students work, and introduced an on-going and interactive dialogue between the audience and the artist about the power of perception, the gaze, and the various ways the female body is represented in a medical and scientific context. Imagery in The Eye of the Beholder, ranged from the Mona Lisa, to hysterectomy scars, from medical charts, to medieval illustrations, from photographic images of a pregnant belly, to ultrasound imagery. The following is an excerpt from the Artist's Statement which accompanied the work:
The Eye of the Beholder is the beginning of a group of images about looking at women.
It is about how many different ways to "see" there are, and about how what we see influences what we know. ... about what we know influencing what we are capable of seeing. These images are drawn from life, from art and medical history, and from echoes of encounters between women and medicine. When "phrased" in one way, they carry reflections of anxiety, de-personalization, and reductionism.... when phrased another, they carry reflections of hope, renewal, and strength. No matter how they are phrased, they carry complex and diverse meaning to the viewer which will engage the memories, personal beliefs and experiences of whoever looks at them.
STUDENTS AND OTHERS ARE INVITED TO ALTER THIS WORK. Please feel free to change the panels around, to explore how their meaning might shift if juxtaposed in different arrangements. Re-group them, turn them upside down... make them mean something different...something more. STUDENTS AND OTHERS ARE INVITED TO DIALOGUE ABOUT THIS WORK and what it might contribute or not to how we see the body, in this case the female body.(GO to Images)
Making Introductions was my first attempt to engage with the clinical community co-located with the medical school, and was a series of multi-panel portraits of health professionals examining the power of their uniforms. Three portraits were taken of each of 5 volunteer health professionals, and were accompanied by "forms" which revealed "data" about each. The participants were: Dr. Ian Bowmer ( doctor), Lynn Power(nurse), Regina duToit (medical student), Scott Dowden,(resident) and Gaye Hillier(nurse). Any health care professionals who might be interested in participating in this series of portraits should contact the artist at pamhall@thezone.net .
Below is an excerpt from the Artist's Statement which accompanied the work when it was installed in patient waiting rooms in both Outpatients and Day Surgery areas of the hospital:
Making Introductions is a project which explores the community of the hospital through "introducing" some of the professionals who work within it.... "introducing" them to patients or their families who are visiting the hospital, and also to one another... doctor to nurse, resident to technician. The "portraits" and "data" presented attempt to "introduce" the participants, not only as health professionals, but as people, and indeed, as people who have their own experience being patients.
The "uniforms" we wear often increase or decrease our "authority", sometimes create or diminish confusion about what we do, and may encourage us to forget that encounters between health professionals and their patients, and indeed between health professionals themselves, are really encounters between human beings.
Making Introductions is primarily about revealing the humanity of the "authority" figures in the hospital community... and in understanding their professional "role", as one "role" only... a single part of a complex life. It is a project intended to look beyond labels, extend the patient's awareness of the humanity of their care-givers, and consequently, to feel comfortable about their own.
One of the most significant "events" of the first year "in residence" was the interest of the Canada Council's Artist-in-Communities Pilot Program, and after detailed discussion with all the partners, the artist prepared STAYING ON: a proposal for continuance, which was the basis for Council's support of a second year of residency. "Staying On..." was intended to allow the artist to deepen and broaden her work in the medical education community, and it is this second and final year which is the main subject of this report.
The Second Year...STAYING ON: 1998-99
The second year of residency was aimed at deepening the artist's engagement with the medical education community and extending it, if possible, into the broader community of clinical practice. Consequently, many of her projects continued and developed, and a major collaboration with clinicians was undertaken, as the final project of her residency at the school.
The work discussed in the following pages has clearly emerged from the early explorations of the residency's first year, and in almost all cases, represents the continuing preoccupations of the artist. Consequently, while much of it has been exhibited, and "looks like" finished work, it remains, for the artist, at least, echoes of a body of work still in progress... the "small beginnings" of an emerging process which will undoubtedly continue for many years to come.
Formal Interactions with Students:
Teaching and Curriculum Development
During the first six months of 1998, continued involvement with Ethics and Humanities curriculum development and teaching was maintained. My primary efforts in this context were focussed on the Women's Health unit, and in addition to attending the entire 2nd year module on Women's Health in the Integrated Study of Disease Course, I undertook research and preparation of material to be included in the Ethics/Humanities Module on this topic. The material I prepared is included in Appendix 2, and much of it formed the basis for the finished module which was used with 2nd year students.
Small group tutoring was also continued during the first six months of 1998, but was displaced in the last half of the residency by my commitment to other projects, most notably Mending the Invisible Wound.
Informal Interactions with Students:
Learning the Body... from research to manifestation
While Learning the Body had begun in the previous year as a research project with no particular expressive intention, the second year of interviews with my dozen medical students became central to a body of work which continues to emerge. This project continues beyond the end of the residency, and at time of writing, the third round of interviews are underway, and I have commitments from the project's participants for their continued involvement over the course of their training.
The long term intention for Learning the Body has evolved into a major bookwork, or publishing project, where both transcribed text from the interviews and collected visual material will be integrated into a single work. Until that time ( i.e. when the students are finished their training in full) the material has become the basis for a number of other "works"...
They are listed below, following an excerpt from the Artists Statement which accompanied the first body of work to emerge,
We all exist in a variety of histories... personal, national, professional, and many more. Some we are aware of, others shape us invisibly. Medicine has its own long and complex history, and medical students are embedded within it, whether they know it or not...
Whether they choose their place or position in the "pages" of their history book,and whether they do so intuitively or analytically, they lay down their hands to the service of medicine within a context. A context which is as old as our species itself and which has changed through time, and continues to change.
HANDS IN HISTORY is a project which attempts to underline how important history is for the physician-in-training. Long traditions leave us with both an understanding of great progress and an awareness of barbarism; with pride for the insight of our ancestors, and with chagrin in the face of their foolishness. Theories we hold now to be the truth of our time, may be displaced, debunked, and abandoned within years. Old ideas continue to shape the new, and the role of the physician continues to change with time.
These hands belong to medical students, who, in laying down their hands in a history book, have helped to make explicit the historical context of their profession... They are young hands surrounded, framed in fact, by old learning, sustained by knowledge, resting in history. These students chose their "location" in the history of medicine... doing physically as students what they will do mentally, professionally and politically as practising physicians.
Hands in History: Yr.1
28 panels,8"x10", 14 colour photos, 14 text panels
hands of med students, Medical History book, text excerpts
Hands in History Yr.2 (Elements of Study)
12 colour photographs, 8"x10"
hands of med students, self-selected "significant" books
Hands in History Yr.3 (Elements of Practice)
hands of med students,
self-selected "most important book in your clerkship"
in progress no images available...
This small suite of photographs features the hands of Learning the Body participants holding objects which they identified as significant to them personally, and which reflect in an almost random way, the power of artifacts to carry meaning and resonance about medical practice.
10 - 8"x10" colour photographs, hands of med students with self-selected significant objects
series in progress
22"x30" mixed media works incorporating med students imagery, medical tools, texts, etc.
this series explores the inner and outer "tools" physicians use in working with the body
Series in progress
30" x 44" mixed media drawings based on medical students' hands, conversations, and historical medical illustrations. This series draws on the comments of medical students about how they want to listen to their patients, and contains to date 2 finished triptychs, one entitled " listening with..." and the other " listening to..."
Writing on the Body and To hear, to see, to touch, to know...
These are both new "collaborative" works... still in progress, and while they do not directly involve the participants from Learning the Body, they are clearly linked to my experience in that project. Both invite student "completion" of installed work in the corridors of the Interdisciplinary Labs... in one case... students are "graffiti"-writing on historical anatomical images , and in the other, they are addressing questions about how they want to "see, to hear, to touch..." the body as physicians, on large drawings of body parts associated with the senses.
Both of these sets of "marked" works, will be retrieved by the artist, re-worked based on the students' interventions, and re-installed at a later time.
While my involvement with the Learning the Body students, has clearly provided focus for major part of my creative work in this year of the residency, there are two other "bodies" of work that have been "in progress" since the inception of the residency, and which continue, quite independently from my direct interactions with students of faculty at the school.
This series began in the first year of my residency at the school... to explore the way the female body is "constructed", de-constructed, and indeed "designed" by the marks which medicine leaves upon it. Moving from photos with objects, into fully digital form, this series is on-going, and to date includes work addressing mastectomy and hysterectomy, and their echoes on the body. It will continue to evolve, likely examining C-section, cosmetic surgery, and implant surgery and could easily expand into surgery on male as well as female patients.(GO to Images)
A mixed media work including objects , image and a "Table of Phobias" from a 1943 medical dictionary, this body of work is still in progress. Some of the "working objects" have been exhibited in Progress Notes, at the AGNL, have been "held" by med students in their Hands of the Healer photographs, but otherwise, the work continues, as an exploration of "states of anxiety". The intention of this work, and one which seems to be emerging from it, is to "invent" a series of objects which actually provoke a physical response in the viewer... the clenched fist, the tightened mouth, the quick averted gaze, etc. It is an ongoing exploration of those difficult to describe "feelings" which many patients experience when confronted with medical interaction.
From classroom to clinic... stretching into the broader medical community
Background to the Project
About mid way through my second year at the school, I was approached by two family practice physicians in their final year of residence, to help them with their research project on survivors of sexual abuse. Both were aware of my film on hysterectomy, and in light of their objective to make an educational video for their peers on the subject of sexual abuse survivors, they came to me and said " You are our Artist-in-Residence... HELP us."
This was the FIRST real occasion since I had arrived at the school, where I was asked to help meet the goals and objectives of clinicians... where someone aside from myself initiated a project which required my involvement... and where the goals of extending my presence into the clinical community could be met by invitation, rather than by imposition.
Needless to say, I was quick to say "yes", and with the support and assistance of the Faculty of Medicine, the Centre for Academic Media Services, and the Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers' Coop, we screened a 19 minute rough cut of MENDING... at the Family Practice Research Day on March 3rd, 1999. Dr. Michelle Young and Dr. Angela Rivers received one of four awards for outstanding research projects for MENDING... and I am in the process now of final cut and post-production sound mix. The following pages include the proposal for the project, and excerpts from the script.( Appendix 3 contains the full draft script and a dub of the rough cut is included with this Report)
Copies of the video are intended for use in a teaching and professional development context, and when completed, will be available through the Health Sciences Library, and the Family Practice Unit for members of the HSC community. Ordering information on borrowing or purchasing a copy of the video is available from: pamhall@thezone.net and any proceeds from the video will be placed in a fund to support counselling of medical students who have survived sexual abuse.
Project Description: Mending the Invisible Wound
Doctors, Healing, and Survivors of Sexual Abuse
Mending the Invisible Wound... is a collaborative project between 2 family practice residents and the artist-in-residence in Memorial's Faculty of Medicine. Combining residency research, the preparation of a pamphlet/brochure, and the production of a 15-30 minute video, Mending... will introduce family physicians, residents and medical students to some of the issues surrounding survivors of sexual abuse and the role of family physicians in their healing processes.
A detailed description of the video is attached, as well as a draft script.
Proposed Faculty of Medicine Involvement
To date, all of the research has been undertaken and completed by Michelle Young, and Angela Rivers, as part of their R-2 final project in Family Practice. Pre-production planning and script development, have included both principal investigators and the faculty's artist-in-residence, Pam Hall. As the script nears completion, we are seeking support from the Faculty of Medicine, in order to move forward with the production of the video.
We request Faculty support of the project, through the provision of in-kind services through HSIMS. Such services would involve the shooting of raw footage using the HSIMS broadcast quality Hi-8 camera, a camera operator, to shoot under the guidance of the Director, and the use of the HSIMS "studio" for some, if not all of the shooting set-ups. We will seek and obtain both image and sound editing facilities outside of the Faculty of Medicine, and preliminary willingness to undertake the post-production component of the project has already been expressed by the Centre for Academic and Media Services (CAMS), in the School of Continuing Education and by NIFCO (Newfoundland Independent Filmmaker's Co-op).
Benefits to the Faculty of Medicine:
Faculty support for a project of this kind, a creative collaboration between doctors and the artist-in-residence, could have significant benefits for the medical school.
A "doctor-made" learning resource for future students, a "testing ground" and legacy for the artist residency, and the potential of producing a video that may reach an audience well beyond this medical school, all hold considerable benefit for the Faculty.
While the producers will retain the copyright to the finished project, the Faculty of Medicine would be credited, would have access to free use of the video, and in the event of broadcast sale, festival awards, video sales or rental income, the producers have decided to set up a fund for counselling abuse survivors within the Faculty of Medicine.
Description of the Proposed Video
A 15-30 minute video by doctors for an audience of their peers, "Mending..." intends to motivate physicians to increase their sensitivity, to decrease their bias, and to enhance their understanding of sexual abuse and its impact on survivors. Through a provocative mix of stills and live action, Mending... will present an introduction to the range and diversity of survivors of sexual abuse, the factors associated with the trauma of sexual abuse, and will explore the ways which family physicians can help their patients through the healing process. Using actresses and actors, still images and sound, Mending... will be structured in a number of sections, tentatively outlined below:
Who is a survivor? An introduction to the diversity of survivors and the multiplicity of backgrounds from which they come.
I survived #1 (I'm not crazy) A "survivor's" monologue addressing the issue of "normal response" vs. psycho-pathology. This character, a "survivor" in process of healing, views her symptoms of anxiety, depression, and chronic pain as "normal" reactions to traumatic experience, rather than a set of "all in your head" self-manufactured problems. She speaks about isolation, and trauma... about self-defeating emotions and behaviours, and about learning to cope in healthier ways with her experience of abuse.
Doctor, Can you help me ? A "conversation" between physician and patient where both spoken and unspoken words explore the difficulties of communication and the dangers of assumptions.
I survived #2 ( it's not just a girl problem) A male survivor speaks about the difficulties of "being a man" and trying to cope with abuse in the male context. He raises the important role of the media in helping him name his own abuse, and in finding support for his healing.
Expert-ease/ Written on the body:
An authoritative description of the four factors associated with sexual abuse, presented in an "expert" voice-over. The imagery accompanying this monologue will be words being written on a bare female back. Some of the words written on "her" body, will echo the authoritative voice-over, and others will run in "counter-point".
I survived #3 (the long wound) An older survivor addresses the issues of time, memory, denial and acceptance as she speaks about her own journey of healing. She examines the consequences of sexual abuse over a lifetime and brings perspective to the question " If this happened to you fifty years ago, why is it still a problem ? "
Many Roads to Healing ...Tail Credits
In a "concluding" collage of voices and imagery, the question of "what is healing ?"
is examined, with special attention to the real and potential roles physicians might play in the healing processes of their patients.
Excerpts from the script: MENDING the Invisible Wound
Voice over: ( young boy )
He told me that I was special , that it was a secret...
He said if I told anybody, my mom, or anybody, that they wouldn't believe me
and they would know I was bad.
He said they would send me away from my family
... for lying, and for being bad.
I was scared all the time.
Finally when I did tell my mom, she believed me.
We went to see a doctor,
and she believed me too.
That man was wrong, you know...
They didn't send me away, they sent him away.
Voice Over: (mix of multiple female and male voices:)
We are survivors of sexual abuse...
some of us were hurt by strangers,
some of us were damaged by those we trusted most.
we come in all shapes and sizes
we come from all walks of life
we could be old or young, we could girls or we could be boys.
we could be a friend of your kid's
we could live down the block,
or we might be in the same church group or hockey league.
We are survivors of sexual abuse...
we could be anybody, we could be you.
we are all different...
The only thing we have in common is that we have to get better...
sometimes we try to do it alone ,
sometimes we need somebody to help us
Maybe you could help us ?
(GO to Selected Stills from the Video)
Other Activities in the Community
In addition to the activities already described, there were other aspects to my "role" as the "artist at the med school", and though they might seem less significant or less "creative" than some other aspects of my work there... they stand as examples, even if small, of the slow shift of assumptions ( both my own, and the school's) from visitor/ "other"/stranger... to resource/ asset/ ally. Some of these activities are presented below in point form:
- screening and discussion of UNDER THE KNIFE: personal hystories, during the Women's Health Unit for 2nd year students
-provision of imagery to a member of the English Faculty for a poster advertising his new course in Literature and Medicine
- donation of a piece of art to 2nd year students travelling to Dalhousie Medical School as their "gift" to their hosts
- donation of another piece to the auction for Monte Carlo, a tradition med school fund-raiser for local charities
- public presentation to the Women's Health Network , International Women's Day Event, on my Gynaeopedia work at the med school
- assistance in designing the evaluation process of the residency by the Faculty of Medicine
- Presentation to Faculty Council ( med school) on the residency to date
- various media interviews for broadening public awareness of the residency
(see Access to the Public)
- meetings with Susan Williams, consultant engaged in evaluating Canada Council Artists-in-Communities Projects
- Peace of Mind-Piece of Body, workshop on ways to see the body at Goddard College, Vermont
- major research/reading in the history of medicine, epistemology and dominant meaning systems, consciousness, neuroscience, the "gaze", transformative practice, art theory, anatomy, and "embodiment".
Community Awareness/Access to the Public
Within the Medical Community:
Awareness of the residency within the medical school and Health Science Centre, has largely been raised by the installation of the artist's work itself, by her direct interactions with various faculty and students, and by internal and external reports in the media. Additional awareness was raised through a presentation by the artist to the medical school's Faculty Council,
by the faculty's recent evaluation process, and in the context of Family Practice Medicine, through the recent screening of MENDING the Invisible Wound. It is likely "fair to say" that in its moments of final closure, the artist's residency is now the subject of broad awareness throughout the medical school.
On a national level, articles have been written for Family Practice magazine, the artist was interviewed on CBC Morningside in 1997, and an article is in preparation for another national medical journal, The Medical Post, by a local writer, John Gushue.
Within the Artistic/Cultural/and Academic Communities:
In addition to inclusion in a group exhibition called Progress Notes, at the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador, (March-April, 1999), the artist's work at the med school has been subject of a major article in the March/99 Newsletter of Visual Arts Newfoundland and Labrador (VANL). The "success" of the residency in its initial year encouraged the AGNL (one of the partners in the '97 residency) to introduce new artist residencies in partnership with Gros Morne National Park, and with the Department of Geography at Memorial University. Progress Notes, the exhibition mentioned above presents work by four artists within the context of these residencies, so one can assume that awareness is higher in the visual arts community than ever before.
Within the "academy", the interdisciplinary nature of my work at the school ( as well as other aspects of my practice) drew the attention of Goddard College in Vermont, and I was appointed in August, 1998, to the faculty of their MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program. Finally, a graduate student at Carleton University, Elizabeth Orton , has included the residency as one of three major artists-in-communities projects that she has reviewed in her Masters thesis. This may not build broad awareness but will certainly add a significant contribution to the unfortunately meagre scholarship on artists working in non-art communities in Canada.
The Public at Large:
There has been extensive coverage of the residency by both print and electronic media. In this second year of my presence at the school, local CBC television did a profile for Here and Now,(the evening news program) and the Evening Telegram has printed a number of stories, the most recent dealing with the video project, MENDING the Invisible Wound. My intentions for the finished version of MENDING... include festival screenings, and other "access-points" to the video, so this will undoubtedly extend the general public awareness to the residency and some of the work that has emerged from it.
Impact on the "Community"
Within the "community" of the medical school, are a number of distinct, and sometimes "competing" communities... like all "cultures", it is extremely diverse. The community defined by the label "faculty" differs from that defined by the label "staff", "student", or "resident". The community defined by the label "family practice" differs from that defined by the label "surgery", or "epidemiology". "Clinicians" belong to a different community than "non-clinicians"... "female students" to a different one than "female clinicians". Within this diverse terrain, I think it is fair to say that while my work "introduced" itself to the full range of communities within the school, merely by its physical presence on the walls, my most profound and on-going relationships were within the undergraduate student community, and there, were most potently focussed on the dozen or so students in the Learning the Body project.
My "final" project, MENDING the Invisible Wound, extended my work for the first time into the clinical community of Family Practice Medicine, and if there are "regrets" on my part about the end of the residency, it that these links to a new community in the school, cannot easily be pursued. One hopes that specific clinicians, residents or other engaged in Family Practice Medicine might be open to collaboration on a project basis in the future.
Comments on the Residency:
Other comments may be viewed by checking out our Guestbook .
While it is difficult, and probably not appropriate, for the artist to "assess" the impact of her work and her presence within the med school, below are some excerpts from the evaluation forms distributed by the Faculty of Medicine. They represent "echoes" which have come from usually anonymous sources... and rather than an "assessment of impact", they may serve more as a hint of preliminary response. If nothing else, they illustrate the strong and often opposing responses of diverse individuals within this particular scientific community, to the presence of this particular artist and her work. It is important to remember, that another artist, a different body of work, might have attracted more support, or indeed, more opposition from those who responded to the questionnaires from which these "excerpts" are drawn.
It is also, I think, important to note that in spite of the predictable "pains of rejection" that are inevitable when confronting negative response to one's work, I remain extremely optimistic about my time in this environment. I likely would have been satisfied and encouraged by a single voice, speaking in support of my presence in this place, and I was quite frankly amazed that amidst the disdain and dismissal, a little predictable scorn and contempt, there were enthusiastic voices of support raised and recorded in support of the residency. We artists tend to be a little "over-protected" in the "smallness" and isolation of our culture ( not unlike physicians in theirs)... The nasty comments are often "kept" from us, by caring curators and loving friends. Having access, then, to a "healthy" range of diverse response, critical in both the best and worst sense of that word, was novel, and intriguing... While it may compromise my idealistic perceptions of "being welcomed", it also teaches me something important about my work and its audience(s).
Excerpts from the Evaluation Forms:(each statement is selected from a different respondent)
Impact on Artistic Practice
This section will alter its "voice"... will revert to first person narrative, and consequently allow me to speak of the impacts on my practice, and indeed on my life, in a more personal way.
Reflecting from the inside out, as the subject of change, rather than as an agent of change...
as the one altered, rather than one attempting to alter...
as the one transformed by experience, rather than one experienced in transformation.
I had spent all my energy thinking of how I might "impact" on your world, and had just assumed
I would "negotiate" its impacts on me easily... instinctively absorbing whatever you and your world
could "throw" at me... I am no use to anyone, myself included, if I am not "raw" to the "encounter"...
Maybe this "spillage" comes from a sense that you would understand the preciousness and privilege
of such a meeting... that you might "allow" the "potency" of encounter that lies there between one
dead woman and one live one... that you might just keep an eye open to see if "changes" me...
or that you might just remind me of how commonplace all this is in your world... for in mine, it is
something big and powerful and I hope I can find some place to carry it all gracefully...
May, 1997, from a letter to the Dean of Medicine
My report on the first year's residency included excerpts from my journal as a way to "capture" impact, and although I intend to do the same here, I want to generalize a bit first...
to reflect on the major and most significant aspects of what this engaged and sustained encounter has delivered unto me, as an artist, as a "teacher", and as an embodied human living in a number of "communities" at once.
I want to reflect on communities... as source of work, as collaborators in work, and as audience for work. I want to reflect on interdisciplinarty... on crossing boundaries, not only of media, technique and process, but of traditions of thought and concept. I want to reflect on the roles of the artist... within late 20th century western society , and on the issues and ethics of appropriation, of throwing the voices of others, of artistic control, originality and authorship.
Certainly my two years at the medical school did not introduce me to these issues or areas of speculation... but it was instrumental in extending my thinking about them, in privileging me with the opportunity to integrate theory and practice, and in advancing my experience and skill in working across the boundaries of languages, traditions, and practices.
Communities, Interdisciplinarity, and the Roles of the Artist
Some of the most profound impacts on the way I work and the way I think about my work that emerged from this residency were those which undermined the traditional "modernist" view of the artist as outsider, "other", and de-centred from the daily life of the "community". While I was never identified within the medical community as a "member"... and many undoubtedly sustained their assumptions about my "outsider" role, it became patently clear to me that acceptance, permission to speak, and inclusion in certain aspects of medical community life, were open to me if I wished to pursue them. For whatever reason, I was "free" to define myself within the community ( or some parts of it, at least)... as observer, as reporter, as participant... as an ally, an analyst, and finally, as a collaborator.
As in most other communities, such access and opportunity to community-specific knowledge carries the consequence of responsibility . Within the context of working with "other people's experiences", (in addition to my own), I had daily occasion to challenge and refine my thinking and practice on issues surrounding representation, "authorship", and the privileges and consequences of direct engagement with one's audience.
Throughout the residency, I installed and presented work at various sites throughout the school, and in almost all cases, accompanied work with dialogue opportunities. Consequently, the traditional distance between the doer and the viewer was radically collapsed, and while occasionally "painful", the requirement to live with one's work as it lives in the world was overwhelmingly positive . The absence of "mediation" by a gallery, or any other artistically "empowered" voice, and my own physical presence in the classrooms and hallways of the school, situated the work in a context of direct dialogue...unprotected by the "reverent" response usually demanded by a gallery context. It was "that woman, Pam" putting up "stuff", which sometimes provoked wonder, and sometimes inspired anger... which sometimes made statements and sometimes asked questions. While not all of the response to the work was positive, and in fact some was quite passionately negative... it was real, unmediated response, from individuals who were moved to "write it down"... and as such, was invaluable in my growing understanding of how work "speaks", how meaning is constructed, and how context mediates the viewer's "right" to response.
Another important impact on my practice was the strong and consistent both support and demand for working across the boundaries of discipline. While many in the cultural community would define interdisciplinary work in the arts as that which "uses", incorporates, or integrates more than one set of artistic disciplines (i.e. image and text, film and dance, performance and installation), the experience at the med school reinforced my own history of working across intellectual boundaries, and of seeking commonalities among fields, practices, and traditions. My practice has long been grounded in a variety of expressive media, so that working with text and image, film and drawing, sculpture and photography, was not new or unfamiliar. What offered the most provocative development for my practice was extending and enriching my understanding of another field, another history, another culture.... in indeed, in so doing, finding remarkable parallels between elements of artistic practice and medical practice. Certainly long historical relationships exist between the two professions, but in the time spent speaking with students, and faculty, and engaged in research, I discovered connections and echoes between art and medicine which range from theory to practice, from the personal to the professional. Such insights can only serve me well in the contexting of my own practice, and in my ability to articulate across the traditional barriers between art and science... and indeed, to speak outside the "ghetto" in which contemporary art practice finds itself.
A final few comments about the impact of the residency on my practice in an interdisciplinary context.... the first "technical", and the second, "intellectual". While most inter-media artists like myself learn to manipulate new materials and techniques as we require them, the video project, MENDING... placed me in the situation where I urgently needed to acquire new skills as an editor of video. My experience cutting 16mm film was relevant conceptually, but useless in a practical sense. As an "no-budget" project with a deadline set to serve the needs of my two medical collaborators, I was forced by circumstance to cut the piece at NIFCO, on the AVID, a non-linear digital editing system. I was exceedingly fortunate to find a qualified operator who would help me with the rough cut, in exchange for a piece of art, but knew I would need to undertake the final cut unassisted. As a consequence, I completed a five day training course on the AVID, and am now in the final editing stage alone. I will pursue a similar training course on Pro-Tools, for digital sound editing , to enable me to complete the final post-production sound mix on the piece. This new technical learning has already had significant impact on my practice, and certainly will continue to serve me in an enabling way, as both a visual artist and a filmmaker.
The intellectual "benefits" of the interdisciplinary aspects of the residency have served me exceedingly well in my teaching duties in the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College in Vermont , and also in my contribution to the interdisciplinary team of scholars studying the fisheries crisis in Canada from an ethical perspective. While I was a member of this SSHRC funded national study team before I was appointed to the medical school, my ability to "hear" my colleagues in the "hard" sciences, my knowledge and growing fluency with ethical issues, and my willingness to "do the homework" in order to listen to the language of other fields, have all been radically enhanced by my experience in "the Halls of Medicine".
In closing off this section, I want to speak briefly about the challenges to creative practice presented by the community context, by working with other people's voices, and in some cases towards other people's "goals". The individuals who shared their experiences with me, whether students who were Learning the Body, or health care professionals who were Making Introductions , or residents in Family Practice who handed me the Director's chair in their "film" project, provided me with far more than access to their world. Their participation and my reliance on it, challenged many of the so-called "freedoms" of traditional "original authorship", they placed me in a constant situation of not being entirely "in control" of the work, and they forced me to "walk my talk" in reference to consent, permission, and the responsibility attached to representation of some ones else's experience and the inscription of some one else's "reality".
Even though I am well grounded in the film world, (where release forms are standard practice) and had long ago adopted this strategy when dealing with material that was human in origin, the two years at the school sharpened, extended, and refined my both my skills and sensitivity in the area of "documentary" or "other-centred" work. Work which uses one of the most powerful languages on the planet (the visual and material) to "represent" experience which is neither self-referential nor auto-biographical. Working in Nature had made me patient... so the endless "waiting around" for busy and important people to "give" me some time, was not as frustrating for me, as it might have been for many. Extending to the participants in my projects the "power" of refusal, however, was a strategy which demanded my willingness to exclude work which participant's were uncomfortable with. This is not the "modernist" stance wherein the artist is privileged to express freely, in any way they choose. This was a strategy of consciously implicating and empowering those who "fed" my work. It was partially motivated by an ethical perspective, partly by a desire to engage participants more fully in the process, and partly by the "pedagogical" intention of revealing the power of visual representation.
It was not always "easy", and on at least one occasion, work was withdrawn from display until the participant whose hands were represented, was comfortable with the text which accompanied them. I fully expect certain elements of the material I have gathered over the course of the residency to remain inaccessible to public presentation. Disclosure in any context is a risky business... and in the "altered" context of an art work on public display may become problematic for some participants in some projects. Their permission is required before work goes to the public any finished form which would identify them... a parallel, perhaps with the "informed consent" of medical practice.
My final project at the school, MENDING the Invisible Wound, stands as the most collaborative of the residency... one in which I worked to serve objectives that I had not, myself, set. Certainly as Director and editor and collaborator/writer on the script, I had as much "voice" as one might expect in a film or video project, but it was in no way "my" project. Rather it was one in which the artist "served", rather than "controlled" the process. Regardless of the modernist bias against "useful" or didactic work, and the still powerful myths which privilege "art for art's sake" over works with a learning or teaching agenda, I view the MENDING project as one of the most radical and critically successful of the residency. For me, it stands as the clear and provocative "beginning" of what an artist-in-residence might achieve within the context of the medical education community, or indeed, any community with a need to express itself to itself.
In closing this section of the report, I refer interested readers to Appendix 5 where selected excerpts from my journals are included. My intention there, is to expose some of the daily elements of "practice".... to de-mystify, a little, the artist's engagement in a world both foreign and familiar to her own. To share, if at all possible, the freshness of the experience as it happened, without the benefits of hindsight...to reveal in a more personal "voice", the sense and smell, the daily grind... the history and the mystery of my brief journey into medical territory.
The Future: ongoing preoccupations, projects and relationships:
One thing remains most clear at the close of the residency, and that is my continuing and substantial preoccupation with issues surrounding medicine, the human body, and the manner in which medical knowledge is "constructed"within the dominant meaning system of western tradition. Clearly I will be pursuing my explorations in these areas for a number of years, with or without any on-going relationship to the Faculty of Medicine.
The Learning the Body project alone, will take a number of years to complete even the basic research with participants, who have agreed to stay involved at least until they receive their MD, and possibly on into their resident training. I am fairly certain at this time, that a major bookwork will emerge from this project. MENDING the Invisible Wound will be continue towards completion on my own time, and VHS dubs will be provided to the Faculty of Medicine once the final edit and sound mix are complete. Like most film/video works, it will establish a "life" of its own... both through use at this school, perhaps at others, and in whatever festival context seems most appropriate to the finished work. The Figuring the Ground series, has just begun, and will continue to emerge, as will most other works in progress initiated during the residency. (i.e. Tools of the Trade, Table of Phobias, and Drawing on the Body )
The Faculty of Medicine will be provided with whatever imagery they desire (produced during the artist's tenure at the school), in digital form, and with copyright permission for its educational use. Original works will be removed as required, and there is some possibility that I will continue to mount work in various locations at the school.
My own intentions with regard to the medical school are to forge less formal links, to pursue strategic collaborations on a project basis, to continue and extend my research into the clinical rather than the academic community. Meetings are scheduled with the Dean early in April to discuss possibilities of my future involvement with the school and until they take place, nothing can be achieved by speculation. It is unlikely that I will "disappear" entirely from this community, and hope that, even if only as an observer, an occasional visitor, or a sometime collaborator, I can sustain a relationship, that began in 1992, long before the residency.
To those student, faculty and staff members of the Faculty of Medicine who welcomed me into their community, who generously contributed to my learning and my work, and who have been curious, supportive, and patient about my presence in their midst, I say THANK YOU.
Further information about this work or residency can be requested from the artist at:
or
from The Dean of Medicine
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