Visceral Operations / Assemblage

Hands, nothing but hands I see in the surgical operating theater. In surgery the meaning of the hand increasingly changes through the use of electronic technologies. This transformation caused by digital aids equally concerns the act of healing and the relationships between patients and clinical personnel. Visceral Operations / Assemblage encounters these changes in the practice of surgery, based on the research Performing Surgery, with the development of artistic approaches. Therefore activities in the operating theater during minimally invasive interventions and classic open surgeries shall be observed, recorded and compared. Special attention shall be paid on tactile aspects of perception. Though the tactile does not solely refer to physical touch but rather to the full complexity of human communication. In surgery nonverbal expressions, gestures and body language are immediately intertwined with the processes of healing. Currently a gesture is frequently understood as manual manipulation of a device or screen. However in the frame of Visceral Operations hands shall be explored in regard of their shift in meaning for the surgical treatment. In order to tackle the question, which role hands do still play in surgery and whether they will stay connected with the act of healing in the operating theater in the future, sensitive artistic procedures are required. Methodologically those include the designing of textile works, experiments with silicone, resin and other material components, the development of spatial arrangements as well as drawing and filming. Sutures between surgery and art shall be revealed in the handling. As a result body related assemblages emerge in order to express interpersonal dimensions within those common actions. Christina Lammer corporealities.org

VISCERAL OPERATIONS / ASSEMBLAGE In Visceral Operations / Assemblage the increasing shift of meaning of the hand in surgery caused by the application of digital technologies was explored by means of filmmaking and bodywork. Therefore, activities in the operating theater during minimally invasive interventions and classic open surgeries were observed, recorded, compared, and analyzed. The spread of the coronavirus disease necessitated a slight reconceptualization of the research process. It was less possible to conduct fieldwork in surgery. The surgical operating theater with its strict hygiene regulations, however, became intrinsically connected with our everyday routines and necessities. Thus, I began to observe the biopolitical and emotional impact of the measures. How can we feel safe in such an environment? The ways corporeal proximity and distance are negotiated or sterile masks are used, how asepsis materializes, were explored. The sociocultural dimensions of hygiene were revealed. Choreographies of hand washing and other cleaning procedures became part of a wider collaborative practice across art and medicine. The COVID-19 precautions, keeping a distance from each other, mouth and nose protection, and the use of disinfectant, to name the most obvious, dramatically changed how people take care of their breathing, communicate with each other, and are spontaneously sociable. As a sociologist and communication scholar I perceived the political strategies at work to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease as socially intolerable. Nevertheless, the situation raised an awareness of the interdependencies of all organisms, among them bacteria and germs-commonly perceived as dirty and potentially dangerous. The development of arts-based practices of care that allow us to bring our attention back to breathing within these entanglements of humans and more than humans became an important aim of the project.