I Sing the Body Prosthetic

"I Sing the Body Prosthetic" is a review of "Leben mit Ersatzteilen" [Living with spare parts], an exhibition on prosthetics conceived of and designed at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany. It was shown there between May 2004 and December 2005 before migrating to the Medical Historical Museum of the Charité in Berlin where it will reside until February 2007. The author first discusses the general museological options chosen to present a thematic and chronological history of enhancement, with sections on the eye, the ear, teeth and jaws, internal organs, limbs and joints, and tissue engineering. By providing a more specific analysis of the exhibition concepts underlying the visual and auditive units, she then concentrates on the question of what it actually means to live with spare parts.