Obliterated Bodies: An Installation

Encounter between art and technology is a cumbersome issue. There is an ever-growing inclination in contemporary arts to draw on sophisticated technology. In numerous artistic instances, however, the operative modes of these devices remain obscure. What matters more to us is the illumination, through aesthetic experience, of the very conditions in which we engage with technological apparatuses in everyday life. The central focus of the installation project Obliterated Bodies is obstetric examination as one such engagement site - at the heart of which lies ultrasound-based scanning technologies.

The Fetal Image

A historical glance confirms that medical knowledge relies on a whole-sensory communication between the physician's sensory faculties and the patient's story/body. The physician listens, hears, touches, even smells and tastes, and therefore imagines corporeally "at the very bedside of the patient." With the opening up of cadavers in the 19th century, however, physicians' sensory capacities begin their seamless journey towards converging at sight; hence the development of numerous imaging technologies (from X-ray to MRI) as extensions of the medical eye. From then on, the physician sees. Perhaps his body is still next to the patient, but his gaze is diverted away from the patient's body onto an image or a monitor.

Fig. 1.

Plan showing circulation pattern.

© Ersan Ocak and Safak Uysal

Among other techniques accompanying this bargain, obstetric sonography is exceptional - not only in employing sound to envision a body's interior in a non-invasive manner, but in unconcealing another body in the female body via the fetal image. Coming to stand for the origin of life, this image arouses a feeling of amazement. Moreover, it becomes equivalent to the fetal body it represents with a great sense of semblance and immediacy - both of which need to be problematized.

The Caesura

In the specific case of the obstetric exam, the ability to strip the female body to survey the womb (along with the ability to read the resulting image, which requires professional translation) endows the obstetrician with a governing position. The cost of such power, however, is a double-sided obliteration. On the one hand, the female body is somewhat eliminated and subordinated to the image - the very mise-en-scéne of examination authorizes the monitor's centrality. On the other hand, the doctor him- or herself is desensitized towards his/her bodily capacities and the stakes of this act (penetration and surveillance of the female body). Although enhanced, the contact between doctor and patient, along with their relation to their own bodies, is cut.

Fig. 2.

General perspective overlooking Stage 1.

© Ersan Ocak and Safak Uysal

It is this caesura that we tried to reveal by constructing an installation, titled Obliterated Bodies, based on a linear circulation pattern (Fig. 1). We aimed at deciphering the operational protocols of obstetric imaging, its modus operandi, so as to transform it into a critical experience - by way of inviting visitors to participate in a displacement of all subjective positions involved in the obstetric examination.

The Installation

The installation welcomes the visitor at Room 1, where she is dictated instructions by an obstetrician, while watching a fetal image sample (Stage 1) (Fig. 2). Then, she enters a dark corridor, where the same image can be seen at a distance, projected from the other end on a transparent sheet suspended mid-air. (ST2). Approaching the sheet, the visitor recognizes a mirror covering the back wall, simultaneously seeing the superimposition of the image on her own body (ST3). While adjusting herself accordingly before the transparent sheet, she is guided to realize a second corridor to the right, at the end of which there exists another monitor. Displayed here is the live-video of herself shot by a camera from behind the mirror through a pin-hole (ST4). Inevitably, she can see herself on the second monitor only with her head rotating right and her gaze directed off-screen. As she approaches the monitor, the exit is revealed on the left. Once outside, she finds herself in Room 2, facing...