Memories of events that took place during anaesthesia are an oxymoron only if we wish to deny the body itself its memory. The aim of anaesthesia is to divide the mind from pain (its physical experience), but also to preclude excessive empathy from doctor to patient. Through a retrospective search for any representations of this moment, I search for possibilities to communicate memory loss and something removed from inside the body. The individual works are polemical attempts to transmit bodily experience through technical images, focusing on visualisations of data describing my elementary bodily functions, which I requested at the hospital after an operation. (Sharing of Information under General Aneasthesia, Oh, my own?, I don’t think I can be anyone now)
Sharing of Information Under General Anesthesia / Sdílení informací v celkové anestezii
2019
Sharing of Information Under General Anesthesia is a video that discusses the impossibility of articulating and sharing pain that is all the more pressing for its physical part taking place in unconsciousness. Subjectivity is lost in induced unconsciousness, and subsequent attempts to share this state with others are practically impossible. The graph of my basic life functions is animated through the time of the operation, and though it describes my body, it is just as distant for me as for any other observer. The first part of the video captures the interior and exterior of my home. In the background of the shot is my mother, working in the kitchen as usual. The shot is accompanied by a telephone conversation with a friend, an anaesthesiologist, who clarifies the side of the observer of induced unconsciousness. The second part of the video shows a reconstruction of “residual memory”, phantom pain, and embodied notions of the operation. Listening to a friend who – just like anyone else – can become the bearer of this non-memory that is “mine”.
I don't think I can be anyone now
2019
I don't think I can be anyone now consists of a digital print on semi-translucent plastic film and a short video behind it. In the past, total anaesthesia also served as a means to allow students of medicine to see the act of operating up close. The glass dividing the doctor and his unconscious subject from their audience turned the operating situation into a picture to be exhibited. The exhibition works with this reference to the making-public of the body based on its alienation from the subject. I published data concerning my body on a website and allowed free downloads. Data extraction without the knowledge of the individual, which is typical for any activity on the internet, acquires a physical dimension from the perspective of anaesthesia. This work was made for the Deniska display board.
Oh, my own?
digital prints, 2019
Oh, my own? is a series of digital prints that work with precise visualisations of medical records of falling asleep and waking up from induced unconsciousness and with simulations of bodily perceptions directly before and after memory loss. They are architectural blueprints; structures for forgotten experiences.
The series was exhibited at a solo exhibition at the PLATO Gallery, Ostrava.
Falling Asleep, One Version From Many / Jedna verze usínání
2021
The audio is a diary record of my memories and non-memories of artificial sleep and an auto-theory of my body's own memory. The piece was exhibited as part of the Wom*n-Rose-Song-Bone exhibition at the Display Gallery. Sound design by Mary C.
For listening, please contact me.