Formerly announced workshop ’Communicating Medicine: Objects and Objectives’—held Friday 7 March at the Centre for History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM) in Manchester—gathered over 40 scholars and curators, mainly from the UK.

There were nine presentations in all. One each from Science Museum (London), Museum Boerhaave (Leiden), the Wellcome Collection (London), and the Sedgwick Museum (Cambridge), and another five from us here at Medical Museion (Copenhagen): by Søren Bak-Jensen, Susanne Bauer, Jan Eric Olsén, Camilla Mordhorst and myself (see full programme here and here).

 (Susanne Bauer)

Altogether this was a varied and inspiring day about medical museum exhibitions and collections. I’m afraid I was a trifle too involved in the discussions to be able to give a fair resumé of what went on. Suffice it to say I was particularly concerned with Francis Neary’s (Sedgwick Museum) contribution, because Francis brought up the notion of ‘things-that-talk’ in connection with his (otherwise beautifully crafted) argument about machines and instruments as agents.

 (Francis Neary)

As readers of this blog may have noticed, Adam and I have recently had some serious doubts about the usefulness of the ‘things-that-talk’ metaphor (see here, here and here), so Francis’s argument gave rise to some critical questions in the discussion that followed. Why impute agency to instruments? What do we gain from doing so?

Also raising lot of discussion was Søren’s paper on collecting biomedicine and the experiences of acquiring contemporary biomedical artefacts during the University of Copenhagen Medical Faculty Garbage Day last June: 

(Søren Bak-Jensen)

Søren’s presentation made me think of former British Museum Director Robert Anderson’s point that ‘acquisitions are the life blood of museums’. Or to put it another way: research can be seen as the soul of museums, and exhibitions their public face and rationale for public funding—but the incessant acquisition of new artefacts provides the life-sustaining nourishment for museum institutions.

I’m not sure that all medical historians or medical museum curators today are fully aware of the consequences of Robert Anderson’s wisdom. So next time we meet we should perhaps discuss how to collect medical objects rather than how to use them for communicating medicine?

 (John Pickstone listening attentively)

Altogether a most enjoyable day, well worth the trip and air traffic delays, and very well organised by CHSTM’s outreach officer, Emm Barnes:

Btw. did anyone else take better notes than I did?

During the cold war years, the international congresses of history of science used to be rather dull events, with too many local dignitaries involved and too many talks by people who apparently had never been in contact with major intellectual streams in the field.

But post-1989 globalisation has gradually beefed up these meetings. So there is every reason to go to Budapest 26-31 July 2009 for the XXIII (23rd) Congress of the History of Science and Technology (they brought technology in after the last congress, in Beijing, in 2005).

The broad heading of the meeting is “Ideas and Instruments in Social Context”. Here’s an excerpt from the circular:

All kinds of scientific and technical instruments as preserved in museums, descriptions, memories and in art belong to the topic of the congress. The influence of the instruments on the culture of the laboratories and on everyday life in the different periods is also a highly appreciated topic of the congress. The history of all kinds of „instruments” that helped or hindered the development of science and technology like legislation, international, state or local influence institutions are incorporated into the second part of the topic. For much of the history of our discipline, two separate and sometimes antagonistic approaches to the history of science have focused on the study of ideas, and on the study of instruments. However, in the past few decades, more and more scholars have striven to integrate both aspects, showing that instruments not only constitute the material culture of science, but also shape and even embody ideas.

(see more on the congress website).

Looks like an opportunity to organise a session around the establishement of medical instrument collections and their role for the understanding of the history of contemporary science, technology and medicine. (Medicine is still not formally included in the congress, but medical science and medical technology is, of course.) The only thing that could keep me away is the mean July temparature in Budapest—27 degrees!

‘Artefacts’ is a network of academic and museum-based historians of science, technology and medicine who are interested in promoting the use of objects in scholarly work. The network started in 1997 and recent meetings have dealt with ‘Exploration’ (Oslo 2007; see also here), ‘Constructing and Deconstructing Icons of Achievement in Science and Technology’ (Stockholm 2006), ‘Globalization’ (Washington 2005), and ‘Scientific Instruments as Artefacts’ (Utrecht,2004). Six proceedings volumes have been published so far.

The 2008 meeting will be held in Washington DC, October 5-7. The subject for this year’s meeting is the relationship between art and science/technology, broadly understood (not medicine? I thought we agreed on that in Oslo last year?). Possible themes include:

• How aesthetic considerations have influenced scientific instruments.
• How design concepts have affected invention.
• The ways in which scientific and technical developments have entered into the practice and works of artists.
• How views on the art-science/technology relation have influenced museum practices of collecting and exhibition.

The ‘Artefacts’ meetings are informal and pleasurable gatherings without keynotes, formal receptions or other kinds of unnecessities. Each accepted contributor gets his/her 20 minutes talk + 10 minutes discussion slot. For further info and paper proposals, write to one or several of the organisers: Barney Finn (finnb@si.edu), Robert Bud (robert.bud@sciencemuseum.org.uk) Helmuth Trischler (h.trischler@deutsches-museum.de), and Martin Collins (collinsm@si.edu). They want suggestions before the end of May; accepted abstracts (to be circulated before the meeting) are then due by September 7. And don’t forget that Washington is beautiful in October!

A propos things that do not talk—last week Herwig Turk and Paulo Pereira (see earlier post here) opened an exhibition in Maribor, Slovenia:

The exhibit has been created within the framework of their blindspot-project, an interdisciplinary art-research project about perception, which they are continuously developing together with Günter Stöger, Beatriz Cantinho and Patrícia Almeida:

The project aims at investigating perception in a broad and global sense, as well as its circumstances, its determinants, and its contingencies. The proceedings in the laboratories for research in vision sciences are translated into different settings, thereby creating a meta-language that crosses the traditional boundaries between science and art. At the same time, a new heterotopic space for experimentation is created where objects, gestures, and language acquire new dimensions having been separated from their supporting contexts. The approach used by the authors of blindspot adopts the formal structure of a research project. The starting point is the hypothesis that science represents an imperfect means whereby perception is used as a privileged means to assess reality (“an improved means to an unimproved end”) (Thoreau, 1854). (my underline)

After decades of Contextualisation this aim—separating objects from their supporting contexts—feels fresh.

The exhibition will be on display until 19 March. Time for a trip to Slovenia!

We have received a mail from Ginger Scott, a Masters student in the Museum Studies program at the University of Toronto, who is currently researching the display of human anatomy in museums. Ginger has asked us to distribute this inquiry to our readers:

Through my research, I am particularly interested in the relationship between human anatomical displays (the objectification of death) and the museum visitor and the issues involved when an individual is confronted with representations of themselves as specimens or objects. I am also fascinated by the continued relationship between art and medical science as they have developed hand in hand for centuries. Do you believe that this confrontation is primarily an educational experience, or is it also alienating for individuals who are uncomfortable with the display of anatomy as human form? Please direct me to any other information on these topics if available.

Does anybody have a good answer? You can reply with a comment to this post (below).

A propos our historical and curatorial interest in invisibles (see earlier post here)—the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford is inviting to a lecture on Wednesday 5 March by renowned philosopher of science Rom Harré, who will talk about one the most common assumptions of modern science, “namely that our experience of the natural world is to be explained in terms of tiny entities”. What kind of knowledge can we have of this invisible world?

The lecture is titled ‘Big questions about small worlds” and takes place in the museum building on Broad Street. For small inquiries, contact Stephen Johnston (who has co-curated the exhibition ‘Small Worlds’, which opened last October and runs until 6 April; see earlier post here).

The programme for the 5th European conference of The Society for Literature, Science and Arts (SLSA) in Berlin, 2-8 June—on “Figurations of Knowledge”—is now available on-line.

The programme committee has not only put together an unusually rich, varied and exciting carneval of presentations which (in my humble opinion) leaves the usual social studies of science meetings organised by EASST and 4S in the desert of oblivion. It has also developed its own colour-happy program aesthetics:

Anyway, it’s not for coloro-political reasons that Medical Museion is participating with/in two sessions:

On Wednesday 4 June, Jan Eric Olsén is organising a session titled “Recent Biomedicine and Vitality” with papers by Sniff Nexø (“A matter of disposal: Enacting aborted foetuses in hospitals”), Hanne Jessen (“Vitality of a scientific model: The coming into being and trajectory of a new laboratory animal”), Susanne Bauer (“Risk assessment software and the biopolitics of prevention”), and himself (“Life struggles and the invaded body”). See their abstracts here.

Two days later, on Friday 6 June, I will give my paper on “Five (good and bad) reasons why a medical museum director wants to bring art and science together” in the session “Rethinking Representational Practices in Contemporary Art and Modern Life Sciences”, organised by Ingeborg Reichle.

There is a plethora of tickling offers on this year’s program and we are in heavy competition for hundreds of SLSA souls. (Not to mention the sad fact that one of the papers I’d really love to hear, viz., Matthias Bruhn‘s “Life in layers. Art history of microtome”, is simultaneous with my own talk :-). That aside, the SLSA meeting in Berlin promises to become the event of the year for all science, technology and medical museum faculty or staff members who wish to expand their horizon. Dead-line for registration (details here) is 30 April.

When I walk around our own collections—or when I visit other (history of) science and medicine museums—I’m often struck by the relative lack of mundane biomedical laboratory artefacts.

The acquisition of lab artefacts tends to focus on high-tech things like gene sequencers, PET scanners, PCR machines, knock-out mice, etc. Curators are fond of them, perhaps because these are the kinds of artefacts that the donators (lab people) spontaneously come to think of when asked for potential museum items.

As a consequence much ephemeral and mundane laboratory equipment—like cover slips, tissue grinders, disposable gloves, plastic tubing, cups and flasks, filtering equipment, petri dishes, cell spreaders, and so forth—are largely absent in museum collections and displays. Few curators think of collecting them—and even fewer donators think of saving them for posterity.

This is a shame, because these pedestrian objects are often essential for making sense of biomedical laboratory culture (cf. earlier post here). Take for example a common pipette support rack (probably from the 1960s when they still used traditional glass pipettes in 1-50 milliliter volumes):

It’s a very useful everyday thing which helps keep order on the bench. It has the same function in the lab as the dish drying rack has in a ordinary kitchen—in other words, it’s indispensable! Every kitchen-savvy person knows that the dish rack is more important for a well-functioning kitchen that a gas oven with electronic timer and interactive colour display. 

In an earlier post I wondered about the current fashion of ’things-that-talk’-talk that has invaded some valleys of cultural studies. For example, at a forthcoming workshop in Vienna, the organisers invite the participants “mit den Dinge zu argumentieren und diskutieren” (to argue and discuss with the objects), and they hope that “die Dinge gleichsam selbst zu Wort kommen” (the things in themselves shall have their say).

This is not an isolated event. The theme of the next meeting of the German Ethnographical Society (Gesellschaft für Ethnografie), to be held in Berlin 21-22 November 2008, is “Die Sprache der Dinge — kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf die materielle Kultur” (The language of things — cultural scientific perspectives on the material culture). The organisers not only wish to highlight the language of things, they emphasise “die Wirkmächtigkeit der Dinge” (the action potential of things) and “ihre Kulturgenerierende Funktion” (their culture generating function):

Dinge … als Handlungsträger und Akteure … Vermittler und Übersetzer …  Produzenten von Bedeutungen, von sozialen Beziehungen und Praktiken, von Identitäten, Wertvorstellungen und Erinnerungen (things as carriers of action and actors … mediators and translators … producers of meaning, of social relations and practices, of identities, values and memories).

Accordingly, the propsed themes for the meeting include “Dinge als kontextspezifische Akteure in der Praxis” (things as context specific actors in practice) and “Dinge als Produzenten von Praxen, Bedeutungen und Identitäten” (things as producers of practices, meanings and identities). (All quotes are from Wednesday’s H-SOZ-U-KULT@H-NET.MSU.EDU; see also the conference website).

In other words, the German etnographers not only want to restate the importance of material objects (things) for the understanding of culture and society. They also suggest that things are speakers, actors, mediators, translators, and producers of all possible social and cultural meanings and relations, and so forth.

The new focus on things in cultural studies is exciting. But I cannot see why some scholars take the further step to endow things with the status of actors/mediators/translators/producers etc. I mean, after all, if you ask an ethnographer if he/she really believes that a milk container literally has a language, or that it acts (really acts), or translates, and so forth, then I guess few would suggest it really does. And yet, the conscious actor category somehow creeps into the scholarly terminology. Why?

I’ve just discussed the matter with my learned friend Michael, who suggests that it may be an expression of a latter-day fetishism, that is, a revival of the ‘primitive’ religious practice to attribute powers to inanimate objects, like stones or pieces of wood (“the veneration of objects believed to have magical or supernatural potency”; Britannica).

Sounds plausible at first. All kinds of fundamental religious thinking (and its backlash counterpart, devout atheism) is washing over us like a tsunami. But then again—fetishism is not one of these. There must be a better explanation for this wave of ‘things-that-talk’-talk.

We have problems with a slow host server today. We don’t have the patience to wait for the windows to open. So no postings today.