Between: Embodiment & Identity

Abstract

A new exhibition that explores how personal identity has become embodied in a powerful landscape of anatomical imagery is opening at the Inigo Rooms, a new space within Somerset House designed to foster innovative forms of engagement between King's College London, the cultural sector and the public.

The ancient philosophical tension between what we are and how we think, between human embodiment and identity, is being radically ramped-up and redefined by advances in anatomical knowledge and the brain sciences. At the same time, visual imaging techniques make this new knowledge visible and explicit, conferring huge explanatory power onto digitized medical imagery.

How do we define the ‘self’ in an age of increasing materiality? The philosophical tensions between what we are and how we think, between human embodiment and identity, is being radically redefined by advances in anatomical knowledge. At the same time, visual imaging techniques make this knew knowledge visible, conferring huge explanatory power onto digitized imagery.

BETWEEN both celebrates the richness of such scientific research and presents works that collectively challenge technology’s entitlement to mediate form. Exhibiting together for the first time, and working with King’s neurobiologist Richard Wingate from the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology, artists Susan Aldworth, Andrew Carnie and Karen Ingham present works that explores emerging and enriched images of the Self.

Susan Aldworth’s work engages with neuroscience and philosophy to explore medical, personal and scientific narratives that develop an understanding of human identity. The works four films are: Going Native, Lines of Thought, and Out of Body, made during her residency at the Gordon Museum of Pathology, and Apoptosis a collaboration with the poet Valerie Laws.

Andrew Carnie uses time-based media to reflect the evolving and changing nature of our sense of self, as we construct an identity through the acquisition of knowledge and the challenges of medical disorders. His slide based work Seized uses projection to explore how the experience of epilepsy impacts on the sense of being embodied, and developed from a collaboration with academics from Plymouth and Exeter Universities.

Karen Ingham’s interest lies in juxtaposing the narratives behind scientific objects, language and images conferring new meaning onto the notion of embodiment. The digital films exhibited include Narrative Remains, made in collaboration with The London Hunterian Museum and Variance with The Francis Galton Collection at UCL. Vanitas: Seed Head and the Piece of Mind Mask print series were made with the assistance of the Cardiff Neuroscience Research Group.

Also on display is a Cabinet of Curiosities, containing anatomical artifacts curated to deepen contemplation of the artists’ works. BETWEEN is both a critique and an acknowledgement of the potency of a biomedical revolution in which King’s College plays a leading role.

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