A man raises a trumpet to his lips. A rash of triumphal notes blasts forth. But only the musician’s jaw and skull are visible. The rest of him is immaterial to the X-ray film that originally registered his recital. This footage–which was shot in the 1950s in a Rochester hospital by James Sibley Watson Jr., a pioneer in X-ray moving-picture technique–has been given new life by experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer. Her new film, Sanctus, a ghostly essay on bones and beauty, heads up a batch of videos that are part of a new group exhibit at the Renaissance Society, an exhibit the artists hope will “make viewers more physically and metaphorically aware of themselves.”
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The intriguing array of videos and objects is titled The Body. “The body has been fractured, depersonalized, put at bay by the overwhelming high technology in modern medical investigation,” says curator Susanne Ghez. “This exhibit seeks to make the body whole again, as a bridge into the next century. If we come to terms with our bodies, with our own deaths, we can seize life–and form social, political, and cultural groupings at this post-AIDS moment in our society.” One sculpture on the wall, Sleeping Beauty by artist Doug Hammett, incorporates HIV-positive blood.
The tendency of technology to disembody us is displayed in Penetration, an installation by Sean Smith. This pseudo trade room, with its thick white carpet and severely subdued lighting, showcases industrial simulations of sexual organs. A “Dual Unisex Operation” comes with a “detachable xycon gas-charge exploding vaginal/anal insert.”
