In Matters of the Heart, Christina Lammer explores the gestures of surgeons. This highly collaborative work is embedded in the arts based research project Performing Surgery (2015-2018) that she realizes at Medical University Vienna, Austria. A movie camera, either a digital or an analogue 16mm Bolex, is her constant research companion. The device has become embodied, it connects the artist with the clinical realities. She employs in-camera editing, absorbing the orchestration of hands, instruments and material components in the surgery room with much care and respect for intimate operations of dismemberment.
Lammer creates close-up images of hands: cutting, clipping, preventing, cutting again, detaching, excising, cutting again, clipping again, and suturing again. The body of another person is turned into a visceral tableau vivant. A sketchbook side by side to the pages of an anatomical atlas or microscope images of an open brain surgery next to a wall drawing of long pigtails of a young girl. Opening an imaginative space, Matters of the Heart aims at turning the art gallery into an operating room where local health professionals, artists and academics share experience and practice.
For information about Matters of the Heart: Screening of films by Christina Lammer, in collaboration with Wilfried Wisser, an event organized by Media @McGill, in collaboration with Social Studies of Medicine and OBORO that will take place on Friday, May 22, 2018 at 4:30 at McGill University, Arts W-215, 853 Sherbrooke Street West, please consult:
http://media.mcgill.ca/en/content/matters-heart-screening-films-christina-lammer-collaboration-wilfried-wisser