Biomedicine on Display

I have just had a paper accepted for a very interesting symposium called Representing the Contentious, organized in London 14 October by Bronwyn Parry, Ania Dabrowska and Wellcome Trust People Award.

My presentation contains many images from my PhD Delineating Disease: a system for investigating Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva that were not presented to the public for reasons I will discuss.

Drawing hidden truths

How do you show disease in a way that reveals new insights, is clear, informative, is understandable to members of the public as well as to medical experts, and yet remains respectful to the subject? And what if this research is also set within the context of the medical museum where processes of preparation and display must also be considered?

In an artistic research PhD, a system using drawing as a valid research methodology to investigate a rare disease was developed. It presented a breadth of experiences of a disease called FOP and also revealed the disease within the context of museum conservation and display. The activity of drawing was shown to both initiate the act of looking and evidence the journey of understanding taken during this process. It involved actually spending time in the presence of people and objects, and forming relationships. This commitment maintained dignity and respect for people and objects, and the drawings were seen to be informative and sensitive. Drawing was used not merely to record, but as a participatory activity. Evidence showed the research revealed new insights, confirmed medical opinions about the progression of the disease and presented a far greater breadth of experiences of FOP than previously seen.

But the impact of this research also had unexpected consequences. Certain drawings were not included in the exhibition that formed part of the final research exposition, as they were deemed unsuitable. Medical experts were ‘shocked’ by drawings presenting the methods involved in preparation of donors with the disease. These processes integral to the research, hidden behind the scenes of the museum, were not what the experts had expected to see.

But the greatest impact was on the people with FOP. I was completely unprepared for their reactions when they saw drawings of the disease. Their responses to being drawn were positive. They appreciated someone looking at them without staring, spending time with them, bothering to see them. Despite having seen their own X-rays, CT scans and read medical books, when they saw other drawings of FOP they were shocked. Unlike medical imaging, which requires training and experience to ‘read’, they ‘understood’ the drawings and felt their clarity revealed the hidden, terrible truth. They acted like a mirror. Conversely, they also felt it was vital the research was shown to make people aware of this rare disease.  The responsibility of this is something that has weighed heavily on me. Despite the research being seen to be valid, insightful and useful, it also had unseen consequences. What form of exposition should these contentious elements take, should they be shown at all?

After more than half a year of budget negotations, Medical Museion is now officially part of the EC 7th FWP programme-financed project StudioLab.

Inspired by the merging of the artists studio with the research lab to create a hybrid creative space, STUDIOLAB proposes the creation of a new European platform for creative interactions between art and science. STUDIOLAB brings together major players in scientific research with centres of excellence in the arts and experimental design and leverages the existence of a new network of hybrid spaces to pilot a series of projects at the interface between art and science.

Science Gallery in Dublin, Le Laboratoire in Paris, Ars Electronica in Linz, Royal College of Art in London, and MediaLab Prado in Madrid are the five major partners — and the rest of us, including Medical Museion, are six associated partners (which means we get less money — but also have less responsibility).

StudioLab will involve activities along three key dimensions: incubation of art-science projects, education and public engagement. Medical Museion’s part of the contract is to create a public engagement-oriented installation and event about synthetic biology (i.e., the next hot topic in the life sciences).

So now we are on the outlook for good ideas! And I thought we might get some inspiration from the seminar titled ‘Organizing collaborations: Synthetic biology, social science, art and design’ that Jane Calvert from INNOGEN, Edinburgh, is giving here in Copenhagen on Thursday:

Something that makes the emerging field of synthetic biology particularly interesting is that diverse groups including social scientists, ethicists, lawyers, policy makers, artists, designers and publics are becoming involved in the field from the outset. In this presentation, Jane Calvert explores the opportunities and challenges provided by these new forms of collaboration, drawing both on her own experiences as a social scientist studying synthetic biology, and on the Synthetic Aesthetics project, which brings synthetic biologists together with artists and designers.

This is very much along the lines we’ve been thinking in the StudioLab context.

The seminar takes place Thursday 22 September, 3-5 pm, in room K4.41, Kilevej 14A, Copenhagen Business School. Be sure to register for the seminar by email to cf.ioa@cbs.dk before 19 September.

I found this interesting – consider it in light of museum materialities and aestethics:

“The symposium will also consider why academic and artistic projects are
subject to different degrees of ethical oversight and how the final
outputs of such projects are shaped by their prospective consumption in
the public domain.”

See below for the full call

——————————————————————————————————–

Representing the Contentious:  A Symposium

Dr Bronwyn Parry and Ania Dabrowska, Artist
Mind Over Matter, Wellcome Trust People Award

Call for papers.

14th October, 2011

10 am – 4 pm

Shoreditch Town Hall, 380 Old Street, London, EC1V 9LT

Representing the Contentious is a one-day interdisciplinary symposium
that will examine the complexities of creating and representing work
(whether academic or artistic) that, due to its ethical, political, or
cultural sensitivity, its subject matter or research methodologies, has
the capacity to cause or provoke controversy, offence or condemnation.
The symposium will examine how the production of such work is negotiated
not only through the personal relationships of those involved but also
through formal institutions such as Ethical Review Committees. The
symposium will also consider why academic and artistic projects are
subject to different degrees of ethical oversight and how the final
outputs of such projects are shaped by their prospective consumption in
the public domain. Contributions are welcomed from academics or artists
who wish to take part in this ‘insider’s view’ of representing the
contentious through a mixture of critical discussions and presentations.
The symposium will run in parallel with Mind Over Matter, a Wellcome
Trust funded science/art exhibition about brain donation and the search
for a cure for dementia that will run at the Shoreditch Town Hall, 11-23
October, 2011.

You are invited to submit proposals for presentations of your academic
papers and art projects for consideration.  Proposals should include a
short bio and either an abstract for academic papers or a project
statement for artists with image files (up to 8 JPEGs or PDFs up to 2MB
each). A collected edition of these works is planned for future
publication. Please email proposals to the either of the co-authors of
the Representing the Contentious Symposium and Mind Over Matter Project:
Dr. Bronwyn Parry at b.parry@qmul.ac.uk  or Ania Dabrowska at
aniadabrowska@mac.com

Submission deadline: 15 September, 2011
Participating organisations: Wellcome Trust, Queen Mary University,
London, CFAS, CC75C studies, The University of Cambridge.  For
information about attending the symposium please contact Mind Over
Matter at: aniadabrowska@mac.com  or visit www.ania-dabrowska.co.uk  -
Mind Over Matter.

I’m not sure if Suzanne Anker‘s “Biota” (Porcelain, rapid prototype figurines, 2011) is fun, imaginative, engaging or plainly irritating (the fluttering movements are not kind to my overstimulated synapses):

Anyway, it’s an illustration to a talk titled “Fundamentally Human: Contemporary Art and Neuroscience”, which Suzanne Anker is giving at the Suna Kıraç Conferences on Neurodegeneration in Istanbul on 25 June.

In addition to scientific value, neuroscientific images, concepts and theories reflect shifts in perception and expression. In part, brought about by technological intervention, what was once thought to be the stuff of science fiction is now actually real. Fundamentally Human: Contemporary Art and Neuroscience, explores the ways in which state-of-the art technologies are intersecting and augmenting the artist’s imagination in the 21st century. From algorithmic computation, to robotic drawing to rapid-prototype sculpture, high-tech ways and means transform data into aesthetic experience.

More here: http://en.peramuzesi.org.tr and http://www.skconferences.org.

We’ve just produced this simple piece of genomic jewellery — a necklace made by a gene chip in a thin silver chain (see larger image below).

This particular gene chip (BeadChip) is produced by the San Diego-based company Illumina, which develops and manufactures platforms for the analysis of genetic variation and biological function for the rapidly growing sequencing, genotyping and gene expression markets.

First, here’s some technical description of the Illumina BeadChip (based on what our senior curator Daniel Noesgaard has found out):

A BeadChip is a ~30 x100 mm silica slide containing twenty-four arrays, each allowing for genotyping of a single biological sample. Each array contains a very large number of microscopic microwells etched into the surface of the slide. The microwells (<3 micrometer in diameter, 3 micrometer deep) are uniformly spaced across the silica surface, i.e., each array contains more than 0.5 million about microwells. The microwells are filled with tiny silica beads (one type per well) held to the wells by non-covalent forces. Each bead is covered with hundreds of thousands of copies of a known short nucleotide sequence (50 nucleotides long). In addition, each bead also contains an address sequence that allows for decoding, once beads have been randomly distributed across the chip wells. The design allows for 3,000 to 90,000 bead types, each of which represents one single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) to be analysed.

The assay is based on genomic DNA that is extracted from blood samples. The DNA is amplified, fragmented, precipitated and resuspended before being loaded onto the BeadChip for hybridization with the short nucleotide sequences on the beads. After hybridization, the chip is washed to remove unhybridized or non-specifically bound DNA. Then fluorescently labeled nucleotides are added to extend the hybridized DNA that thus act as primers. Finally, the chip is coated for protection against photo bleaching. Following coating, the chip must be scanned immediately. If necessary, the chip can be stored for up to 72 hours in a dark vacuum with minimal signal loss.

The necklace has so far been produced in one copy only — made as a gift for Bodil Busk Laursen at the occasion of her retirement as Director of the Design Museum Denmark last week.

It was our senior curator Bente Vinge Pedersen who suggested we could use one of the chips left over from the ‘Genomic Enlightenment’ art installation earlier in the spring:

(see also the video from the installation work here; more about the ‘Genomic Enlightenment’ installation in a later post).

Senior curator Niels Christian Vilstrup-Møller and conservator Nanna Gerdes did the craft work and the necklace was handed over to Bodil Busk Laursen at a reception last Monday.

And here’s a larger image of the piece:

The installation Genomic Enlightenment, which was pre-showed last night for a specially invited scentific audience interested in “deep sequencing” , has involved a lot of work.

This is a movie about the skills, joy and team-work that went into making and putting up the beautiful, glimmering wave of microarrays.

The installation can be seen in the entrance hall of Medical Museion from Wednesday 23 March. Stay atuned for news about the official opening.

On my continuing investigation into the aesthetics of rollators I was told about the Danish Queen Ingrid. After falling and breaking her hip, she appeared in the summer of 1998 for the first time publically using a rollator. Photographs and news footage of her shows her dressed in a glamorous couture gown and pushing a matching coloured rollator. Going to a gala wearing her prom dress and matching rollator and proudly escorted by her grandson Prince Frederik became a powerful image that encouraged others not to be ashamed of their rollators.

Determined to draw this culturally and historically important artifact I found that there was an exhibition about Queen Ingrid’s life at the Amalienborg Museum.

In the final room many of Queen Ingrid’s clothes were on display and in a long glass display cabinet that filled the entire wall of one room was her famous prom dress and there, peeking out shyly from behind the dress that lumpy, squat rollator lurked.

The accompanying sign reads:

“Rollator. With advanced age Queen Ingrid experienced difficulty in walking. In 1998 she attended a public event for the first time with a rollator-a wheeled walking frame. This had great significance for elderly people in the country, who then, with Queen Ingrid as role model, no longer felt that it was embarrassing to use a rollator”

I was slightly disappointed to find that the rollator was partially hidden as though embarrassed of being on display.

I wrote to ask for permission to draw it and was informed that this was not in fact the Queen’s rollator but an exact replica. In further conversations all was explained. This is not the actual one used by Queen Ingrid because, as happens in the case of every Danish citizen, when she died the original rollator was returned to the commune and once more became the property of the health service. No one will ever know if they are using the same rollator as the Queen Mother once used. The one on display is the same model manufactured at the same time and representative of the one she used. It is an Opal Futura 450 made by Dolomite and manufactured in early 1997 so was an up to the minute model when used by Queen Ingrid. Importantly the colour, which is mint, was not made to match her dress. The material for the dress was found to match the rollator.

The staff at the Amalienborg museum were incredibly helpful. Every morning I would arrive just after 8am and the rollator was carefully removed from its case and placed in the middle of the room for me. I was then left to draw until 11am when the museum opened.

Queen Ingrid’s rollator is not ‘special’, it was not specially designed or commissioned or bespoke made to royal requirements. She used the same rollator as anyone else but chose a bright mint coloured one. And like other users, she probably felt it was ‘her’ rollator and relied on it in the same way as any other user would.

Two weeks ago I mentioned that the Museums Journal had published Ken Arnolds and my Dogme 95-style manifesto for creating science, technology and medicine exhibitions, first presented last September at a conference organised by Medical Museion in Copenhagen. We have now received the journal’s permission to publish the full version of the manifesto. Enjoy and/or criticize!

Just over 15 years ago, Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg spearheaded Dogme 95, a manifesto to purify the art of film-making.

The aim was to engage audiences more profoundly and make sure they weren’t distracted by over-production. The Dogme manifesto ruled out special effects, post-production changes and other tricks in order to focus on the story and the performances.

Since then, writers, theatre directors and other arts practitioners have all found inspiration in Dogme 95’s back-to-basics philosophy. Dogme has been criticised, as have some of the films made according to its rules, but as exhibition producers, this classic vow of chastity has inspired us as a way of guiding and sharpening the creative practice of making science, technology and medicine exhibitions.

These rules have been written and published with almost indecent speed. They are deliberately provocative prompts for further discussion. This manifesto is not a definitive set of working proposals, but a draft, which will no doubt be modified and sharpened through challenge and feedback.

And anyone who knows the institutions we are based at will be aware that the exhibitions we have presided over have often not followed one or more of these rules.

This manifesto is almost reference-free, but this does not mean we think the ideas are purely our own. There are vast bodies of literature on science communication, exhibition making, art history and museology; we have read some of this literature and been influenced by it. We also have learned much from the museums we have visited.

1. Exhibitions should be research-led, not a form of dissemination

Curators should use exhibitions to find things out (for themselves and for their visitors) and not just regurgitate what is already known. Good curators are inspired and imaginative researchers who find and then build on the investigations of experts and colleagues, juxtaposing varied understandings about their chosen topic. They add their own insights and gradually come up with new ideas and perspectives.

2. A scientist should always be involved in the exhibition, a technologist if it is about technology

Don’t shy away from drawing on real expertise in interpreting a topic or finding exhibits. But this is not to say that the aim of the exhibition is simply to give voice to the views of these experts. They are not, nor should they be encouraged to see themselves as, the curators, but it is vital that their perspectives are present in the final exhibition.

3. Be clear about exhibitions being “multi-authored”

Exhibitions emerge from curatorial collaborations between experts and designers. But a show’s funders, the institutional context and other stakeholders have a bearing on the final outcome; it should be possible for exhibition visitors to find out about these influences.

The project teams who make exhibitions deserve to be credited. Those responsible for the show not only need to take a bow, they also need to be held responsible for its contents and impact.

4. Use only original material

Exhibitions should engage audiences with original material rather than reproductions and props. If you cannot illustrate a topic with original artefacts, images and documents, ask yourself if an exhibition is the best way to make the point. Models, replicas and reproductions can be shown, but only if this is the point of showing them.

Reproductions of artworks should not be used, unless the work’s natural medium is “facsimile” – for example, digital photographs. The use of scientific and medical images raises complicated questions, such as what is the “original” format of a microscopic image of a cell?

Most scientific images today are minted as digital data, and their final appearance invariably owes much to enhancements and cropping. How this material should be displayed and labelled needs consideration. It is often better to leave it out all together.

5. Never show ready-made science

Focus on the processes of science: science in the making; the triumph of discovery; the frustration and blind alleys explored along the way. Also, look at the social and cultural processes of scientific ideas becoming accepted and embedded.

6. Jealously guard a place for mystery and wonder

Exhibitions provide opportunities to explore topics in ways that bring new light to sometimes forgotten or less-well understood aspects of medicine, science, technology and their histories. But this urge to demystify subjects should not be allowed to render exhibitions earnestly didactic.

Deliberately include some exhibits about which less, rather than more, is known – curious exhibits that just cannot completely be accounted for. Visitors should leave exhibitions wanting to find out more.

7. Reject most exhibition ideas

Exhibitions represent the meeting point between subjects and material culture, and can be approached from either end – themes or objects first, or a mixture of the two. But often, topics that seem promising will not be worth developing because there simply aren’t good enough objects with which to explore or support them.

Similarly, many areas of material culture end up just not being interesting enough to make a show about. Too often, exhibitions are made from empty ideas of stupid objects. It is worth searching for a topic and a set of objects that harmoniously amplify and mutually enrich each other.

8. Leave out as much as possible

Less is usually more in exhibitions. Visitors will remember and enjoy looking at 10 carefully chosen things more than a 100 that are reasonably well selected.

The most important aspect of an exhibition is its outer boundaries, which keep out the mass of distractions that lie beyond. In the digital era, a core value of a museum exhibition is that it makes its point through displaying a few selected original objects.

9. Embrace the showbusiness of exhibitions

Audiences come to exhibitions in their leisure time and deserve to be lifted out of themselves. They will respond to the drama of the best exhibits, displays, design, writing and lighting.

Make sure that all of this is done well and given the greatest polish. This will enhance the presence of the objects and the impact of the ideas. Don’t be ashamed to admit that making exhibitions is, in part, a matter of putting on a show.

10. Celebrate the ephemeral quality of exhibitions

Catalogues, web-presence and filmed versions of exhibitions can lengthen the shadows cast by exhibitions, but they will never come close to keeping alive the actual experience of visiting a show.

This is an important part of the magic of exhibitions. Like good pieces of theatre, they gain much of their energy by being around for a limited time and then disappearing. The fact that they are time-limited gives their makers a degree of freedom to experiment and be daring. Grasp it!

11. Make exhibitions true to the geography of their venues

The principle is that knowledge is “situated” – the context in which we contemplate and acquire it can seem as important as the ideas or facts themselves. Exhibition makers need to think hard about how to work with the “place” of an exhibition.

Consider what is lost in touring an exhibition where the subject becomes detached from the local context. The country, the city, the venue, the room, and the set and design of an exhibition, even the showcases and the orientation of individual objects – all have a bearing on the meanings that audiences derive from them.

12. Avoid artificial lighting

Use natural light where possible. Start with the light available and build up from it. If possible, reveal the windows and keep the doors open. Let the natural layout of the building be apparent, make it clear where you have introduced false walls. This will enable visitors to keep a sense of where they are.

And don’t fall into the trap of imagining that the background for an exhibition has either to be a neutral black box or a pristine white cube. Ideally, a show should look and feel very different on a midsummer morning to a winter evening.

13. Always involve more than one sense

It is impossible for visitors to turn off their non-visual senses in an exhibition – they will hear, touch and smell things no matter what. So make sure that some of the tactile, audio, or olfactory experiences of an exhibition are curated. Exhibitions work by teasing their visitors into thinking that they could get close enough to what they see to touch it, even while making sure they don’t.

But curators should think about how to introduce at least a few objects that visitors can touch. Never use artificial sounds or odours, but try hard to find ways to enhance the audio and olfactory qualities of the original objects, getting visitors to use their ears and noses.

14. Make exhibitions for inquisitive adults

If you aim at educationally under-achieving primary school children, it will be impossible to engage anyone else (and you are unlikely to engage even your target audience). Many children and teenagers are keenly attracted to adult culture, but very few adults see the attraction of young material.

Never make exhibitions for educational purposes – other media and methods are more effective. It’s also worth bearing in mind that exhibitions are, by their nature, a “childish” medium, bringing out playfulness in all of us. This should be encouraged, but to focus deliberately on young audiences reaps diminishing returns.

15. Remember that visitors ultimately make their own exhibitions

Some visitors might not be interested in reading what the curators write, while others might not look at many objects. Some will be interested in aspects of a topic that the curators might not have come across.

Because of this, when an exhibition opens, it is only ever the second or third draft of an idea that will, through revision, reach maybe its eighth or ninth incarnation by the time it closes.

Exhibitions should be alive, and change is a vital part of life. Even in the most “stable” shows, lights will need adjusting and labels redrafting. An exhibit might even have to be removed or replaced. More radically, some exhibitions should be deliberately half-finished, or set up so that updates can be added halfway through.

16. Make exhibitions the jumping off place for further engagement

Good exhibitions are the point of departure for a longer relationship. The value of exhibitions should only partly be judged by analysing how many people come, how long they spent in a show and what they think of it. On this basis alone, most exhibitions are foolishly expensive ventures, particularly in these cash-strapped times.

Don’t forget that, just occasionally, exhibitions can really change visitors’ lives and this is worth a lot. Effective exhibitions can also bring in new objects to museums, have an impact on recruitment, add to shop sales, improve the organisation’s reputation, and provide a context for corporate celebrations. There is a virtual avalanche of cultural capital that can flow from them: this should be valued from the start.

17. Don’t be afraid to bend, break or reinvent the rules

There is a strong disciplinary element in science, which university politicians, research foundations and science managers prefer to emphasise.

What they usually don’t understand, but what most (younger) scientists know very well, is that there is also a strong playful and anarchistic dimension in scientific practice. Somewhat akin to the dichotomy between apollonian and dionysian.

A feature article in the last issue of The Scientist suggests that “creativity, do-it-yourself individualism, anti-establishmentarianism and attitude” make science more akin to punk music than most people would believe. Here are some quotes:

• “Punk ethos is typified by a passionate adherence to individualism, creativity and freedom of expression with no regard to established opinions … Good scientific discipline is also typified by such qualities, including inquisitiveness and curiosity, with no entrenchment to established beliefs”.
• Punk is “about the freedom to express what you want to express,” 
• Both punk and science also value individualism and are not always embraced by society: “In that sense, I think both of them have a subcultural aspect to them.”
• “We’re always looking for discoveries that challenge current thinking … Punk rock is like that, too”
• “Scientist or not, anyone with an open mind [and a] passion for life has the punk ethos.”

Agree. But this scientific attitude isn’t restricted to punk music. The world is full of cultural activities of that kind. A lot of modern art, for example. Experimental theatre. Much of contemporary writing. Not to speak of a whole array of political movements.

But — how do you make an exhibition about the dionysian element in science? How do you display an attitude with the help of material and visual objects?

We got this cuddly edition of the malaria parasite from Marco Herbst who was here visiting the museum last week, to get inspiration for his upcoming Malaria Museum in Berlin.

Marco’s approach to making a museum was refreshingly nontraditional. Far from being webbed up in museological concepts and theories, he builds on a growing fascination with his subject along with the human instinct to collect interesting things.

The former owner of a night club in Dublin and a bar in Berlin, Marco has some of the passion and personality of the renaissance collector with his cabinet of curiosities. I’m looking forward to popping by his museum for my daily gin and tonic – a drink originally invented to prevent malaria, as the tonic water contains the alkaloid quinine.

But of course background knowledge, and above all interesting objects, are essential. So Marco is at the moment traveling the world from Japan to Copenhagen, to meet malaria experts and museum people and ‘suck’ their knowledge.

Upon arrival at Lotte residential care home on 7th December, I was greeted with the trappings of a party. The dining room had been recently decorated with candles and baubles for Christmas and the tables were set with Danish flags and napkins in honour of a resident’s birthday.

A chair was placed for me at a table. I sat next to Ingrid and opposite Inge and Nis. I had met Nis the previous week but he had no memory of me. He was very pleased to talk and introduced Inge to me as his fiancée.  Ingrid remembered me but did not recollect that I had drawn her. She seemed very pleased to see the drawing of herself when I showed it to her.

After eating together, I chose to depict Inge and Nis sitting next to each other in one drawing. Inge was very elegant and beautiful. Her silver hair still had a luster and a stylish wave. She wore a black fur sleeveless body warmer and a shirt with fashionable wide collar and cuffs. Strings of large beads and a set of smaller beads adorned her neck. Her mottled discoloured arms denote cellulitis but her hands did not seem to have signs of arthritis. She is 100 years old.

Nis always sits next to Inge. His adoration of her was obvious and on the day of my visit he was very proud to show her off to me. Nis who is 97, boasted about Inge’s age. He was an architect and was keen to look at my drawings. Every time I looked at Nis to draw him, he would make a funny face at me and chuckle. His high arching eyebrows betrayed his cheeky nature and his large cheeks became lost in the large ribbed neck of his cosy Nordic sweater.

They ate their meals; Nis had a special one as he is a vegetarian. They had a glass of wine and then enjoyed birthday cake and coffee.  Whilst both were rather hard of hearing they were clear and articulate.

After drawing Nis and Inge I drew Ruth. She had wanted me to draw her for the last couple of weeks. She is a youngster for Lotte, a mere 78 years old and had been there for 4 years. She is wheelchair bound and has restricted use in her right side, almost none on her left side and has problems speaking clearly but her intentions are always clear. Determined to perform the tasks of eating and drinking for herself as much as possible, Ruth was keen to participate.

Before we began she made a request, that I wait until someone came with her false teeth. It was very touching that she wanted to look her best for the drawing. She spent as much time as she could grinning at me, smiling as if for the camera but trying to sustain it through the long drawn out session. Her face is small and her petite body seemed to be even smaller in the big wheelchair she uses. Ruth’s already large eyes were enlarged through the thick lenses of her glasses and they gazed at me, smiling at me throughout the time I drew.

I returned to Lotte on 12^th January. I sat with Karen. She was a petite lady aged 97 with her white hair cut into a smart bob style. She had fallen before Christmas and gashed her forehead and had required 16 stitches but seemed to be quite happy that it was healing well. Lines were deeply etched around her cheeks and eyes and her strong nose seemed disproportionate to her small delicate face and large eyes.  Her mouth was in constant flux, never resting and never maintaining the same position for long.

She received a letter from her daughter, an artist living in California and only needed a little help to open the envelope. She was keen to show me a photo of her because I am an artist too. Sitting in her cosy cream cardigan she seemed very gentle but very able. Her pride in her daughter’s work was clear and her enjoyment of being drawn was obvious.

x

One of my favourite fellow bloggers, medical photographer Øystein Horgmo, has just written about how he was recently invited to document a family taking farewell of a young father in an intensive care unit.

It’s a moving story. But what actually caught my interest was this painting (by medical doctor Joseph Dwaihy and artist Sara Dykstra), which Øystein uses the illustrate the story.

Based on a photograph from the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center’s first intensive care unit, circa 1955 (read more here), the painting is reminiscient of Norman Rockwell-realism. Like Rockwell, Dwaihy and Dykstra portray people in mundane situations. It’s people who play the primary role. The instruments are background props.

Compare Dwaihy and Dykstra’s painting of the 1955 ICU motif with a photo of a contemporary ICU unit. Today, there are indeed still people (a patient, a doctor, maybe a relative) around—but they seem to play a secondary role to the instruments.

In the cartoon below, the central role of instruments in an ICU is emphasized. The patient is invisible, the doctor is on his way out. Here the ICU is all about the instruments:

Visiting Lotte residential care home is always an experience. The first thing you notice upon entering is there are no signs warning you of something or pictograms and ideograms giving instructions. The next thing you notice is the lack of plastic. No carers in wipe down aprons, no wipe clean table clothes, plastic beakers or bibs. The tables have tablecloths, the residents have lunch as anyone would, using normal cutlery and china plates and they have beer or wine with their meals. This is not an institutionalized feeling care home.

My first session of drawing there was on November 24^th. After sitting and speaking with the delightful Nis who was an architect responsible for the main design around Rådhuspladsen, I sat next to Ingrid as we all played Bingo (Danish: Banko). Ingrid is 96. I had noticed her on my first visit because she wore a bright red, star shaped hair slide.

Ingrid was again wearing her star shaped hair slide. She was curious about my large hooped earrings and I pointed out when I am 96 I will probably still be wearing them. Her haircut was in a very smart bob style, which fell forward as she leaned over her cards to place buttons on the numbers being called. She has arthritis in her hands and the joints were swollen and enlarged, pulling the surrounding flesh taught across her hands. The hair caught up in her slide fell in a layer shorter than the rest of her hair and the tip of one arm of the star was partially obscured by the white strands.

I sat next to her; she was at the head of the table concentrating on her game, I sat on her right. I watched her and drew her while she was engaged in her activity. Several times she checked with a carer on her left which number were being called, just to be sure she had heard correctly. Once in a while she looked up and caught my eye. She smiled and shook her head. She was surprised and bemused that I was looking at her so intensely. She did not think she would be very interesting to draw.

She was. There were a great number of deep wrinkles on her face. Her brow and forehead had lines so deep they almost seemed to separate areas of her skin. Carved like plots of farrowed land. Shapes formed under her eyebrows and around the top of her nose and the deep lines etched by her lips formed long flowing crevasses. The teardrop droop of her jowl rested low and the extra flesh under her chin swept down by her neck. The shawl thrown around her shoulders had a fringe and was knotted at her sternum.

I asked her what career she had been in. She replied she was nothing special, just an ordinary person who never did anything special, just looked after the home and raised her children. That’s a pretty special thing in my opinion.

This session at the conference in September circled around the role of art in the museum, and how museums and artists can and should work together.

The first speaker, Karen Ingham, emphasized that the concept of art in museums essentially refers to interdisciplinary happenings and should always be a product of dialogue. She talked about how museum- and other spaces speak to us, and how the space can function as a creative catalyst and a link between museums and artists. Read Karen’s full abstract here.

Silvia Casini explained how her work with the aesthetics of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) led her to undergo several scannings herself and how she in the end became an artist, video-maker, and curator in order to represent these very personal and yet elusive images. Read Silvia’s full abstract here.

The discussion afterwards focused on how art is incorporated into the museum. The question was raised whether, in the end, museum visitors will be able to tell a scientific object from a piece of art, and whether there has to be a difference. Comments were heard from Alex Tyrell, Lucy Lyons, Suzanne Anker, Thomas Söderqvist, John Durant and Victoria Höög.

See a list of the abstracts here. Read more about the EAMHMS video clip project here.

Rollator drawings, 30^th September – 4^th October 2010:

Continuing my appreciation of the aesthetics of seemingly ugly and mundane artefacts we associate with ageing, I investigated a second rollator.

This was a contemporary model. It had a clear plastic tray, a wire shopping basket and four wheels rather than three for extra stability. It was squatter, sturdier and in some ways even uglier than the earlier three wheel model. The hidden complexities and detailing within the design meant it took much longer to draw than I had anticipated.  I intentionally drew it from the position someone would see it if they were approaching it to use it.

The moulded plastic on the handles had been textured for extra grip and had an organic quality. The bolts and connections remained evident but were more refined.

What I found was how much I appreciated the qualities that I had previously missed. The curve of the front bumper and the connection on the front wheel shafts were particularly elegant and the sweep of the handles, handgrips and ergonomic brakes were much more aesthetically thought out than I had initially noticed. The light reflecting on the clear plastic tray formed bright curves and rainbow patterns in contrast to the opaque density of the black mat handles and shelf. The network formed by the basket was highly detailed and the intersecting areas had been welded neatly to form the grid of the shopping basket.

Interestingly, on the back of the rear metal legs were two orange rectangular strips of reflective material to ensure safety at night. The four wheels were not as fat as in the earlier model and the two at the back remained fixed whilst the two front wheels acted more like a shopping trolley.

Other things had not changed. The cuffs around the wheels remained the same, the mechanism for folding had not changed and the brake system appeared to be similar. The handles used to adjust the height of had become elongated and needed less effort to use.

Perhaps because these objects are so new, they are too close to us to be perceived as historical objects so have yet to become ‘artefacts’ i.e. something worthy of being presented within the auspices of a curated museum display where they would be expected to attract crowds who wish to engage with them. What would a member of the public hope to see when looking at an object such as this?

When objects are utilitarian, essential to many and in such common usage they can easily become invisible. The rollator is associated with assisting those who do not suffer from a terrible incurable disease but simply aids those who are just ageing as we all are, and need a little extra help. Is it because this is so uneventful, so usual we are not interested in looking at items associated with this natural process? Is it because the materials are thought of as utilitarian and not beautiful, or is it because we choose to turn away and not see something we find distasteful or fear but certainly do not welcome and embrace – the everyday process of ageing?