Biomedicine in museums

Some speak about the perfect storm. Here’s the perfect scientific journal: Journal of Universal Rejection (JofUR).

It’s all about rejection. The perfect rejection, i.e., universal rejection. In other words, the journal’s policy is to reject all submitted manuscripts, regardless of quality.

Here’s their reasons for why you should send your manuscript to them:

You can send your manuscript here without suffering waves of anxiety regarding the eventual fate of your submission. You know with 100% certainty that it will not be accepted for publication.

There are no page-fees.

You may claim to have submitted to the most prestigious journal (judged by acceptance rate).

The JofUR is one-of-a-kind. Merely submitting work to it may be considered a badge of honor.

You retain complete rights to your work, and are free to resubmit to other journals even before our review process is complete.

Decisions are often (though not always) rendered within hours of submission.

JofUR solicits all types of manuscript: “You name it, we take it, and reject it. Your manuscript may be formatted however you wish. Frankly, we don’t care.”

After submitting your work, the decision process varies. Often the Editor-in-Chief will reject your work out-of-hand, without even reading it! However, he might read it. Probably he’ll skim. At other times your manuscript may be sent to anonymous referees. Unless they are the Editor-in-Chief’s wife or graduate school buddies, it is unlikely that the referees will even understand what is going on. Rejection will follow as swiftly as a bird dropping from a great height after being struck by a stone. At other times, rejection may languish like your email buried in the Editor-in-Chief’s inbox. But it will come, swift or slow, as surely as death. Rejection.

More details and selected authors’ furious complaints on JofUR’s blog.

Very interesting stuff for our forthcoming exhibition on obesity — the planned special issue on the materiality of fat edited by Christopher E. Forth at the University of Kansas for the Journal of Material Culture in 2012.

“The Materiality of Fat” is inspired – but in no way limited – by the problem of “obesity” as the master pathology of the moment. In today’s world, where warnings of the “obesity epidemic” are front-page news, it is hard to avoid the problem of fat. Too much of this substance is regularly cited as unhealthy and unattractive, and a major source of “disgust.” Scholars and activists who critically engage with fat stereotypes usually emphasize the visual concerns of size and beauty, but accord less attention to fat as a material substance with tactile and olfactory properties that are capable of generating ambivalent reactions independently of physical corpulence. Even though fat people are regularly lampooned as sweaty, sticky, and smelly, as well as large and ugly, the materiality of fat as a problematic substance has rarely been the focus of serious historical, anthropological, or literary analysis. The materiality of fat cannot be discounted if we are to approach stereotyping as the complex multisensory phenomenon that it is.

Given that fats are frozen oils, and therefore closely related substances, this collection inquires into the spectrum of practices and meanings enabled by the physical properties of fatty and oily matter as well as the various social and cultural responses that such substances have elicited. Rather than demanding a focus on “obesity” per se, it seeks articles addressing the “material entanglement” between human embodiment and animal/vegetable fats and oils, assessing the various ways in which the qualities of the latter have become enmeshed in a range of cultural locations. This cross-disciplinary collection welcomes the contributions of anthropologists and archaeologists as much as classicists, historians, and scholars studying art, literature, and religion.

Possible topics include anointing and smearing; the phenomenology of fat embodiment; theories of abjection and disgust; materiality and the senses; magic, divination, and illumination; harvesting and employing human fat; symbols of fertility and decay; fats and oils in medical discourse and practice, etc.

Interested authors are invited to submit ~250 words abstracts to Christopher Forth (cforth@ku.edu) by 15 March. If this special issue proposal is accepted, authors will be asked to submit final submissions of no more than 8,000 words each by mid-February 2012.

I’ve spent some time last week watching, in fascination, Buenos Aires-based photographer Irina Werning’s “Back to the future”, a series of juxtapositions of images of individuals at different ages.

She finds people who have portraits of themselves as a young child (not very difficult, most of us have) and then re-enacts the portrait with a contemporary version of the same person placed in the same position, showing the same face expression, wearing the same clothes. Here, for example, is “Lucia in 1956 & 2010, Buenos Aires”:

I think these images are fascinating, because they support the experience I’ve made through biography writing, namely how little people actually change over time. They have an identity (from ‘identidem’: repeatedly, continually, constantly). In spite of many attempts in the humanities and social sciences over the last dacades to deconstruct the notion of individual identity, people usually remain the same over decades.

In the case of biography writing, one is confronted with the constancy of individual thoughts and verbal expressions over time. In the case of Werning’s photo series, one is confronted with the constancy of physiognomy. The re-enactment in terms of positioning, clothing etc. only enhances the physiognomic identity.

(thanks to Carsten Timmermann for the tip about Irina Werning)

De sidste 15-20 år har humanister været optaget af sundhed og sundhedsvidenskab. Det er blevet lavet meget historisk forskning, fx. for at forstå, hvordan epidemiske sygdomme er opstået og har spredt sig, så vi kan lære af historien, når næste influenzapandemi kommer. Filosofferne har været med til at analysere sygdomsbegrebet, og etnologerne har bidraget til at forstå, hvad der skal til for at skabe sunde livsforløb.

Grundtemaet for den her slags humanistisk forskning er, hvordan humaniora kan nyttiggøres og bidrage til befolkningens sundhedstilstand. En sådan nyttig brug af humaniora for sundhedens bedste var den røde tråd i Kultur og sundhed: Humanistisk forskning i krop, sundhed og sygdom fra 2005, som Anne Løkke redigerede for det daværende Humanistiske Forskningsråd. Det er også nytteaspektet, som i grunden motiverar medicinske fakulteter rundr om i verden til at ansætte humanister inden for forskellige varianter af  ‘medical humanities’: ‘medical philosophy’, ‘medical ethics’, ‘medical history’, ‘medicine and literature’, ‘medicine and art studies’ m.m. Der satses mange millioner på forskning indenfor bioetik, medicinhistorie, medicin og kunst og desuden på public outreach f.eks. i form af museumsudstillinger, biblioteksvirksomhed og event-virksomhed på området. (Wellcome Trust i Storbritannien, som hvert år støtter sundhedsforskning med ca. 6 mia. danske kroner, støtter herudover ‘medical humanities’ med ca. 450 mio. danske kroner.)

Men det ville også være frugtbart at vende på nytteargumentet, dvs. “don’t ask what the humanities can do for health and the health sciences — but what health and the health sciences can do for the humanities”. Med andre ord, kan den medicinske forskning inspirere humanister til at tænke humaniora i nye baner?

Forskning i visuelle kulturstudier er et eksempel på hvilke muligheder den omvendte tænkning kan indebære. De biomedicinske videnskaber genererer i stadigt stigende omfang billeder af mennesket i alle tænkelige funktioner og forstørrelsesgrader. Ikke bare klassiske røntgenbilleder, men i stigende grad avancerede digitale imaging technologies: CAT-scanningbilleder, 3D-ultralydscanningsbilleder af fostre, fMRI-billeder, som lægger en fysiologisk-funktionel billeddimension oven i den klassiske anatomiske, etc.. Det vælter ud af digitale billeder af kroppen i alla afskygninger og der er en sand eksplosion af billedmateriale på vævs-, celle-, og molekylært niveau.

Den biomedicinske videnskab og teknologi åbner i dag op for helt nye visuelle erfaringsverdener – visuelle verdener, som kunsthistorien næsten ikke har beskæftiget sig med. Det interessante i denne udvikling er, at hvis der for alvor bliver sat turbo på den slags nye visuelle verdener, bliver også et helt nyt spektrum af visualisering af mennesket – dvs. et af humanioras klassiske foci – sat på dagsordenen. For den her slags forbliver jo ikke inden for forskningsverdenen. De mange billeder, som produceres inden for den biomedicinske forskning, diffunderer langtsomt men sikkert ud i kulturen gennem massemedier, via internettet, på YouTube, på blogs, på FlickR, i museumsudstillinger, i de kulørte videnskabsmagasiner, og ud i det formelle uddannelsessystem (om end lidt langsommere). Gradvist bidrager dette fyrværkeri af biomedicinske billeder til at forme et nyt menneskebillede og dermed også et nyt billede af mennesket. 

Forskning i materielle kulturstudier er et andet eksempel. De biomedicinske videnskaber åbner op for en ny form for materialitet. I de sidste 30-40 år har humaniora været præget af tanken om sproget som det helt centrale. Den ‘sproglige vending’ (‘the linguistic turn’) har præget humaniora. Den ‘sproglige vending’ har været nært forbundet med en næsten hegemonisk socialkonstruktivisme inden for store dele af humaniora og samfundsvidenskaberne, hvor samfunds- og kulturfænomener er blevet set som sprogligt, intersubjektivt konstruerede, og videnskab og teknologi er blevet behandlet som sociale konstruktioner.

Men materialismen er på vej tilbage i humaniora. Ikke som en firkantet materialisme, fx i historie-materialistisk og marxistisk forstand, men som en mere sofistikeret materialisme. En materialisme, som begynder at se mennesket og dets kulturelle interaktioner grundlæggende som interaktioner mellem molekylære væsner. En materialisme, som gør Kants dystre profeti om umuligheden af en naturvidenskabelig forståelse af mennesket og livet til skamme.

Med udgangspunkt i kortlægningen af det humane genom er den biomedicinske forskning i fuld gang med at kaste lys over det detaljerede cellemaskineri. Komplicerede fysiologiske reaktioner og anatomiske strukturer bliver kortlagt ned i de molekylære detaljer: hvordan transporten af vand, ioner og signalmolekyler foregår, hvordan sansereceptorerne fungerer, hvordan proteinsyntesen reguleres. For 50 år siden var maskinanalogien for menneskekroppen blot en kulturel metafor. Nu begynder den at blive realistisk.

Det mest kendte udtryk for denne nye molekylære materialisme er ambitionerne hos en del hjerneforskere, der mener, at de allerede nu kan sætte menneskelige følelser og endda tankeprocesser på materiel formel, f.eks. ved hjælp af fMRI. Meget af dette er formentlig hype. Der er lang vej endnu. Men det konstante bombardement af molekylære nyhedsbulletiner har en stor påvirkningskraft, også på humanister. Vi kan begynde at se humaniora med andre øjne.

Det gælder fx den aktuelle satsning på proteinforskning. Når det gjaldt udforskningen af det humane genom i slutningen af sidste århundrede, foregik meget af forskningen inden for et slags sprogligt paradigme. Grundmetaforerne var ’livets bog’, ’livets kode’ og ’livets sprog’, og man talte om DNA som kroppens styresystem i kybernetiske termer. Analogien til computer science og sprogvidenskab var nærliggende. I mange årtier var den biomedicinske forskning på linje med fortolkningsparadigmet inden for de humanistiske videnskaber.

Proteinforskningen vender op og ned på metaforikken. Grundmetaforerne er nu ’maskineri’ og ’kroppens arbejdsheste’ i klar kontrast til styresystemmetaforerne. I den biomedicinske forskningslitteratur fylder proteinerne mere og mere på bekostning af DNA. De er allestedsnærværende, og de introducerer en sofistikeret materialitet som erstatning for ’livets bog’.

Set i det lys er humanioras udfordring at lade være med at udgrænse en sådan molekylær forståelse af mennesket ved at kalde den for ’biologisk’ eller ’humanbiologisk’ reduktionisme og derved slippe for at forholde sig til den. Opgaven er snarere at inkorporere den biologiske forståelse for derved at udvide humaniora, så de kommer til at rumme den komplekse materialitet, de biomedicinske videnskaber lægger for dagen.

Så i stedet for at blive ved med at opretholde et kunstigt fakultetsskel mellem humaniora og sundhedsvidenskaberne eller kun gøre humaniora nyttig for sundheden, kan man håbe på, at det humanistiske fakultet vil tage hjerteligt imod den nye visuelle og materielle menneskeforståelse, sundhedsvidenskaberne producerer i disse år.

A lot of people on Facebook have recently been excited about art critic and historian James Elkins’ analysis, in a recent Huffington Post chronicle (“Exploring Famous Unfinished Paintings in Google Art Project”), of what it means to ‘finish’ an artwork. It’s a well-written and beautifully illustrated piece, but it’s not unproblematic if you think in terms of other creative genres than art.

“How does an artist know when a painting is finished?”, Elkins asks. I’m not sure I really understand what the problem is. When I write an scholarly article, it’s by definition finished when I send the proofs back to the publisher. That doesn’t mean my thinking is finished; the article will most probably be followed by another article, and yet another article, and then maybe a book. Most scholars see their articles/books etc. as finished partial products in a network-chain. But this never-ending, unfinished intellectual process doesn’t change the fact that each individual article is finished when the proofs have been sent off. One way to make Elkins’ analysis meaningful outside the narrow field of art is therefore to ask if there is a deeper difference between article production and artwork production.

I guess this also means one has to weigh in ownershap as a parameter. If the artist is in physical control of his/her art work, well then it is still open for change. But when it is sold, it is, for all practical purposes, finished. A more interesting question is therefore how the market situation affects the closure of the work.

An even more interesting problem is whether a bioart work is ever finished! Oron Catt’s tissue cultures continue to grow and defy his alleged attempt to closure.

In the 12 February issue of The Lancet, Jacqueline Finch from University of Manchester’s Centre for Biomedical Egyptology (yes, such a centre really exists!), writes a charming report of her investigation of Egyptian prosthetic devices.

Jacqueline Finch, “The ancient origins of prosthetic medicine”, Lancet, 377: 548 – 549 (2011). See also Medgadget’s comment here.

Unless you’ve alrady seen it, here are the winners of the 2010 Medical Blog Awards:

• Best Medical Weblog: EMCrit blog.
• Best New Medical Weblog: ZDoggMD
• Best Literary Medical Weblog: StorytellERdoc,
• Best Clinical Weblog: GeriPal
• Best Health Policies/Ethics Weblog: Covert Rationing Blog
• Best Medical Technologies/Informatics Weblog: ScienceRoll
• Best Patient’s Blog: Wheelchair Kamikaze

Not surprisingly, several of this year’s winners have been awarded before. What’s good, continues to be good.

For et par dage siden påpegede jeg at Foreningen Danske Videnskabsredaktørers blog Open Access (!) kræver at man opretter konto og logger ind hvis man vil skrive kommentarer.

Jeg troede det var en idiosynkratisk grej for Foreningen Danske Videnskabsredaktører. Men nej: for et par minutter siden ville jeg skrive en kommentar til en artikel på videnskab.dk. Samme problem:

Hvorfor gør de det så besværligt? Jeg har aldrig hørt om en blog (undtagen Open Access), som kræver indlogning eller kontooprettelse for at skrive kommentarer.

Det ligner et mønster. Er videnskabsjournalister bange for kommentarer?

Ari N. Schulman has an interesting point about the current transhumanist movement. His point of departure is the blog of Lepht Anonym, who famously (see for example this feature in Wired) writes about her home-made enhancement surgeries, such as magnets under her fingertips and others kind of implants and mutilations, which sometimes gives her medical problems.

Schulman thinks there is something strangely refreshing about Lepht Anonym’s blog, because it’s the only transhumanist writing he has come across which seems to be written by an actual person with a reasonably complicated inner life. In his vew, transhumanists “seem to lose interest in expressing their inner lives when they give their thoughts over to the boundlessly incoherent muddle of transhumanist theorizing”. They have no conception, he suggests, “of any relevance to beings alive today of what it means to flourish, and neither, then, of what sorts of acts and states of mind constitute a profound lack of flourishing”.

What has triggered Schulman’s comment is the alleged fact that Lepht Anonym has recently been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The transhumanists’ enthusiasm for her DIY bio practice thus reflects, in his view, their lack of ability “to evaluate self-mutilation as the self-destructive behavior of a person in need of help, but encouraging it — both by reporting on it so enthusiastically, and by fostering a subculture in which it could be understood as a laudable act of creation and self-expression”. Accordingly, Schulman sees the celebration of Lepht Anonym and similar DYI bio practies as a step backwards in human betterment.

Is our fascination with body-artists like Orlan and Stelarc fuelled by our tacit awareness assumption that they actually need care and support? Is the point of the contemporary freak-show the sublime contrast between their public self-mutilation in the name of art and their private craving for love?

Two weeks ago I mentioned that the Museums Journal had published Ken Arnolds and my Dogme 95-style manifesto for creating science, technology and medicine exhibitions, first presented last September at a conference organised by Medical Museion in Copenhagen. We have now received the journal’s permission to publish the full version of the manifesto. Enjoy and/or criticize!

Just over 15 years ago, Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg spearheaded Dogme 95, a manifesto to purify the art of film-making.

The aim was to engage audiences more profoundly and make sure they weren’t distracted by over-production. The Dogme manifesto ruled out special effects, post-production changes and other tricks in order to focus on the story and the performances.

Since then, writers, theatre directors and other arts practitioners have all found inspiration in Dogme 95’s back-to-basics philosophy. Dogme has been criticised, as have some of the films made according to its rules, but as exhibition producers, this classic vow of chastity has inspired us as a way of guiding and sharpening the creative practice of making science, technology and medicine exhibitions.

These rules have been written and published with almost indecent speed. They are deliberately provocative prompts for further discussion. This manifesto is not a definitive set of working proposals, but a draft, which will no doubt be modified and sharpened through challenge and feedback.

And anyone who knows the institutions we are based at will be aware that the exhibitions we have presided over have often not followed one or more of these rules.

This manifesto is almost reference-free, but this does not mean we think the ideas are purely our own. There are vast bodies of literature on science communication, exhibition making, art history and museology; we have read some of this literature and been influenced by it. We also have learned much from the museums we have visited.

1. Exhibitions should be research-led, not a form of dissemination

Curators should use exhibitions to find things out (for themselves and for their visitors) and not just regurgitate what is already known. Good curators are inspired and imaginative researchers who find and then build on the investigations of experts and colleagues, juxtaposing varied understandings about their chosen topic. They add their own insights and gradually come up with new ideas and perspectives.

2. A scientist should always be involved in the exhibition, a technologist if it is about technology

Don’t shy away from drawing on real expertise in interpreting a topic or finding exhibits. But this is not to say that the aim of the exhibition is simply to give voice to the views of these experts. They are not, nor should they be encouraged to see themselves as, the curators, but it is vital that their perspectives are present in the final exhibition.

3. Be clear about exhibitions being “multi-authored”

Exhibitions emerge from curatorial collaborations between experts and designers. But a show’s funders, the institutional context and other stakeholders have a bearing on the final outcome; it should be possible for exhibition visitors to find out about these influences.

The project teams who make exhibitions deserve to be credited. Those responsible for the show not only need to take a bow, they also need to be held responsible for its contents and impact.

4. Use only original material

Exhibitions should engage audiences with original material rather than reproductions and props. If you cannot illustrate a topic with original artefacts, images and documents, ask yourself if an exhibition is the best way to make the point. Models, replicas and reproductions can be shown, but only if this is the point of showing them.

Reproductions of artworks should not be used, unless the work’s natural medium is “facsimile” – for example, digital photographs. The use of scientific and medical images raises complicated questions, such as what is the “original” format of a microscopic image of a cell?

Most scientific images today are minted as digital data, and their final appearance invariably owes much to enhancements and cropping. How this material should be displayed and labelled needs consideration. It is often better to leave it out all together.

5. Never show ready-made science

Focus on the processes of science: science in the making; the triumph of discovery; the frustration and blind alleys explored along the way. Also, look at the social and cultural processes of scientific ideas becoming accepted and embedded.

6. Jealously guard a place for mystery and wonder

Exhibitions provide opportunities to explore topics in ways that bring new light to sometimes forgotten or less-well understood aspects of medicine, science, technology and their histories. But this urge to demystify subjects should not be allowed to render exhibitions earnestly didactic.

Deliberately include some exhibits about which less, rather than more, is known – curious exhibits that just cannot completely be accounted for. Visitors should leave exhibitions wanting to find out more.

7. Reject most exhibition ideas

Exhibitions represent the meeting point between subjects and material culture, and can be approached from either end – themes or objects first, or a mixture of the two. But often, topics that seem promising will not be worth developing because there simply aren’t good enough objects with which to explore or support them.

Similarly, many areas of material culture end up just not being interesting enough to make a show about. Too often, exhibitions are made from empty ideas of stupid objects. It is worth searching for a topic and a set of objects that harmoniously amplify and mutually enrich each other.

8. Leave out as much as possible

Less is usually more in exhibitions. Visitors will remember and enjoy looking at 10 carefully chosen things more than a 100 that are reasonably well selected.

The most important aspect of an exhibition is its outer boundaries, which keep out the mass of distractions that lie beyond. In the digital era, a core value of a museum exhibition is that it makes its point through displaying a few selected original objects.

9. Embrace the showbusiness of exhibitions

Audiences come to exhibitions in their leisure time and deserve to be lifted out of themselves. They will respond to the drama of the best exhibits, displays, design, writing and lighting.

Make sure that all of this is done well and given the greatest polish. This will enhance the presence of the objects and the impact of the ideas. Don’t be ashamed to admit that making exhibitions is, in part, a matter of putting on a show.

10. Celebrate the ephemeral quality of exhibitions

Catalogues, web-presence and filmed versions of exhibitions can lengthen the shadows cast by exhibitions, but they will never come close to keeping alive the actual experience of visiting a show.

This is an important part of the magic of exhibitions. Like good pieces of theatre, they gain much of their energy by being around for a limited time and then disappearing. The fact that they are time-limited gives their makers a degree of freedom to experiment and be daring. Grasp it!

11. Make exhibitions true to the geography of their venues

The principle is that knowledge is “situated” – the context in which we contemplate and acquire it can seem as important as the ideas or facts themselves. Exhibition makers need to think hard about how to work with the “place” of an exhibition.

Consider what is lost in touring an exhibition where the subject becomes detached from the local context. The country, the city, the venue, the room, and the set and design of an exhibition, even the showcases and the orientation of individual objects – all have a bearing on the meanings that audiences derive from them.

12. Avoid artificial lighting

Use natural light where possible. Start with the light available and build up from it. If possible, reveal the windows and keep the doors open. Let the natural layout of the building be apparent, make it clear where you have introduced false walls. This will enable visitors to keep a sense of where they are.

And don’t fall into the trap of imagining that the background for an exhibition has either to be a neutral black box or a pristine white cube. Ideally, a show should look and feel very different on a midsummer morning to a winter evening.

13. Always involve more than one sense

It is impossible for visitors to turn off their non-visual senses in an exhibition – they will hear, touch and smell things no matter what. So make sure that some of the tactile, audio, or olfactory experiences of an exhibition are curated. Exhibitions work by teasing their visitors into thinking that they could get close enough to what they see to touch it, even while making sure they don’t.

But curators should think about how to introduce at least a few objects that visitors can touch. Never use artificial sounds or odours, but try hard to find ways to enhance the audio and olfactory qualities of the original objects, getting visitors to use their ears and noses.

14. Make exhibitions for inquisitive adults

If you aim at educationally under-achieving primary school children, it will be impossible to engage anyone else (and you are unlikely to engage even your target audience). Many children and teenagers are keenly attracted to adult culture, but very few adults see the attraction of young material.

Never make exhibitions for educational purposes – other media and methods are more effective. It’s also worth bearing in mind that exhibitions are, by their nature, a “childish” medium, bringing out playfulness in all of us. This should be encouraged, but to focus deliberately on young audiences reaps diminishing returns.

15. Remember that visitors ultimately make their own exhibitions

Some visitors might not be interested in reading what the curators write, while others might not look at many objects. Some will be interested in aspects of a topic that the curators might not have come across.

Because of this, when an exhibition opens, it is only ever the second or third draft of an idea that will, through revision, reach maybe its eighth or ninth incarnation by the time it closes.

Exhibitions should be alive, and change is a vital part of life. Even in the most “stable” shows, lights will need adjusting and labels redrafting. An exhibit might even have to be removed or replaced. More radically, some exhibitions should be deliberately half-finished, or set up so that updates can be added halfway through.

16. Make exhibitions the jumping off place for further engagement

Good exhibitions are the point of departure for a longer relationship. The value of exhibitions should only partly be judged by analysing how many people come, how long they spent in a show and what they think of it. On this basis alone, most exhibitions are foolishly expensive ventures, particularly in these cash-strapped times.

Don’t forget that, just occasionally, exhibitions can really change visitors’ lives and this is worth a lot. Effective exhibitions can also bring in new objects to museums, have an impact on recruitment, add to shop sales, improve the organisation’s reputation, and provide a context for corporate celebrations. There is a virtual avalanche of cultural capital that can flow from them: this should be valued from the start.

17. Don’t be afraid to bend, break or reinvent the rules