A one-day workshop at Birkbeck, University of London Thursday 13th September, 9.30am – 6pm Curating the Medical Humanities considers some of the key ethical, intellectual and practical challenges involved in curating medical humanities exhibitions, particularly in relation to questions of audience, accessibility, participation and public engagement. The workshop developed out of the organisers’ experiences curating the exhibition Mr […]
What can writers and teachers of Creative Writing learn from psychiatry, neuroscience, and other medical disciplines about the links between creativity and mental illness? Richard Hamblyn, Toby Litt and Lily Dunn, from Birkbeck, University of London, have organized an exciting series of dialogues, culminating in an ambitious one day conference on ‘Creative Writing and Mental […]
This reading group explored the relationship between portraiture and illness, and was led by the artist Tim Wainwright. It met on Thursday 23 March, 3-4.30pm in Room BO2, Birkbeck School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square WC1H 0PD. Set texts: Transplant & Life digital guide: http://www.transplantandlife.uk/en/ Tamar Tembeck, ‘Selfies of Ill Health: Online Autopathographic Photography […]
Blood; ejaculate; spit & phlegm; tears; mucus & pus; urine; diarrhoea; milk; vomit; sweat. Sometimes the body seems to be a leaky collection of liquids, a porous and productive entity, a body that repeatedly transgresses its own boundaries through seeping and oozing, or even gushing. During 2016, Fluid Physicalities has been running as a seminar series, convened by Anthony Bale and Esther […]
The cover of Healing Spaces, Modern Architecture and the Body, a collected volume published in 2016 by Routledge, features an architectural cross-section. A rectilinear tower with a reinforced concrete frame is rendered as a grid of pristine logic and perfection. Within the grid’s compartments, miniature outlines of sexless human figures gather in small groups in […]
Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, London Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 2:00 PM – Friday, May 12, 2017 at 6:30 PM (BST) How have theatre and performance represented, examined or been implicated in the transmission and circulation of medical and psychological conditions? How has our understanding of these relationships and phenomena changed over time, across […]
In our first session of Spring term, we will explore themes relating to surgery via two set texts. Henry Marsh’s Do No Harm (2014) is an account of his work as a neurosurgeon in the NHS. We will also read a short extract from Samer Nashef’s The Naked Surgeon (2015), which details his experiences working […]
In this talk, artists Tim Wainwright and John Wynne are joined by Beth Elliott and Karen Taylor to discuss the exhibition Transplant and Life (currently on show at the Hunterian Museum), the stories behind it, and the broader relationships between arts and health. Beth Elliott is Director of Bethlem Gallery, a contemporary gallery based on […]
Friday 3 February 2017, 2-5pm, Keynes Library (room 114), School of Arts, Birkbeck, 43 Gordon Square This event marks the publication of the collected volume Healing Spaces, Modern Architecture and the Body, Ashgate Studies in Architecture (Routledge, 2016). Healing Spaces brings together cutting-edge scholarship examining the myriad ways that architects, urban planners, medical practitioners, and […]
At least since Thebes was beset by plague, western theatre has incubated a fascination with its own contagious power. This has extended beyond investigating medical and psychological conditions on stage, to both exploring and protecting against performance’s capacity to transmit ideas, illnesses, feelings and behaviours. This two-day Wellcome funded symposium puts the relationship between theatre […]
