The hypothesis of a re-membering body
By Pantelis Makkas
PreAct
Introduction
8
Context
10
Hypothetical Context
14
Paul Pearsall’s case studies
20
Enhanced-back up
22
The discovery of a toolKit
27
Tool I, cellular process
29
Tool II, [m]bodied process
31
Tool III, speech transplantation
33
Tool IV, re-do
34
Tool V, imageograms
38
Act Project analysis
42
Man About Crowd
43
Dissertortion
46
Mono Logue
48
The Pseudological Diary
51
Conclusion
58
The play, Black Box
63
Bibliography Acknowledgements
Mnemosyne was the Greek goddess of memory. She was the daughter of Uranus and Gaia and with Zeus she gave birth to the nine Muses. Memory is the tool that allows us to learn, reason, predict and to anticipate outcomes, thus being the very foundation of civilization.
PreAct
“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend� Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, 1946.
Introduction In my opinion memory is the power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms. The concept of body and cellular memory, a hypothesis of a bodily function that allows to 'capture' and store memories outside the brain, is central to my work and research. According to this hypothesis the body is able to remember independently and store memories, bypassing the functions of the brain. My examination of body and cellular memory initially approached the subject in the context of pseudoscience. Later however I came across recent scientific publications that suggest a biological basis that could explain cases of reported body memories. This had a profound effect on my research and work as it appeared to be the missing piece of the puzzle. In pseudoscience cellular memory is the proposed mechanism of transference of memories and information through a transplanted organ, from donor to recipient. In science, the concept of cellular memory refers to processes that allow cells to remember previous experiences and responses. Two examples are immunological memory and epigenetic regulation of genetic information. Standing at the doorstep of scientific breakthrough in the area of complex organ transplantation I strongly believe we should allow more space for research on the concept of body and cellular memory. Will body memory and cellular memory be registered in the history of science as a pseudoscience or can we expect to see major developments in the field of biological research, which will establish a scientific basis for the concept of body and cellular memory? The hypothesis of a re-membering body is an observation and an analysis on the concept of body and cellular memory from the perspective of science and pseudoscience. In the first section, Pre Act, I introduce recent scientific evidence that supports a scientific context on the terms of body and cellular memory. I examine how the boundaries of science, pseudoscience and science fiction intersect and how recent research findings suggest biological mechanisms that could provide scientific bases for body memory. Under the title The discovery of a toolkit, I present a series of tools that I developed through my work and research. In the second section, Act, I present four projects that were developed with the use of the toolkit and focus on my original hypothesis. The play, Black Box (2014), that concludes The hypothesis of a re-membering body is a synopsis of all my research presented in a fictional way.
Context “For centuries, poets and artists have told us that the heart is a great repository of spirit and emotion. That’s a beautiful idea, but clinically there’s nothing to it. The heart is just a pump”1 After extensive research Dr. Andrew Armour (neurocardiologist, author and researcher at the university of Montreal) introduced in 1994 the concept of a functional “heart brain”2. His work revealed that the heart has a complex intrinsic nervous system that is sufficiently sophisticated to qualify as a ‘little brain’ in its own right. According to Armour the heart’s brain is an intricate network of several types of neurons, neurotransmitters, proteins and support cells similar to those found in the brain proper. Its elaborate circuitry enables it to act independently of the cranial brain – to learn, remember, and even feel and sense. The heart’s nervous system contains around forty thousand neurons, called sensory neurites. Information from the heart - including feeling sensations - is sent to the brain through several afferents. These afferent nerve pathways, argues Armour, enter the brain at the area of the medulla, and cascade up into the higher centers of the brain, where they may influence perception, decision-making and other cognitive processes.3 The discoveries of Armour seem to suggest that the heart has its own intrinsic nervous system that operates and processes information independently of the brain or nervous system. This mechanism is important for the function of a transplanted heart. In vivo the heart communicates with the brain via nerve fibers running through the vagus nerve and the spinal column. After a heart transplant, these nerve connections are severed and naturally reestablished but only after an extended period of time. In the meanwhile the transplanted heart is able to function in its new host only through the capacity of its intact, intrinsic nervous system.4
1 2 3 4
C. Sylvia with W. Novak, 1997, A Change of Heart, 219. A. Armour, 1995, “Neurocardiology”, Clinical Cardiology, for all information in this paragraph. Ibid. D.A. Murphy, G.W. Thomson and others, 2000, The heart reinnervation after transplantation, The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, for all information in this paragraph.
The human body consists of two hundred different cell types. Each one has undergone a differentiation process necessary to acquire its distinct functionality and at the same time it includes all information present in all other cell types, the genome. The basis of differentiation is the blocking of information that will not be used by the specific cell type. This is achieved by proteins and mechanisms that bind on the genetic code making it illegible. The genetic information contained in a cell together with the mechanisms that ensure its differentiation form an entity that is called chromatin. It combines all the information with its instructions of usage. During cell replication however the entire genome needs to be accessed, copied and transferred to the daughter cells. While differentiation requires limiting access only to relevant information, cell division requires ample access to all the information. After cell division is completed the functionality of each cell type is insured by the re-establishment of proteins and mechanisms that gave the parent cell its properties. Thus life, at least on a cellular level, is a cycle of functional censorship of the genetic information followed by a reversal of the process necessary for division. The re-acquisition of functionality after division relies in yet unknown mechanisms that are controlled by the cell itself.5 Research on the biological significance of the differentiation and division cycles started only as recently as 2009 and was published in Nature International Journal of Science in 2014.6 A group of biotech scientists of the university of Copenhagen under the supervision of Anja Groth set out to unravel the complicated processes involved. The main focus of the Groth group research is the molecular understanding of how chromatin is replicated to ensure faithful transmission of both genetic (species specific) and epigenetic (function specific) information during the cell division. Groth herself states that “To understand cellular memory it is evident that we need to unravel how chromatin is replicated.”7 The understanding of such a fundamental principle is essential in order to understand how our organism is developed and maintained. If cells lose their capacity of memory (cellular memory) not only can they lose their functionality but also they can potentially develop into cancer cells.
5
6
7
B. Alberts, A. Johnson, J. Lewis, M. Raff, K. Roberts, and P. Walter, 1983, Molecular Biology of the Cell, 1-45, for all information in this paragraph. C. Alabert, J.C. Bukowski-Wills, S.B. Lee, G. Kustatcher, K. Nakamura, F.L. Alves, P. Menard, J. Mejlvang, J. Rppsilber and A. Groth, 2014, “Nascent chromatin capture proteomics determines chromatin during DNA replication and identifies unknown fork components”, Nature Cell Biology. Ibid.
As novel as this biological concept of cellular memory may seem, another form of cellular memory, the so-called immunological memory, has been described for the first time in 1921 by the English immunologist Alexander Glenny.8 Since then it has been well researched and accepted by the scientific community and the 2011 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded jointly to Bruce A. Beutler (immunologist, geneticist) and Jules A. Hoffmann (biologist) "for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity" and Ralph M. Steinman (immunologist, cell biologist) "for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity".9 Immune cells acquire through the entire lifetime of an organism the ability to respond to invasions of antigens (foreign substances or organisms) orchestrating an immune response. The ability to recognize and respond to each specific antigen lies within a group of specialized cells, all daughter cells of a single cell that first encountered the antigen and acquired the blueprint of the specific immune reaction. Immunological memory bears uncanny resemblance to a person's memory as it develops through experience and defines the reactions of the body. The total of the antibodies of each organism is an imprinted image of its experiences. Cellular memories, in the form of immunological response, and conscious memories represent an archive of life events. While tools for documenting cellular memories are yet to be discovered ,conscious memories are often documented in photographs. A photograph has the capacity to evoke feelings, ideas and thoughts about a person or an event closely associated with the core memory. The essayist Catherine Keenan in On the relationship between personal photographs and individual memory, has noted that photographs can supplement memory, and even help in configuring it.10 She argues that if the photograph becomes involved in configuring narrative memory then it becomes a 'memory image'. Memory images are the images that intervene and modify conscious memories. I believe that the concept of images intervening and modifying body memories should be further investigated and conceptualized. The structure and operation of the eye in a technical sense is very similar to the electronic camera. Both are based on two major components: a lens assembly and an imaging sensor. The lens assembly captures a portion of the light reflected by an object, and focuses 8 9 10
T.A. Glenny, H.J. Südmerson, 1921, Notes on the Immunity to Diphtheria Toxin, 179–220. www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2011. C. Keenan, 1998, “On the relationship between personal photographs and individual memory”, History of Photography Journal, 22.
onto the imaging sensor. The imaging sensor then transforms the pattern of light into an image signal, either electronic or neural. Basically the human eye creates images constantly while a camera has to be given a command (one way or another) to capture an image. A market research firm -Yankelovich11 - made an estimate that a person currently living in a city sees up to five thousand images per day. Twenty years ago this estimate was at two thousand images per day. This estimate is only based on two-dimensional images mainly through photographs, media screens and street ads. Using my definition of image this estimate changes radically. While watching a theater play or a movie that lasts an hour and a half for example, the human eye and brain can capture 129,600 frames, each frame consisting of multiple images. The human brain can remember thousands of images, with a surprising level of detail. However not all images are equally memorable. Conducting a study at MIT, neuroscientists Phillip Isola, Jianxiong Xiao, Antonio Torralba and Aude Oliva built a collection of ten thousand images of all kinds, such as interior design photos, nature scenes, streetscapes.12 They presented a series of images some of which were repeated to human subjects. The task of the subjects was to indicate, by pressing a key on their keyboard, whether an image that they had already seen reappeared. After gathering their data, the researchers made 'memorability maps' of each image by asking people to label all the objects in the images. A computer model then analyzed the labels to determine which objects make an image memorable. The conclusion was that images with people in them are the most memorable, followed by images of human-scale space — such as the produce aisle of a grocery store — and close-ups of objects. Least memorable are natural landscapes, although these can be memorable if they feature an unexpected element, such as shrubbery trimmed into an unusual shape. A memory triggered during the day can intervene in the series of real-life images as a proper image itself, defined by Keenan as memory image. Memory images are captured by the eye and stored in the brain. The hypothesis of memories being created and captured by the body itself leads me to introduce the concept of cellular memory images: body memories that take the form of visual images and interfere with the daily flow of conscious images. If indeed memories can be stored in different parts of the human body and not only in the brain, then tools to record and access this data should be researched. 11 12
L. Story, 2007, NY Times Magazine, January. P.Isola, J. Xiao, A. Torralba, A. Oliva, 2010, What makes an image memorable.
Hypothetical Context I believe that a hypothesis is somewhere in between a theory or a guess. A hypothesis is something more than a wild guess but less than a well-established theory. In scientific context, a hypothesis is an idea or explanation that can be tested through study and experimentation before it is accepted as a theory. Although many such hypotheses have not managed to enter the world of science, during the process of scientific questioning they have helped to elucidate other theories that are now well accepted. In 1796 the field of neurology welcomed what was at the time believed to be its latest advancement namely, phrenology. Phrenology was the study of the conformation of the skull based on the hypothesis that it is indicative of mental faculties and character. It was widely accepted by many practicing neurologists as a powerful diagnostic tool. As other scientific methods that were developed to investigate the psyche and the secrets of the brain began to yield to more careful scrutiny, phrenology became increasingly marginalized. By the end of the 19th century the doctrines of phrenology were almost abandoned by medicine and mainstream neurology. Phrenology survives to this day as a classic pseudoscience, with dedicated adherents convinced of its efficacy.13 Although clearly dead as a science, phrenology survived into the 20th century and even up to the present time in various forms. Studies like criminology, craniometry and anthropometry were based in the tools phrenology introduced. Phrenology had a great influence on American psychology in various ways.14 The basic methodology of phrenology was the study and analysis of individual faculties, and thereby individual differences. Phrenologists were interested in analyzing and measuring individual differences, a method that almost all psychologists follow today. Presently evolutionary psychology and modern psychiatry, or the science known as sociobiology, use the same tools introduced by phrenology to draw valid conclusions on a scientific basis.15 Phrenology serves as an example of how hypothetical theories can be very important 13
14 15
S.H. Greenblatt, 1995, Phrenology in the Science and Culture of the 19th century, for all information in this paragraph. D. Simpson, 2005, Phrenology and the Neurosciences: Contributions of F.J. Gall and J.G. Spurzheim. L. Lawrence, 2009, F.J. Gall and Phrenology's Contribution to Neurology.
for the evolution of our thinking. The term hypothesis however is generally applied in many different ways. A scientific hypothesis arises from facts and uses them to create a theory for an explanation. My ‘artistic hypothesis' from the other hand can arises from fantasies, myths, rumors, thus also resulting in an explanatory theory. In order to evaluate the role of hypothesis in my work it is crucial to define it as “a proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without the assumption of its truth, a supposition made as a starting point for further investigation from known facts”.16 Hypothesis as an instrument in my research is closely related to the term 'scenario'. It is similar to the intro “what if ...”. Albert Einstein wrote, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. So the unknown, the mysterious, is where art and science meet”.17 This idea of the mysterious is what prompted me to work on the subject of body and cellular memory. The terms body memory and cellular memory were coined and used in the realms of pseudoscience. Body memory is based on the assumption that memories can be stored in body organs outside the brain. The cellular memory hypothesis states that these memories are stored in all the cells of human bodies, not only in the organised, functional entities that organs are. The idea that non-brain tissues can have memories is accepted by some individuals who have experienced organ transplantation, even though this idea is considered impossible by scientists. A well documented report of body memory is the case of the American woman Claire Sylvia.18 On May 1988 Sylvia received the heart of an 18-year-old male who was killed in a motorcycle accident. Soon after the operation Sylvia noticed some distinct changes in her attitudes, habits, and tastes. She found herself acting more masculine, strutting down the street (which, being a dancer, was not her usual manner of walking). She began craving foods such as green peppers and beer, which she had always disliked before. Sylvia even began having recurring dreams about a mystery man named Tim L, who she had a feeling was her donor. As it turns out, he was. Upon meeting the “family of her heart,” as she put it, Sylvia discovered that her donor’s name was, in fact, Tim Lamirande, and that all the changes she had been experiencing in her attitudes, tastes, and habits closely mirrored that of Tim’s. Cellular memory is defined as the idea that the cells in our bodies contain information
16 17 18
The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1990. A. Einstein, 1931, Living Philosophies, 27. London Sunday Times, February 1996.
about our personalities, tastes, and histories.19 Evidence of this phenomenon has been found most prevalently in heart transplant recipients. Though cellular memory may seem too farfetched for many, some scientists have looked further into it as a valid concept and have come up with various theories to try and gain more understanding of it. The findings of the American neuroscientist and pharmacologist Candace Pert published in her book Molecules of emotion (1999)20 helped support the belief that every cell in our body “has its own ‘mind’...and if you transfer tissues from one body to another, the cells from the first body will carry memories into the second body”.21 Pert described the role of neuropeptides in the transmission of emotional signals inside the brain but also from body organs to the brain and from one body organ to another, suggesting that these are the “molecules of emotions”. Such a concept opens for me questions in the possibility of emotional communication between a transplanted organ and the recipient of the transplantation Fascination with transplantation can be traced back to myths and legends and it has been rendered in various art forms. The oldest depiction that I have been able to find is a 15th century religious painting showing saints Cosmas and Damian transplanting a black leg onto a white body assisted by angels. Saints Cosmas and Damian were early Christian martyrs who, according to legend, practiced medicine without payment and therefore represent the medical ideal. In this Spanish altarpiece, the saints appear in a vision, dressed in the full finery of academic doctors as they perform the miracle of A verger's dream, oil on wood, 1495, Wellcome Library.
transplanting a leg. The painting, A Verger's Dream, is based on the description found in a book of 1275 by Jacobus de
Voragine, Legenda aurea (The Golden Legend). A verger living in the church of Cosmas and Damian in Rome suffered a disease which was eating away the flesh of his leg. One night the verger had this vision in which the two saints came and cut off his suffering limb replacing it with the leg of a dead African who had just been buried in a nearby churchyard. When he awoke, the verger found that he had a healthy black leg while it was discovered that the African's body now lacked a limb. The painting was probably once in the Church of Saints 19 20 21
C.R. Todd, 2002, “Cellular Memory”, The Sceptics Dictionary, C. Pert, 1999, Molecules of Emotions: The science between Mind-Body Medicine Scribner. C. Sylvia with W. Novak, 1997, A Change of Heart, 221.
Cosmas and Damian in Burgos in northern Spain and can now be seen in the Wellcome Library in London. Another painting of the 16th century with the same subject and by an unknown painter is located in Landesmuseum Württemberg, a museum dedicated to history and folklore in Stuttgart. This particular ‘miracle’ has fascinated artists and there are many paintings depicting this event in various churches and museums, all being based on the same description. In 1908 French author Maurice Renard published his novel Le Docteur Lerne, SousDieu (Doctor Lerne, Undergod) where he tells the story of a mad scientist who uses animal transplants on men but also goes as far as transplanting plant and machine parts to them. In this science fiction novel he examines the imaginary implications of transplantation. In 1920 he continues his preoccupation with transplantation in his book Les Mains D'Orlac (The Hands of Orlac). In this novel a concert pianist, Paul Orlac loses his hands in a horrible railway accident. His wife Yvonne pleads with a surgeon to try and save Orlac’s hands. The surgeon decides to try and transplant new hands onto Orlac, but the hands he uses are those of a recently executed murderer named Vasseur. From that point, the pianist is tortured by the presence of a knife he finds in his house, just like the one used by Vasseur, and the desire to kill. He believes that along with the murderer’s hands, he has also gained the murderer's predisposition to violence. He confronts the surgeon, telling him to remove the hands, but the surgeon tries to convince him that a person’s actions are not governed by his hands, but by the head and heart. Several variations of Renard's story have made it into film, including Orlacs Hände, a 1935 silent Austrian film, Mad Love (1935), Les Mains D'Orlac (1960), and Hands of a Stranger (1962). A similar story is told by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (authors of Vertigo) in the novel, Et mon tout est un homme (1965), which was made into the film Body Parts in 1991. A prison psychiatrist loses an arm in an accident and is given the arm of an executed psycho-killer. The arm then develops a mind of its own. What intrigues me about the cellular memory hypothesis in science is the fact that it is also based on fictional works. Renard's vision of hand transplantation in The Hands of Orlac, became reality after almost six decades. The first hand transplantation was performed in Ecuador in 1964, but the patient suffered from transplant rejection after two weeks. The first short-term success in human hand transplantation occurred with New Zealander Clint Hallam who had lost his hand in a circular-saw accident while in Rolleston prison. The operation was performed on September 23, 1998 in Lyon, France by a team built from
surgeons from different countries around the world. Another case in which an art work predicts future reality is the TV series and series of films Star Trek. Films describing a future reality are always categorised as science fiction. Very often these science fiction works have come to predict future technological developments. The film The Hands of Orlac not only predicted hand transplantation as a medical reality but also predicted the reports of body memory recalls of the recipients rumoured to have come from the donors. The early paintings of the 'miracle' depicting a leg transplantation, prefigures the future of organ transplantations. A 19th century painting from Sri Lanka showing Bodhisattva22 giving his eyes to a blind man predicted research on eye transplantation. This kind of operation is currently considered impossible but The Bodhisattva giving his eyes to a blind man. Painting from Sri Lanka, early 19th century.
scientific research is ongoing. Makoto Asashima (developmental
biologist at Research Center for Stem Cell Engineering, professor at the University of Tokyo) published his work on developing a frog eye using stem cells isolated from frog embryos and then transplanting it to tadpoles.23 There are more people like Sylvia Claire, who claim to have memories from their donor’s organs. Jim Gleason, Bill Wohl, Paul Oldam, Jamie Sherman, Dottie O’Connor, Brian Histand are claiming that after organ transplantation operation they inherit memories and tastes from their donors. Gary Schwartz (professor in psychology, medicine, neurology, psychiatry and surgery at the University of Arizona) in collaboration with Paul Pearsall (author, neuropsychologist at Wayne State University School of Medicine) have documented more than seventy cases of transplant recipients who have inherited the traits of their donors. Schwartz said, “When the organ is placed in the recipient, the information and energy stored in the organ is passed on to the recipient. The theory applies to any organ that has cells that are interconnected. They could be kidneys, liver or 22
23
In Buddhism, a Bodhisattva is a being that compassionately refrains from entering nirvana in order to save others, Merriam Webster online Dictionary. Y. Myoishi, M. Furue, Y. Fukui, T. Okamoto and M. Asashima, 2004, Induction of tooth and eye by transplantation of activin A- treated, undifferentiated presumptive ectodermal Xenopus cells into the abdomen.
even muscles.” 24
24
“Cellular memory”, The Sceptic's Dictionary, http://skepdic.com/cellular.
Paul Pearsall’s case studies Collecting case studies is an important process in validating a hypothesis. Stories documenting donor memories experienced by recipients are not enough to prove that cellular memory actually is a fact, but recording and organizing these reports could allow a pattern to emerge. The validation process of the case studies becomes more complicated when one considers that many organ recipients are prone to magical thinking and 'feel' the presence of the deceased donor within them. The recipient's subjective validation may be driven by a desire to prove the belief or to please the donor's family, the doctor, or a medical attendant who may encourage the belief. Now that the idea of cellular memory is being promoted in books and on television (the Discovery Health Channel, BBC), making sure the stories are not contaminated will become more difficult.25 Luckily Paul Pearsall's seminal work on collecting body memory reports was conducted before body memory was widely publicized. Pearsall's research on personality changes of transplant recipients was published in Nexus Magazine.26 Pearsall underwent himself a bone marrow transplantation in 1987 and his interest on the subject of body and cellular memory began after his own transplantation. The cases reported represent more than seventy four transplantation patients, twenty three of whom were heart transplant recipients, and were brought to Pearsall's attention.The report in Nexus Magazine in 2005 provides theoretical and empirical justification for conducting a controlled comprehensive study. Pearsall concluded that our current understanding of memories as being stored in the central nervous system (and secondarily in the immune system) predisposes recipients to ignoring the possibility of body memory. At the same time family members and friends of the recipients as well as healthcare providers in general are not open to hearing transplant recipients talk about body memories. “Hence, it is not possible to determine what the actual percentage is of personality changes; under-reporting appears to be the rule rather than the exception.”27 Pearsall has observed that the heart transplant recipients seemed to be the most susceptible to personality changes. Patients who had undergone organ transplants for kidney 25 26
27
“Mindshock, Transplanting Memories”, 2006, Channel 4. P. Pearsall, G.E. Schwartz, L.G. Russek, 2005, “Organ Transplants and Cellular Memories”, Nexus magazine. Ibid.
and liver also sensed changes in their sense of smell, food preference and emotional factors, but these changes were usually transitory and could be associated with medications and other factors of transplantation. Through Pearsall’s case studies, the findings for heart transplants appear more robust and more strongly associated with the donor’s history. I consider the case report of a transplantation performed between children as Paul Pearsall describes it, an important example. In this case an eight-year-old girl received the heart of a ten-year-old girl who had been murdered. The recipient ended up at a psychiatrist’s office, plagued by nightmares of her donor’s murderer. She said she knew who the man was. After a few sessions the psychiatrist decided to notify the police. Following the girl’s instructions, they tracked down the murderer. The man was convicted on evidence she had provided such as the time of the crime, the weapon, the place and the clothes the murderer wore. Everything the girl described turned out to be accurate.
Enhanced back-up
Digital cameras, available to the public since 1997, have driven the marginal monetary cost of recording and saving images toward zero. Freed of the expense of film, developing and printing, a digital camera owner can capture almost any number of images without effective monetary constraint. Once captured, digital images can be reproduced and disseminated like any other data. Cell phone cameras, introduced in 2002, constantly accompany their users. They combine effortless and immediately accessible digital photographic capability with the capacity to transmit images instantaneously. During the last ten years, distribution channels for digital images have expanded exponentially. Social networks like Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, Instagram and many more have become an everyday tool for the contemporary human. The latest technological developments by Google-company enable us to have, amongst others, a camera installed in our glasses and record everything we see in our every day life. The next project for Google is to develop contact lenses with incorporated cameras. The ability to capture our every day life and store it online is slowly becoming a need as vital as communication and interaction. The agency Trendwatcing introduce the term 'Life cathcing' in 2005.28 Life catching refers to a social act of storing and sharing one's life events in an open and public forum. Modern life caching is considered a form of social networking and typically takes place on the internet.29 With modern technology the ability of capturing every day life, becomes effortless, almost automatic. The way we capture digital images and store them online through social media networks is mirroring the way the eye captures images and the brain stores memories. The cameras are slowly being incorporated into our bodies, which twenty years ago would have sounded as farfetched as a science fiction plot. As the cameras are fusing with the human body, capturing images is becoming less and less self-conscious. Cameras like Googleglass, Memoto and SenseCam can start recording images automatically based on light changes and movement and not by the conscious push of the 'record' button. The phenomenon whereby people can digitally record their own daily lives in varying amounts of detail, for a variety of purposes is called life logging. In a sense it represents a comprehensive 'black box' of a 28 29
http://trendwatching.com/trends/LIFE_CACHING.htm. "Ethics on the line as ordinary people put themselves in the picture", 2006, The Sydney Morning Herald.
human’s life activities and may offer the potential to mine or infer knowledge about how we live our lives. Early research into lifelogs -the actual data that are gathered through life logging- started in the 1980s, when pioneers such as Canadian researcher and inventor Steve Mann began developing increasingly smaller wearable sensing and lifelog capture devices with continually improving power consumption.30 Starting in 1994, Mann continuously transmitted his everyday life twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Those days with the advent of smartphones and other pervasive devices the paradigm of life logging extended to ubiquitous devices. For instance UbiqLog and Experience Explorer employ mobile sensing to perform life logging. While other lifelogging devices, like the Autographer, use a combination of visual sensors and GPS tracking to simultaneously document where you are and what you see.31 Where the body is in action an image can be made. Memories of our experiences form a network and are the basis of who we are as individuals. They are called autobiographical memories and are processed in a brain region called the hippocampus. If the hippocampus were to be removed or inactivated the person would feel like being stuck in time as memories of new experiences would rapidly fade away. The hippocampus functions to create a seamless story of the self, much like the hard drive of a digital camera. It becomes clear that there are many parallels between human memory and image recording. Simply put, an image or a photograph is information about previous light, movement and knowledge as they are perceived in present time. Similarly, memories are the information of our previous experiences on our present self. Photographs and images can serve as memory storage and when viewed can activate memory recall. The basis of our autobiographical memory is a selection of what happened, where it happened and when it happened.32 Similarly images captured can store information of what, where and when. In this Henry Gustav Molaison, also known as H.M 30 31
regard, an image is very much like a memory
C. Gurrrin, A.F. Smeaton, A.R. Doherty, 2014, LifeLogging: Personal Big Data. S. Mann, 1997, "An historical account of the 'WearComp' and 'WearCam' inventions developed for applications in 'Personal Imaging,'" The First International Symposium on Wearable Computers: Digest of Papers, IEEE Computer Society, 66-73.
of a life event. Current memory research owes a lot to Henry Gustav Molaison, who was simply known to the research community as patient H.M.. H.M. had debilitating seizures that developed after a bicycle accident at the age of nine. For eighteen years various treatments did not succeed in helping him with his seizures. In 1953, at the age of twenty-seven, H.M desperate by his debilitating seizures, was treated by William Beecher Scoville, founder and director of the Department of Neurosurgery at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut. Scoville was experimenting at the time with surgical procedures as means of curing psychosis. H.M. underwent an experimental surgical procedure called a bilateral medial temporal lobe resection. This involved the removal of large portions of the temporal lobe from both hemispheres of his brain. Tissue was removed from the anterior (front) tips of the temporal lobes on the medial (inner) surface of the brain, extending 8cm backwards. The resection therefore completely removed the amygdala, the entorhinal and perirhinal cortices, and about two-thirds of the hippocampus.33 After the surgery H.M. was no longer able to form new memories about his personal experiences. He was in his late twenties when he had this surgery and because he could not form new autobiographical memories he felt like perpetually stuck in his twenties. The surgery eventually stopped his seizures, but the amnesia that resulted was completely unexpected and since then the research on hippocampus autobiographical memory formation has grown exponentially. Steve Hodges (engineer at Microsoft), Emma Berry (psychologist), and Ken Wood (managing director of Microsoft), are researchers working for Microsoft who have been studying the role of photography in strengthening memories in patients with a damaged hippocampus.34 Individuals with hippocampus damage have autobiographical memory deficits, meaning they cannot recall the events of their lives and after a few days their memories of life events fade away. Microsoft developed a digital camera, which they call the SenseCam. SenseCam is worn by the individual suffering memory loss and it captures an electronic record of the wearer’s day. It does this by automatically recording a series of still images through its wide-angle lens, and simultaneously capturing a data log from a number 32 33
34
J. Sarinana, 2013, Memories, Photographs and the Human Brain. W.B. Scoville, & B. Milner, 1957, “Loss of recent memory after bilateral hippocampal lesions”, J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry, 11-21. E. Berry, N. Kapur, L. Williams, S. Hodges, P. Watson, G. Smyth, J. Srinivasan, R. Smith, B. Wilson, K. Wood, 2007, “The use of a wearable camera, SenseCam, as a pictorial diary to improve a autobiographical memory in a patient with limbic enceplalitis: a preliminary report”, Neuropsychol Rehabil, 582-601.
of built in electronic sensors. In this study, participants with hippocampus damage reviewed all the photos taken during their day. The level of recall in individuals with the SenseCam was then compared to memory recall of events without the SenseCam or to memory recall aided by logs in a conventional diary. Participants with a SenseCam had greater levels of recall when compared to no aid at all and to using only a written diary. What is interesting about the findings is that it suggests that visual memory of events can be recorded outside the hippocampus, but only after studying photographs. The hypothesis is that studying photos of life events helps substitute the hippocampus and allows processing of such memories in a different brain region or regions. The Microsoft Research team raises the question “whether or not photos bring up associated emotions that occurred during those events in patients with hippocampus damage, are these memories just facts of events or do they also contain emotion?”35 Since SenseCam, more wearable cameras have been introduced into the market, such as Autographer, Glogger, Memoto and of course the latest introduction from Googlecompany, GoogleGlass. With a ‘broken’ hippocampus the results of wearing a camera as such and looking at the images of the previous day can only be positive. Those products however are marketed to everyone. Researching the implications of such memory enhancing devices for people with normal function of the hippocampus and normal memory function will be a major field of research in the coming years. Conscious memories rely heavily on images but memories are prioritized. Only images connected with other memories become memorable. We can hypothesize that enhancing memory through the use of digital capturing devices or even through sharing images in social media, results in an accumulated mass of images. These images can be accessed without prioritization and with a lack of purpose, almost randomly. As we can no longer prioritize what we remember conscious memory loses its associative links between individual memory events. Transplant recipients report having transplanted memories of tastes in food and trivial preferences in hobbies. One can imagine that one of the properties of the hypothetical body memory is its unpredictability. Tim L.'s taste for green peppers would not be something that he would like to be remembered by, but yet this is exactly what Claire Sylvia seems to have inherited with his heart. Body memories reported by transplant recipients appear to be random. Effortless digital image recording and the incorporation of these images in social 35
Ibid.
media seem to bring a change in the way we remember our conscious memories. Further investigation is needed because our conscious memories seem to become more random, perhaps like body memory is. Maybe the action of making images and reviewing them on an every day basis interacts also with the memories that are stored in our organs and cells as well as with the memories that are stored in our brains. As the results of the SenseCam experiments suggest, reviewing every day, unprioritized photographs, allows people with dysfunctional hippocampus to develop alternative pathways of conscious memory processing and storing. Designing similar experiments for people who report so called body memories could bring us a step closer to tracing where body memories are stored.
The discovery of a Toolkit “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us” M. McLuhan, The Medium is the Message: the recordings, 1967.
Traditionally a tool is an item or implement used for a specific purpose. Tools can be physical objects such as mechanical tools which include saws and hammers as well as technical objects such as web authoring tools or software programs. However I believe that a concept can also be considered a tool. A tool is not only defined by its physical form, but also by its functions, which are dependent on a particular context of use. After all it is this context of use that determines whether the tool is functional or not.37 For example, a stick can be used as a weapon, or to fetch an object which is at a distance from its user, or it can be used to control the broom or even to draw a straight line. The stick as an object contains all these possibilities along with other specifications which can only be defined by the context of its use. Accepting that a tool is determined mainly by its context of use and not by its material properties, lead me to analyse the method of action of each tool in order to define it. In my opinion a tool without an explanatory method of use can only be regarded as an object and not as a tool. One generally tends to think of tools merely as articles of utility, having the function of serving man's basic needs. I believe that we, humans, use tools to serve all our needs, including those usually thought of in a less material way. The use of tools can be either practical or conceptual. The philosopher James Feibleman uses the term tool “as a synonym for instrument, apparatus, device, contrivance, appliance, utensil, vehicle, machine and engine.”38 In fields like philosophy, psychology, economics and statistics, the definition of tools refers to contrivances rather than to practical functions. Philosophical tools like paradigm, epiphenomenon, rhetoric and dialectic can be important not only to philosophers but to everyone. I believe that the use of these tools can help one think more clearly and from a broader perspective. Being acquainted with the theory behind tools, their properties and their results will allow one to select the proper tool. The invention of a tool requires in depth knowledge of the problem one wants to address. Developing a successful tool does not only offer an effective solution to the problem that generated the tool, in the first place, 37 38
V.V. Binoy, 2012, “Tools as non-elaborated aesthetic form”, Science and culture. J.K. Feibleman, 1967, “The Philosophy of Tools”, Social Forces, 329.
but also offers a deeper understanding and knowledge of its context of use. In my work and research the creation of a tool does not happen only through conscious design. Sometimes minor problems in the working process give birth to a tool. Using this tool does not only offer a solution to the initial problem but also provides insight into what caused the minor problem in the first place. Designing the final, perfected form of the tool incorporates the thinking process and findings of researching the problem. In this chapter I will present five tools that I developed in recent years and that I use in my work and research. The first medium in which I unconsciously expressed myself,was photography. The day I held my first photo camera is still etched in my mind. It was a Kodak pocket B-1 camera that I bought in a store near my family home with pocket money I had saved at the age of nine. I bought the camera not as a medium of expression but as an object that attracted me. With the camera came a 35 mm film with twelve empty frames. I shot all twelve frames on that same day but I can only remember taking one of them: my father cutting wood for the fireplace. A square image, not very sharp, capturing my father raising an axe. Photography remained my language of expression until I realised that still images do not constitute an adequate instrument for the reconstruction of memory, because by its nature memory forever moves inexorably forward. Memory is a domain where past, present and future coexist in the same moment. In essence, the recalling of a memory is an action moving into the future rather than into the past. When I register an experience as a memory it is instrumental for future use. The very moment at which I recall a past experience or event, memory comes into operation with an image of the initial event, shaped by present conditions. At this moment, the initial event is reshaped incorporating present characteristics. The memory of the event changes. Every future recall of the
initial event will include the characteristics of the present. I came to understand that a moving image triggers memory more effectively than a still image, because it allows for the intermingling of past, present and future within the same forward moving narrative. Editing video can be used as a tool for moving in time in order to create a narrative. However the investigation of memory and image in it self was not enough, I also needed the physical presence of the human body. When my experimentation with performance began by introducing the human body into my work, I realised that I was being led to theatrical performance. Theatrical performance was now accepted as a new practical tool in my work and questions started to arise about the acceptance, the need and the process through which new tools were developed.
Tool I, cellular process
During my first years in art school I decided to use a big format photographic camera. In 2000, digital camera technology was still in its infancy and to get the highest quality of printing one had to rely on a studio camera. The reason for purchasing a big format camera was not only to improve the quality of the image. One of my tutors suggested changing the camera format as an easy way to change my own perspective on my work. After several months of experimentation with the big format camera I made a series of photographs. In Between (2003) is a series of photographic images captured on the same negative. It was an experiment with stacking as many images as possible on one single negative. My new camera 'followed' me everywhere to capture images of my life at any moment. At the same time I was taking written notes of each captured frame. I was transcribing images into text. For example I would write, “a woman eats in the park while a man is passing by, driving his bicycle�. In this way ninety nine images were stacked on one frame. When the film was developed it was transparent because of the overexposure. In photographic terms this means that the printed image was absolutely black. When the work In Between, 2003, installation, PSWAR, Amsterdam
was presented in PSWAR (Public Space With The Roof) in
Amsterdam in 2004 the image was this absolute black. The text captured during the process of taking the photo however replaced the image. Taking a written note of each frame I was shooting was a tool that I used to create a log of my photos as I anticipated that overexposure would make the image itself difficult to read. When the work In Between (2003) was presented I realised that the written documentation of the photo subject
Roamings, 2004, Photograpgh
triggered memories of each specific click. It reminded me of all the actions and decisions taken before and during the capturing of the image. At that moment the idea of a ‘cellular process’ as a tool arose. The minor problem of documenting my subjects developed into a 'mapping' process. The term mapping traditionally stands for the creation of a map. In my work and research I use the term mapping as a conceptual method of documenting, data and movements created by my moving body capturing an image. The work In Between (2003) did not lead me to directly define the meaning of cellular process as a tool but more importantly to understand the need of consciously mapping the whole performative process before, after and at the moment of capturing an image. The last time I worked with photography I made a series of images, entitled Roamings (2004). I used the big format camera with an open diaphragm, carrying it around on trains, in cars, even on
the bicycle, and thus capturing entire journeys. Each journey of the work Roamings (2004) combines one photographic image and the sound recordings of the entire journey. The capturing of the image could last from one minute to five hours . In this work the sound recording of the journey is used as a mapping of the journey itself. “Cellular process” is this conscious mapping of an image creating process. The tool was fully formed through the work Roamings (2004). Even though the images produced in Roamings (2004) captured the idea of time from a functional point of view, they did not satisfy my artistic pursuits. Video as a creative format was the next logical step. The only video camera I could afford was a small security camera with an external battery pack and an external recording device. Connecting the camera to my body was necessary to allow freedom of movement for conscious mapping. I went through my closet and found my black Borsalino hat. I started to look for ways to mount the camera inside the hat. Cutting a hole in my Borsalino was not an easy decision, but it turned out this would not to be the only hat that I would be destroying, as during the coming years I was constantly filming with my camera-hat device. The idea of roaming the streets with an omnipresent video camera today is as common as the use of cell phones, but at the time nothing similar was commercially available. With the video camera fixed on top of my head I walked the streets. I became a human tripod again. Initially I was very conscious of my movements and posture to control the images I was filming with my camera-hat. But by using the tool of cellular process, filming became automatic and after a while I stopped controlling movements and posture. I -the mind- would not control any more how and where the filming was happening, as I -the mind- would use a pocket photo camera for my conscious mapping. I -the bodywould stroll around cities without registering any particular feelings, my only need was to film the performance I was creating. The work Man about Crowd (2006) was the result of many kilometers of walking. The cellular process tool was used in this work as a fully functional tool. In his work Lethe (2000) the Greek author Dimitris Dimitriadis, describes the need of the human being to forget.39 He makes a clear distinction between the body and the mind/consciousness. He believes that we, humans, are made of body and consciousness. Even though the two are closely connected, they also stay autonomous and act independently. “I don’t need to remember. I am my body. Look at me. Listen to me. I am body. Only body. I am so much the body. The body is the utmost. Nothing can be more. Nothing is more. As long as it is body. The body to be body. This is enough”.40 Dimitriadis is making a clear statement that one of his basic needs is to give up I -the 39 40
D. Dimitriadis, 2000, Lethe and Four more Monologues, 59-69. Ibid, my translation from the Greek original, 60.
mind- and embrace I -the body-. And by embracing the body, he can dethrone consciousness. He can reach the state of oblivion. Dimitriadis believes oblivion is the way to harmony. My performance The Pseudological Diary (2013) was based on Dimitriadis's work Lethe. I created images because I needed to remember. 'I' is for me as much the consciousness as it is the body. With the cellular process tool, while I -the mind- is preoccupied with the mapping process, I -the body- produces cellular images, capturing them unconsciously. Cellular images are the images my body captures without conscious control. The images that the body needs to remember. So that 'I' is able to forget. To be able to create a cellular image the tool of cellular process is needed.
Tool II, [m]bodied process
In an earlier work, Twenty-four (2008), I worked with a Greek actress and painter, Sofia, a speech and hearing impaired woman. Sofia was the main character in this video. As the make up artist and hair stylist were finishing their work I noticed that Sofia was wearing many bracelets which did not fit into my concept and I asked her to remove them. Sofia explained to me that she never took off the bracelets as they helped her stay connected with the sounds of the outside world. She could feel the movements of the bracelets and translate them into sound. Finally she was convinced to remove them and we started filming. I could feel that she was frustrated however. I asked everybody to leave the set as I thought that people around her were only increasing her frustration. I left her alone in the room with camera, lights and microphone placed on tripods. Twenty-Four, video still, 2007
I was watching her perform on a monitor in another room.
My experience with Sofia in Twenty-four (2008) changed the way I was viewing the filming process and resulted in the tool of [m]bodied process. Solving the minor problem of making my performer feel less self-aware gave birth to a new tool, with much larger implications. By isolating the single performer on the set he becomes more personally involved with the project and his body becomes less self-conscious. This is what I call the tool of “[m]bodied process�. In Mono Logue (2011) further developing the [m]bodied process tool, each performer goes through an hour of complete isolation before the filming begins. This physical and mental isolation of the actor/performer before the filming is combined with a last minute introduction to the spoken text. This increases the personal involvement of the actor/performer and creates a more physical response to the text. It prevents the actor from interpreting the text mentally. The aim of the
[m]bodied process tool is to elicit a bodily reaction from the actor. I prepare the set as I would prepare a laboratory experiment. Even though the filming conditions are strict and controlled, with the use of the [m]bodied memory tool the actor's body is encouraged to respond. What I am extracting out of each actor is the response of the body to the situation and not a cerebral interpretation of it. The [m]bodied process tool is separated in four steps. The first step is the preparation of the set. All the necessary equipment like cameras, lights, microphones, monitors an other devices is placed on tripods, functions without intervention. The second step is the complete isolation of the actor/performer, where communication with others is neither possible on a physical nor on a technological level (mobile phones and mobile internet devises are taken away from them). As a third step the actors/performers receive the text just few minutes before the filming starts. This final step is meant to isolate the actor/performer on the set during the filming process. All instructions are given to them beforehand, so they are the only physical existence on the set. The tool [m]bodied process was used in the videos Dissertortion (2009), Mono Logue (2011), Speech transplantation (2013) and in the performance The Pseudological Diary (2013).
Tool III, Speech Transplantation
“Medically defined, speech is the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words. Speech sounds are made with air exhaled from the lungs, which passes between the vocal chords in the larynx and out through the vocal tract (pharynx and aural and nasal cavities). This airstream is shaped into different sounds by the articulators, mainly the tongue, palate, and lips.”41 I am interested in the physicality of speech, and the way it is produced by the body. For the [m]bodied process tool, I do not allow actors to dissect and interpret the words they are given. What I ask from them is to read out loud the text for one first and only time. This makes their physical response to the words more prominent. I think of speech as a body organ. As any organ it can be transplanted to a recipient’s body. Each person's heart, liver and lungs are unique but they can also function inside the body of a recipient. Similarly a person’s words are unique but they can also function in the body of another person. As cellular memory hypothesis suggest, when an organ is transplanted, the recipient receives with it feelings and memories from the donor. This is true especially when a person speaks the words of another person. He embodies the words, but with these words, feelings and memories of the person who authored the words, - the 'speech donor' -, are also carried over to the 'speech recipient'. From this perspective, speech has the characteristics of a transplanted body organ carrying body memories. “Speech transplantation” as a research tool first appeared in my work Dissertortion (2009). In this work one actress performed the words of all actors in the motion picture Blue Velvet directed by David Lynch (1986). At this point I was less interested in the memories carried over by the text, but more in the bodily reaction of the actress. It showed me however the way to develop this as a tool by giving an actor the words of a somebody else and not disclosing the source of the 41
Merriam-Webster Online, Dictionary and Thesaurus.
words. In the work Mono Logue (2011), I experimented purposefully with the tool of speech transplantation for the first time. Diary excerpts of a total amnesia sufferer, were transplanted into sixteen performers. The actors received the text without knowledge of its source and emotional load. The diary was written by the amnesiac in an attempt to capture his thoughts before they disappeared from his consciousness. I approached his diary records as a documentation of his thoughts, feelings and ideas created in his consciousness and then lost from it, but still trapped inside his body. In Speech Transplantation (2013), the words of an American woman were transplanted into the body of an actress. In this work the tool of speech transplantation was fully formed and functional. Speech transplantation is a hypothetical tool used in the same way transplantation was used by Maurice Renard to investigate the implications of body memory. Speech Transplantation (2013), was conceived in part as a tribute to the film The Hands of Orlac, entertaining the idea of becoming a projection of possible future discoveries. This work used moving images and suggested the prediction of a future reality. My hypothesis behind the tool of speech transplantation is that the spoken text acquires physicality after being excised from the author's context. It becomes an organ, which can function as a link between bodies. According to my hypothesis it transfers information that is not included in the spoken text itself, from the body of the author to the body of the person who speaks the text. Speech transplantation is the tool through which spoken words created in a very specific situation are interpreted by a performer without knowledge of background and the context of their original use. The tool is used as an instrument to research the possibility of carrying over emotions and memories of an original situation by having them expressed by a performer.
Tool IV, re-doing
While filming Man about Crowd (2006), with the camera installed in my hat, I found myself in a train station in front of a photo booth. I placed the coins into the slot, closed the curtain behind me and sat on the stool. The lights flashed and the photo was taken while the filming through the camera-hat still continued. During the two minutes it took for the photo to develop I was trying to understand, what had really happened just now. Was I filming myself while making a picture of myself inside a photo booth, or was I photographing myself with the camera-hat? I picked up the picture and continued filming with the camera-hat. The photo booth pictures always remind me of the feeling of Polaroids, the feeling of capturing reality and having immediate access to it. But this picture was more than that. It left a trace into the video as well. It is a photo documentation of me as a human tripod. Was this combination of actions one of my artistic tools?
Man about Crowd, video stills, 2006
The combination of photographing myself in a photo booth while filming this action, became an unconscious fixation. I kept repeating the process -the action of photographing myself inside the photo booth while filming- hoping to define what I felt was developing into a tool. After having repeated this a few hundred times I realized that the actual tool that I was developing was the use of repetition, the tool of 're-doing'. Going back repeatedly to the photo booth searching for a tool, was the actual tool I was trying to define. Re-doing is the recreation of an incident/action/video/text/drawing, using different materials than in its original form. By replicating research material in a personal way (e.g. stencil in the place of movie poster) I transcribe the
experience into a physical memory. The product of re-doing as an object is not as important as the process, the process being the act of replicating and incorporating the material that originally triggered the research. In my work re-doing is used as a tool in the research process and as a method of treating primary sources. The products of re-doing are themselves part of the research but they can also be regarded as autonomous works. Re-doing is a way to underline all the phrases and meanings I want to pay more attention to, and investigate further. One example of re-doing is a series of stencils that were done after portraits of people who were discovered through my research. In 2012 I used the tool re-doing as part of the performance, The End of Oblivion, (2012). The original work I chose to replicate was a short film, Det Perfekte Menneske (The Perfect Human), by Jørgen Leth (1967). In this film, Leth presents in a detached manner a man and a woman, both labelled 'the perfect human', living in a plain, limitless, white space. A narrator's voice (Leth's) underlines what is shown on the screen in a similarly detached way. The performance The End of Oblivion (2012) incorporates a video of a man and a woman filmed in a plain, limitless, black space. I used two layers of re-doing, one layer consisting the re-interpretation of the original film on video, and the other layer consisting the interpreting the original film through a live performance. The performance The End of Oblivion (2012) was staged inside a black room. While the video was projected on one of its walls, live narration by an actor physically present and visible for the audience emphasized the action on the video. The work was completed by a live performance inside the black room. This was performed by the same performers who appeared on my video. I chose to re-do The Perfect Human because of the way Leth focuses on the human body's form and it's functioning. The End of Oblivion (2012) was presented at the finissage of my solo exhibition Constructing Memory Through the Moving Image (Athens, 2012), at the Museum Alex Mylona – Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, which was a presentation of my artistic research process. Throughout my work and research, re-doing is one of the most valuable tools.
Re-doing examples, from top to bottom: Stencil from the film's poster The Hands of Orlac, Stencil of H.M. portrait photograph, video still from the video performance The End of Oblivion (2012) and of the film The Perfect Human, Stencil of the Phrenology head.
Tool V, Imageograms "Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak."42 What we see has a profound effect on what we do, how we feel, and who we are. Through experience and experimentation, we constantly increase our understanding of the visual world and how we are influenced by it. In the beginning of recorded history of human communication, the vast majority of these recordings was not text based.43 Textual communication has been with us in one form or another for only 3.700 years. With the invention of tools like Gutenberg's movable type printing press in 1450, text took center stage. Graphics were a costly feature of printed material. As printing costs dropped, the use of graphics in printing started to resurface and since then their frequency has continued to rise. In 1995, Charles Brumback, the chairman of the Newspaper Association of America, stated that "as newspaper penetration falls ... the culture itself moves from textual to visual literacy."44 Visual communication has become the main format of communication for most people, including myself, through the use of the internet, computers, mobile phones and screens in general. Visual information - such as photographs, motion picture photographs, video recordings, graphics, emoticons, etc. - is available at the tip of our fingers through the use of the internet. It has reached a quantity, effortlessness and significance unparalleled in the past. The affluence of online images, videos, graphics and emoticons has started to substitute our visual memory. Visual memory is defined as the recollected information about what has been seen. It involves both the mental storage of such information and the ability to retrieve it. But are our visual memory and the human brain able to adapt to new communications technology? A psychological experiment was conducted in Columbia University in New York in 2011. A group of scientists, headed by Betsy Sparrow, assistant professor of psychology at Columbia, reported that people are less likely to remember information that can be easily retrieved from a computer. Internet’s effects on memory are still largely unexplored, Sparrow explains, adding that her experiments had led her to conclude that the Internet has become our primary external storage system, and that human memory is adapting to digital communications technology. According to 42 43
44
J.Berger, 1972, Ways of Seeing, 7-8. D. Davies, D. Bathurst, and R. Bathurst, 1990, The Telling Image The Changing Balance between Pictures and Words in a Technological Age. M. Fitzgerald, 1995, "NAA Leaders Disagree Over Value Cyberspace," International Federation of Newspaper Publishers Research Association, 48-49.
Sparrow's findings, the more information becomes readily available through the internet, the less likely people are going to remember facts.45 The principle “a picture is worth a thousand words” was the starting point of the performance Lethe that was part of the work The Pseudological Diary (2013). The discovery that humans have a better memory for pictures than for words was reported as early as 1894 and was researched at that time by the Canadian psychologist Allan Paivio.46 Paivio describes this as the picture superiority effect (PSE). He proposes that while words carry only their verbal message, images are translated by the brain into a verbal as well as a visual stimulus. This allows images to be recalled more easily than words. This is known as the dual code theory.47 The tool “imageograms” was created as a combination of Sparrow's findings and Paivio's model for explaining the PSE. My hypothesis is that people accustomed to the internet and to the abundance of visual information are becoming less receptive to verbal communication. Internet is the largest and most accessible repository of knowledge in our time. While verbal search remains the most common mode of information searching, a new tool, Google image search, allows internet users to retrieve information in the form of images and to search the internet using images instead of keywords. After 2012 there was an explosion in the number of internet users resorting to image search instead of the classic verbal search as shown in the Google trends graph. The tool imageogram transcribes text into visuals - images and graphics - and juxtaposes the use of images with the use of words. I consider imageograms as a tool under development. By transcribing text into images I aim to leave a bigger imprint on the memory of my audience. In my performance Lethe (2013), a video projection behind the two performers/actors transcribes the text of Dimitris Dimitriadis's book Lethe, (Oblivion) into Google search images while they delivered his text on the stage. Each word corresponded to a specific image and this image appeared exactly the same every time the specific word was spoken. Images had to change every 0.4 sec to follow the rhythm of the spoken text. The performance lasted for twenty five minutes. During this time almost four thousand consecutive images flashed on the screen. The video of the Google images separated from the performance is a translation of the text into images. Imageogram as a tool is defined by visuals, images or graphics, representing words. By representing a word through an image, the concept of the image which is larger than that of the word, is incorporated into the meaning of the word. In this way each image functions similarly to an ideogram, leaving room for interpretation depending on 45
46 47
B. Sparrow, J. Liu, D.M. Wegner, 2011, “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips”, Science AAAS, Online journal, 1-4. E.A. Kirkpatrick, 1894, “An experimental study of memory” Psychological Review, 602-609. J.M. Clark, & A. Paivio, 1991, Dual coding theory and education. Educational Psychology Review, 149-170.
its context.
Google image search, increase, as shown in the Google trends graph.
The audience that attended the performance of the work The Pseudological Diary (2013) was mainly by invitation-only. Like phrenologists and psychologists, I am interested in analyzing and measuring individual differences. Two very good friends of mine whose daily life is not filled with the social media and only involves limited exposure to television and image-producing screens in general, were invited to the performance. The morning after the presentation we spoke about their experiences. They admitted to me that after leaving the theater they experienced serious disorientation problems to the point that they had difficulty reaching the metro station. They also had trouble sleeping and when they finally had fallen asleep they had very vivid dreams, which resulted in feeling tired the next day. Experiences of other spectators I spoke with varied, but no one other reported disorientation and discomfort. My hypothesis is that habitual internet and social media users are adapting themselves to processing more visual information. Imageogram as a tool is still in a process of further development. As it was only used in the work The Pseudological Diary (2013), there is a need of further application in my future projects.
Act Anywhere the body can act, an image can be made.
Project Analysis In 2007 I completed a two-year art residency at De Ateliers in Amsterdam and at that moment I couldn’t see myself focusing on another art project. I felt the need to travel, which a few months later lead me to South Africa. I wandered around the country for three months. For the first time I found myself in an environment totally different than the one I had been living in before. While travelling for such a long period without a specific goal in mind I stopped considering myself as a tourist. I became a wanderer, a flâneur.48 The experiences were similar to the period when I was filming Man About Crowd (2006), strolling the streets without a clear purpose in mind. After spending some time in the cities of South Africa, I felt secure enough to slip out of the urban environment and stay in jungle cabins without electricity. Camp-fires were not so much entertainment for the guests as a means to keep wild animals from preying upon them. As it was my first experience with this kind of natural habitat, a strange feeling of fear started to develop within me. One of the books that accompanied my journey was Last Child in the Woods, by the American Richard Louv. The book concludes that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional health of children and adults. The book by Louv gave birth to the hypothesis of 'nature deficit disorder', which refers to the fact that human beings, especially children, are spending less time outdoors resulting in a wide range of behavioural problems.49 Like billions of people on this planet I was born and raised in a city, with limited experience of the outdoors. I was mentally trying to control my fear, however on many occasions my body would shiver for no particular reason. I -the mind- could control this feeling of fear, but I -the body- would shiver like a frightened child. After my return to Europe, I realised that describing my experiences in Africa was not simple. I once found myself at a loss for words trying to tell the story of meeting a giraffe in its natural habitat for the first time. I had to resort to an impromptu performance to communicate the experience. Resorting to body language for communicating my experience, prompted me to start thinking of the 48
49
The flâneur was, first of all, a literary type from 19th century France, essential to any picture of the streets of Paris. It carried a set of rich associations: the man of leisure, the idler, the urban explorer, the connoisseur of the street. It was Walter Benjamin, drawing on the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, who made him the object of scholarly interest in the 20th century, as an emblematic figure of urban, modern experience. Following Benjamin, the flâneur has become an important figure for scholars, artists and writers. M. Gardner, 2006, "For more children, less time for outdoor play: Busy schedules, less open space, more safety fears, and lure of the Web keep kids inside", Christian Science Monitor.
body as the ultimate medium of expression and whether it can transmit the message effectively or it it distorts it and to what extent. I examined the body as a filter and means of distortion of the message in the work Dissertortion (2009). In this work I was faced with the need for collaborating with a professional actor, as it was the first time that spoken text came into the body of my work. I found a theatre actor, to perform in Dissertortion. The use of a professional actress showed me the missing link in my work and research. The collaboration with a professional actor has since proven to be of vital importance to the development of my work and research. Moving towards theatrical form is a natural evolution of my work. Works like Mono Logue (2011) and The Pseudological Diary (2013) were already flirting with a theatrical form. The theatre play Black Box (2014) concludes my writings. Black box is a summary of my PHD-research into one work. This play aims to transcribe all subjects of the case studies I researched over the last years, into theatrical characters and to present my research The Hypothesis of a Re-Membering Body in a creative form. In the play Black Box (2014) the tool of re-doing is in a constant functional mode. All of my research case studies and writings are reperformed into the play. In the following pages I will present four works that shed light on The Hypothesis of a ReMembering Body. Other works such as In between (2003), Roamings (2004), Twenty-four (2008), Blank slate (2010) and The end of Oblivion (2012) were crucial in developing my research tools. Their approach however did not contribute to my central hypothesis.
Man About Crowd Video installation, 2006
Man About Crowd was commissioned by SMBA (Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam) in 2006. It is a video installation consisting of six different scenes, presented simultaneously on six monitors. These are images taken by a camera which was hidden in my hat while I was wandering through the streets. Each scene and screen have their own subject, varying from voyeuristic images of passengers in the underground to repeated visits to a cemetery. The solitary urban stroller, as a detective, is tracking down the transgressions committed in the metropolis and imposing a form of social control over that lawless formation known as the crowd. As a spy, I manipulate reality purely through my presence.50 This project originated from my fascination with the literary persona of the fl창neur as it was portrayed by Baudelaire, a gentleman stroller and connoisseur of city streets. He is a spectator of
Camera-hat, 2003-2006 50
W. Benjamin, The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire, 1937.
urban life. The association of flânerie with photography as described by writer and art critic Susan Sontag, became possible with the advent of portable cameras in the early 20th century.51 The flâneur captures images of the urban inferno. Sontag equates this relation between the eye of the flâneur and the gaze of the camera in her 1977 collection of essays On Photography. She writes: “the photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno.”52 She continues to explain how the flâneur is not so much interested in the city’s official realities but in its neglected and forgotten streets, aiming to expose some kind of unseen reality or to capture a hidden truth, “as a detective apprehends a criminal”.53The street photographer is seen as a modern extension of the urban observer described by nineteenth century journalist Victor Fournel.54 Digital video gave me the opportunity to explore the idea of 'street videography'. To maintain my distance from what was happening in the streets I created the camera-hat that allowed me to capture videos inconspicuously, documenting city life in a voyeuristic way. When one looks at the images that resulted from Man About Crowd (2006) there is a striking similarity of quality and context with images that result from life logging.
Man About Crown, stills, 2006
Filming Man About Crowd (2006) lasted eighteen months and was done in three countries. During the process I realized that I was losing mental control of the filming and that my body was taking over. I became the human tripod of my video camera and the images captured became cellular images, the images which the body remembers. The concept of cellular imagery originates from this work. Through Man About Crowd I understood that cellular images are images which are captured without the intervention of mind and consciousness. They are not the outcome of a decision nor the answer to a question. Cellular images became very significant to me as they represent more than the 51 52 53 54
S.Sontag, 1977, On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 50-51. Ibid. Ibid. V. Fournel, 1857, Ce qu'on voit dans les rues de Paris (What one sees on the streets of Paris).
images they depict. A cellular image is a combination of an image and the documentation of the physical activity involved in capturing the image. Every cellular image is constructed in two layers: a 'recording' of what I - the mind - cannot see and what I - the body – captures. Cellular images aim to uncover the images which the eye cannot see and the conscious cannot register. I see cellular images as an extension of Sontag's comment, on the relation of photography and flânerie. Cellular images aim to expose a hidden reality and to capture an unseen life. Being in Paris for the first time in 2004 I felt the need to appropriate the space, to make it mine. As the Chinese-American geographer Yi-Fu Tuan says: “a space that becomes familiar becomes a place”.55 But this journey of making the space familiar was a somatic process rather than a mental one. Filming Man About Crowd (2006) I found myself strolling aimlessly revisiting specific places time and time again. I visited Père Lachaise Cemetery repeatedly. Cemeteries are places where the contradicting states of remembrance and oblivion try to coexist. Returning to Père Lachaise Cemetary every day and re-doing the same scene, gave me a clear idea of the concept of memory in a relation to my work. By using the tool of re-doing in Man About Crowd, I understood that memory is not only a mental process but a somatic as well. In Man About Crowd (2006) the tool of re-doing was used constantly, even though I had not yet defined re-doing as a tool. I used the tool sometimes in the repetition of some of my journeys, trying to appropriate space, and sometimes by repeating the ritual of taking snapshots of me filming myself being photographed/ photographing myself filming. When I made Man About Crowd, I could not see with clarity the real questions behind this project. I -the body- could only feel the need of capturing these videos.
55
Y.F. Tuan, 1977, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, 6.
Dissertortion
-from the words dissertation and distortionVideo work, 2009
The video Dissertortion (2009) shows a Greek woman watching the American film, Blue Velvet on a TV screen in its original English version with Greek subtitles. It is a composite of two videos shot simultaneously from a different perspective. One video shows a general view of the room and the other focuses on the body of the woman. The two videos are projected side by side in an empty space, while the use of headphones is necessary for the spectator to be able to hear the sound. The woman reads the Greek subtitles of the entire film out loud, while a translation of her spoken words back to English appears in the form of subtitles. While the audio track of the original film is present in the work, the viewer sees only the woman watching the film and simultaneously reads the woman's words in the form of subtitles. The original message of the film that comes out of the TV box reaches the viewer through the actress. Dissertortion (2009) deals with the way in which the body interferes with the transmission of the message, i.e. how a message gets distorted and the role of memory in that process. It recalls the children’s game of Chinese Whispers, where the memory of the phrase eventually changes the meaning of it. The concept behind Dissertortion (2009) is to place the human body in-between the source of the original message and the final target of the message. It is an experiment with the possible distortion that happens when a message is communicated through the human body. Dissertortion was the first work that prompted me to start researching more systematically the idea of body and cellular memory. Even though this work is not entirely relevant to my research questions, it shows a clear start and raises the first research questions on the subject of body memory. In Dissertortion I realised that the human body is able to distort a message just by allowing it to pass through. What I was exploring with this work was not only to prove that the message can be distorted by the human body but more importantly, to explore mechanisms of memory that exist inside the human body and not only in the brain.
Dissertortion, stills, 2009.
In Dissertortion (2009) I worked for the first time with a professional actress with some experience with cinema but mostly with theatre, Theodora Tzimou. Her acting experience was decisive for the outcome of the work, as she immediately understood the importance of allowing her body to filter the message. An actor's ability to balance between controlling the body and permitting it to lose control is vital in my work and research. Since Dissertortion, I collaborate with actors for all my projects. I always perceive them as 'dual organs', body and speech. Their ability to place themselves on the stage in exact set points that are required for each play in every performance brings not only a strong element of spatial memory56 but also suggests the existence of body memory. While [m]bodied process was first developed as a tool in Twenty-four (2008) and used unconsciously as such, in Dissertortion (2009) it was used consciously. It aimed to 'unlock' the body and to allow the actress to add her personal body memory to the performance. Cameras, lights and microphones where placed on tripods, and no one was there to disturb the actor. Given the opportunity to work with a theatre actress I knew that her discipline and training would enable her to stay inside the role for the duration of the shooting. Following the general directions of the [m]bodied process tool and being disciplined during the filming of Dissertortion would not be physically challenging for her. Dissertortion lasts approximately two hours, the same length as the original film. Even though she was given specific instructions to maintain the same position, seated at the foot of the bed for the entire reading of the subtitles, during those two hours the actress's body gradually crawled up the bed and ended up lying on it. The human body becomes the main focus in this work. It is viewed as a filter, allowing only what the body deems necessary. Dissertortion (2009) gave birth to the concept of speech transplantation as a tool. It is not used in this work as such, because the origin of the words were known to the performer and the text was read and not memorized. Seeing the distortion of the message happen parallel to the distortion 56
J. Paillard, 1991, Brain and Space, “A fundamental requirement of every day life is that of encoding and remembering successfully the locations of objects, landmarks or buildings in space. This function is achieved by structuring spatial information in systems of coordinates�, 163.
of the posture of the actress made me realise the potential of speech transplantation as a research tool. I hypothesized that the change in her posture was not induced by body fatigue but by the context of the words spoken by her.
Mono Logue Video work, 2011
Mono Logue (2011) is a video of a one minute dialogue between two people. Eight pairs of performers deliver the dialogue once, then switch places in the set and deliver the dialogue once more. The dialogue is based on excerpts from the diary of Clive Wearing, a chronic anterograde 57 and retrograde58 amnesiac. The video consists of sixteen repetitions of the one-minute dialogue projected in a white space, while on the opposite wall of the projection, all research material (newspaper clippings, recordings of telephone messages, photographs, diary experts, etc) of Wearing's case are presented. Filming took place in an almost empty room, devoid of information. As the title suggests, it is more of two monologues rather than a dialogue. Since the author of the diary is an amnesiac, he is in a constant dialogue with himself when reading his forgotten writings. Mono Logue is based on a true case study and aims to focus on people with chronic amnesia and the implications for body memory. The work questions the hypothesis of body memory, rather than trying to find any answers.
57
58
Retrograde amnesia: amnesia in which the lack of memory relates to events that occurred before a traumatic event. Retrograde amnesia is in contrast to anterograde amnesia in which the lack of memory relates to events that occurred after a traumatic event, Webster's New World Medical Dictionary. Anterograde amnesia: amnesia in which the loss of memory relates to events that occur after a traumatic event. There is inability to recall new information. Old information can be recalled. Antegrade amnesia may follow brain trauma. Also called antegrade amnesia. This type of amnesia is in contrast to retrograde amnesia in which the lack of memory relates to events that occurred before a traumatic event, Webster's New World Medical Dictionary.
Research material presentation, 2011, Alex Mylonas, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art.
The first time I came across the unique case of Clive Wearing, I was intrigued to research his condition in depth. Wearing developed a profound case of total amnesia as a result of an illness. A virus damaged part of his brain in 1985 and destroyed most of his memories. The virus was identified as herpes simplex and caused encephalitis. Due to damage in his hippocampus , an area responsible for transferring memories from short-term to long-term memory, he is completely unable to form lasting new memories – his memory only lasts between seven and sixty seconds. He spends every day experiencing an awakening almost every sixty seconds, as he describes his consciousness. He remembers little of his life before 1985; he knows for example that he has children from a previous marriage, but cannot remember their names. His love for his second wife Deborah, whom he married the year before his illness, is undiminished. He greets her joyously every time they meet, as if he has not seen her in years or as if they have never met before, even though she may have just left the room to fetch a glass of water. When he goes out dining with his wife, he can remember the name of the food (e.g. chicken); however he is surprised by the taste, as he has already forgotten it, soon after he orders the meal. Despite having retrograde as well as anterograde amnesia, and thus only a moment-to-moment consciousness, Wearing is still able to play the piano and conduct a choir – all this despite having no recollection of having received a musical education. This is because his procedural memory was not damaged by the virus. As soon as the music stops
however, Wearing forgets that he has just played the piano and starts shaking spasmodically. Procedural memory (knowing how) is the unconscious memory of skills and how to perform things, particularly the use of objects or movements of the body, such as tying a shoelace, playing the guitar or riding a bike. These memories are typically acquired through repetition and practice, and are composed of automatic sensor motor behaviours, so deeply embedded in our system that we are no longer aware of them. Once learned, these 'body memories' allow us to carry out ordinary motor actions more or less automatically. Procedural memory is sometimes referred to as implicit memory, because previous experiences add in the performance of a task without explicit and conscious awareness of the previous experiences themselves, although it is more properly a subset of implicit memory. Actors depend on procedural memory to perform on stage the parts that they have practised. Mono Logue (2011) originates from the case of Clive Wearing and his need to keep a diary of every moment. This need is inexplicable as his mind is not able to remember that he forgets. It is almost as if his body is forcing him to write, in order to ‘stay awake’,59 as it happens when he is playing the piano. The human body is in the centre of this work in the sense that I bring together a text that is produced somatically from a person who suffers from complete amnesia, and I place it in the mouths of very well body-trained actors.
Mono Logue, stills, 2011.
This work was created using speech transplantation and [m]Bodied Memory as its primary tools. Actors were prepared for filming by the hair and make-up crew and isolated in the room with the filming and lighting equipment. A few minutes before filming they were given the simple text. They were instructed to perform the text as devoid of sentiment as possible. My aim through this process was to approach the conscious void that gave birth to the text and Clive Wearing is constantly experiencing. 59
As Clive Wearing writes himself in his diaries.
Armour’s theory of the heart being able to work independently of the brain, gives a great opening on the theory of cellular memory. If the heart is able to think and feel independently, could other organs of the body do the same? Such a hypothesis would require further research that could lead to the identification of the biological instrument of Clive’s Wearing body memory. As Armour's theory is quite recent, we expect more research results from neuroscientists to elucidate the mechanisms and the idea of cells or organs being able to process and store information.
The Pseudological Diary Performance, video, 2013
The Pseudological Diary (2013) is a video-theatre performance that took place on May 2013 on a theatre stage in Athens and later concluded at the Benaki Museum in Athens. The performance focuses on human existence, dementia and traumatic experiences. It aims to question the common sense perspective on science and pseudoscience and to underline the idea that knowledge is a subjective notion. The work The Pseudological Diary tries to 'bridge' science and pseudoscience, valid insight and non valid insight. The Pseudological Diary is a one-hour performance comprised of different modules in chronological order: introduction, two videos, a live theatre performance, a research questionnaire and an imprint painting on paper. This performance encapsulates all research tools developed. Module I starts with a professional actor, introducing the performance to the audience, as if he were the researcher/artist. I used an actor for the role of the researcher to emphasize how we perceive science and pseudoscience, how we perceive the truth. I instructed him to play the role with uncertainty and possibly confusion, as at that time I approach cellular memory from the perspective of a hypothesis.
EMDR stimulation video, stills, 2013.
Module II: The performance continues with the re-doing of a video of an EMDR session:60 the audience was instructed to follow only with eye movement a bright spot travelling for thirty seconds from side to side on the dark projection screen with a synchronized beeping sound. I used EMDR stimulation to introduce the audience to the experience of the main character of the following video. At the same time I aimed at putting the audience in a position to start questioning the efficacy of this pseudoscientific method.61 The EMDR stimulation video was repeated during the performance serving as a connection between videos and live action and also as a constant reminder of The Pseudological Diary's (2013) original scope, to question the common sense perspective on science and pseudoscience. Module III: Speech transplantation (2013), is the presentation of a case study and its simultaneous re-creation on a video format. It is the case of a woman from the U.S.A., describing her experience with EMDR. Two videos were presented side by side, the original video from the woman's Youtube channel62 and the video of the re-creation by an actress. The American woman was treated by an EMDR therapist after suffering from what she describes on the video, as recurring body memories. This manifested itself as an internal pain which is vaguely described as leading to the appearance of stab wounds. She attributes these body memories to a trauma from her childhood. The story she tells may or may not be accurate, but her intensity suggests that it is very real to her. The video I made using the actress was presented at the same time, but with a few seconds delay in terms of speech synchronization. The actress was given the monologue of the U.S.A. woman, without its context, believing that it was a fictional text. I instructed her to play the role drawing from personal experiences. I gave the actress total freedom, the text being the only limitation.
60
61 62
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy developed by Francine Shapiro that emphasizes disturbing memories as the cause of psychopathology and alleviates the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). B.O. Olatunji, 2001, “EMDR: Science or Pseudoscience�, The New England Skeptical Societ. T. Jamison, (www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EXdHwC96Vw).
Speech transplantation, stills, 2013.
L Lethe-Oblivion, photo documentation, 2013.
Module IV: a live performance taking place on the theatre stage. The floor of the stage was covered with a sheet of white aquarelle paper. The back of the stage was used for the projection. Two actresses were moving on the paper surface in front of the screen. The performance had the subtitle Lethe-Oblivion (2013) and was based on an 'echoed' monologue. The text I used is an excerpt from the book Lethe and Four More Monologues by the author and novelist Dimitris Dimitriadis. In this book Dimitriadis speaks of the substance of the human body and the duality of the human being. Using a poetic language Dimitriadis suggests that humans are made of two different matters, the body and the mind. One is connected to the other, but at the same time they both experience their individuality. The roles of the two actresses mirror this duality, mind (reciting the text) and body (trying to repeat the text as she hears it). This book consists of five chapters, each in the form of a monologue. The excerpt used in the performance is the chapter Lethe where Dimitriadis describes a person's need to forget, the need of oblivion of both body and mind. I perceive Dimitriadis's work as implying the acceptance of body memory. His character's body has a strong memory that can act on its own. The two actresses presented the monologue onstage. The first one recited the text by heart while the second actress was asked to repeat the words she had just heard. This resulted in the same time delay between spoken text as was used in the video Speech Transplantation (2013). During the live action performance by the actresses a synchronized video was projected on the back of the stage. It presented the text of Lethe translated into imageograms as I
explained in the chapter The discovery of the toolkit - imageogram. Every word was represented by a corresponding image. The image corresponding to the word memory for example would appear every time the actress spoke the word memory. The audience was able to hear the text spoken by the actresses and at the same time see the images. By giving the audience a generic image for each word I was aiming to enhance the impact words had on their body. Almost like an EMDR treatment with images. Module V: A movement imprint of both actresses' was created on the aquarelle paper covering the stage by a mechanism attached on their legs that left a drip of ink recording the trace of their bodies as they moved around the paper. To be able to capture this image as a cellular image, I asked a choreographer to give the actresses a task in order to distract their minds so that the text delivered would lose its mental dimension and become more of a body function. The ink trace on the aquarelle paper which measured six and a half meters by seven meters, was later shown at the Benaki Museum in Athens, as the imprint of the work. A cellular image was captured but this time instead of by camera, the image was created by the body itself.
Speech Transplantation II, stills, 2013.
Module VI: the presentation was concluded with an EMDR therapist explaining the basis of EMDR while a re-creation of Speech Transplantation II (2013) by an actor was presented simultaneously on a video format. A male actor was repeating the words of the therapist in his own terms only limited by the given text. I used the same format to emphasize the ambiguity of the EMDR theory. At the end of the performance each member of the audience was asked to fill in a questionnaire. Through this questionnaire I wanted to create an imprint of the audience after the experience they had. Research Questionnaire: 1. Have you ever experienced psychological trauma in the past? 2. Is it important for you to have memories?
3. Do you have a good knowledge of your body's anatomy? 4. Do you take photos on a daily basis? 5. Have you ever had psychological therapy of any kind in the past? 6. Do you remember the first photo you ever took? 7. Do you know the term Visual treatment representation (Imageograms)? 8. Do you have a good communication with your body? 9. Would the idea of documenting your entire life in photos be appealing to you? 10. Do you have memories of your childhood on an every day basis? 11. Do you think that recording images is a necessity?
The Pseudological Diary, Left Over, photo documentation, 2013.
All of these tools appear in previous works and, - in The Pseudological Diary (2013) they are fully formed and used deliberated. It was the use of these tools that dictated the form of this particular work. By re-doing the EMDR stimulus in the form of a video projected on the stage wall with each member of the audience projecting oneself in the position of the subject. I attempted to magnify the effect and put the audience in the place of the American woman whose video, Speech Transplantation (2013) would soon follow. The tool of speech transplantation was the focal point of the video Speech Transplantation (2013). The original text, the words of the American woman from the YouTube video, is what can very easily be called a pseudo-scientific example: a position that is non-valid for science but real for the subject. The actress received the text as fiction and translated it using her experience into her performance. The actress performed the words with similar emotional distress as the woman who gave her testimonial on body memory in the original video. The spoken words of the American woman elicited the same body and emotional reaction from the actress. Speech transplantation as a tool was also used in the live performance part LetheOblivion (2013). We practised the text with the first actress for two months, until she was completely comfortable reciting the dense, poetic words of Dimitriadis. The second actress was never given the text and rehearsed her part once before the performance. I wanted her repetition to stem from the alertness of her body. The audience perceived the words spoken with mental clarity
from the first actress, with physical intensity from the second and on a third level they also received the optical stimulus of the imageograms. The tool of [m]Bodied Process was used in directing the actors on both video re-creations of The Pseudological Diary (2013) and was partly responsible for the performance of the actress who re-created the YouTube video of the American woman.
Conclusion The mechanisms of memory, how we remember and how we forget, have fascinated me personally and artistically for as long as I can remember. To this day memory plays the most important role in my artistic practice. The way we remember memories is constantly distorted and the way memories are distorted is as much part of the memory process as individual memories themselves. By recalling a memory of the past, we are remembering it as our brain has chosen to distort it, not by the actuality of its event. Photography was initially an adequate medium for my exploration of individual memory events. As I will explain in the following, I conceive of memory as embodied. As the need arose for a more in depth exploration of the relationship between body and memory, video and performance became a more useful medium for my work and research. The physicality and temporal dimension of performance and video allowed the artistic interaction of body and memories in my work. Initially, the concepts of body and cellular memory entered my work and research as a connecting link between body and memory. My original artistic aim of this research was to find a way of tracking my body memories and if possible capture them in images. The first artistic question that arose was if the body has mechanisms for recording memories independent of the brain-based mechanisms and, following the analogy, if it also has its own mechanisms for distorting the memory. In retrospect, a clear point of departure was the work Man About Crowd, (2006) where for the first time I noticed that it is possible for my body to take control over my consciousness, and that, therefore, there was only a limited conscious control over the production of the images in this work. I called these images cellular images. Through this work, I had a glimpse of a mechanism that could potentially exist and allow for memories to be not only stored in the brain, but also in the body. The development of my subject unravelled practically and theoretically in parallel. The idea of body memory is based on a scientific hypothesis, but it is also present in deeply rooted cultural myths. This lead me to explore the concept of body memory through my artistic practice. What intrigues and fascinates me about body and cellular memory hypothesis, is the fact that it is also based on fictional works and early christian paintings. The idea that the concepts of body and cellular memory were born through predictions that arose from cultural myths, literature and
paintings, adds a field of investigation to my research and work which can lead to fascinating artistic research findings. At moments when I felt I was running into a dead end, not being able to understand or to believe/trust specific research material and case studies, I would pause the theoretical research and I would address the same questions through my artistic practice. As the research in the concepts of body and cellular memory is still in its infancy, I constructed and developed my practical art projects in the form of experiments. I see these projects as a quest for a method of understanding the concepts of body and cellular memory. Through the development of my artistic work, I realized that each project was leading me to develop a method, a tool, which allowed me to reach further into the theoretical as well as in the practical quest. Even though I was not conscious of creating these tools or methods at the early stages of my research, re-assessing my works in the context of the research project, I understood the meaning of inventing them. The need for creating artistic tools arose mainly from the lack of scientific approach and the absence of method and mechanisms in relation to cellular memory. Eventually I started using these artistic tools as a stepping stone for future projects, allowing them to dictate the direction of the research. The discovery of a toolkit thus originated while researching the concepts of body and cellular memory and was then developed further and analysed. Research into the regulation of chromatin by the Groth Group at the university of Copenhagen has opened a new discussion on cellular memory and on the question of whether it will be recorded in the history of science as a pseudoscience or not. Cells in our body are constantly dividing to maintain our body functions. With each division, our DNA code and a machinery of supporting components has to be faithfully duplicated to maintain the identity of the cell. The Groth Group has developed a new technology that can reveal the dynamic events of this duplication process and the secrets of cellular memory. Chromatin contains crucial information that tells our genes when to be active and when to be silent. Information stored in the chromatin silences liverspecific genes in heart cells for example, and vice versa. Therefore, the entire chromatin structure has to be duplicated at each cell division to maintain the memory of each cell’s own identity. It is no longer debated that the chromatin structure is crucial to maintain cell identity, but the exact mechanisms remain elusive. As the group of Anja Groth continues the research, new information about the biological basis of cellular memory will become available and hopefully other groups of scientists will contribute to insight into this topic. Research on identical twins, for example, has shown that environmental factors such as nutrition, exercise, stress and toxins, alter the way genes are expressed. This explains why identical twins accumulate differences in their appearance and overall health during their lifetime. The mechanisms through which these environmental and behavioral factors manage to alter genes have been identified as a group of structural and functional
changes of the genome, referred to as epigenetic mechanisms. Epigenetic information accumulates over the years and remains linked to the genome through the life cycles of the cells. Essentially, while the genes represent 'nature', epigenetic information represents 'nurture'. Epigenetic information can be carried over from donor to transplant recipient. Decoding the intricacies of epigenetics is still at its early stages.63 The initial findings seem to open the possibility of cellular memory leaving the realms of pseudoscience and becoming a valid scientific field. Recent scientific findings such as the ones of Armour and Groth, seem to prove that there is a scientific aspect in the concepts of body and cellular memory and suggest that the boundaries of science and pseudoscience need to be redefined. Science history shows that pseudoscientific theories were never created as such, with the intent to deceive. What actually defines the distinction between science and pseudoscience is not the plausibility of the theories, but the level of scientific research that supports or disqualifies them. Science is based on research, experiment and proof. It is developed collectively, its findings are not contestable once proven, and they often become part of our every life through technology. To me science is a unifying, socially acceptable language that has a universal reach and that allows discourse on a basis of what is supposedly “true” and what is known at a certain point. It is based on research, experiment and proof. It is developed collectively, its findings are not contestable once proven, and they often become part of our every life through technology. Pseudoscience on the other hand is an area in which more personal truths are expressed and the idea of what is true is supported by what is believed. As an artist I accept and work with an idea of universal truth as well as with my personal truth that arises from personal beliefs and experiences. I believe that the concept of body and cellular memory needs further research before qualifying it as pseudoscience. Reading about many cases of transplant recipients who claim to inherit their donors memories, I came to understand that these recipients begin to show strange ways of behaving after their organ operation. They often feel the need to receive as much information as possible on the donor's family and on the donor's personal life. Like most organ recipients, Sylvia Claire did not not know who her donor was, but after the transplantation she felt, as she explains in her autobiography, that she had changed in some strange way. She had the feeling that 'someone else' was inside her, that her previous self-awareness was overlaid by an additional presence. Organ transplantation is a relatively new development of medical technology. Prospective studies on the psychological effects of the process have not been carried out, yet distinct behavioural patterns seem to emerge. Biological mechanisms that could potentially explain the basis of the cellular memory theory draw experimental attention. A multidisciplinary approach of the subject through biology and psychology 63
“Genomes of identical twins reveal epigenetic changes that may play role in lupus”, 2009, Genome Research online, http://genome.cshlp.org/site/press/gr100289.xhtml.
is needed. The mechanisms that work in the recipient's psyche and push them to adopt the notion that together with the transplanted organ they also receive and manifest pieces of the donor's history and personality should be the object of further investigation. As the American science historian Michael Shermer, points out “we can demarcate science from pseudoscience less by what science is and more by what scientists do”.64 The hypothesis of a re-membering body focuses, from an artistic point of view, on the hypothesis of the body being able to remember and to contain information independently of the brain and on the ability of capturing those memories into images. In particular my research focussed on the following areas of interest: the role of cellular memory in science and pseudoscience; the implications of organ transplantation in relation to cellular memory, mainly through case studies; and on the importance of capturing images in relation to body memories. The hypothesis of a remembering body aims to enter into the world of scientific research with an artistic perspective and wants to suggest a possible relevance of artistic research for the field of science, and possibly to communicate the need for scientific research on the psychological impact of transplantation on transplant recipients. Artistic research may provide unique and often unpredictable viewpoints from which to inspect or challenge scientific ideas and assumptions and in this way the world of science can potentially gain from art and artistic research. I wonder if the outcomes of my research might perhaps be an inspiration for relevant areas in the medical domain. Through almost all my research and projects, the term cellular memory is viewed as a nonscientific hypothesis. This is due to the fact that I started my research and work before I became acquainted with the important findings of the Groth group. Up to this point, information about the concept of cellular memory was mainly to be found in the field of pseudoscience. The use of tools and method are very important and vital to both fields of artistic research and science. The American science historian Marshall Clagett defined science as “first the orderly and systematic comprehension, description and explanation of natural phenomena and, secondly, the tools necessary for the undertaking”.65 In my case, the tools I developed give consistency and density to both work and research. The use of tools in my work is similar to the use of maps by explorers: not so much to avoid getting lost, but to reach new territory faster and without distractions. The process of devising tools is not completely separate from the artistic process. They are developed in a parallel manner and each work solidifies the structure of the tool which will return more efficiently and precisely in a following project. The tools which I present in The 64 65
M. Shermer, “What is Pseudoscience”, Scientific American, 2011. M. Clagett, Greek science in antiquity, 1963.
discovery of a toolkit can potentially be used by other artists or art theorists, but more importantly, the toolkit aims to show the way in which they were discovered, structured and formed in my projects. I hope this may serve as an inspiration for other artists. With the use of the toolkit I have developed a system that allows the interaction of the cerebral aspect of memories, speech and images, with the bodily increment of memory, movement and reaction. The construction of the cellular process tool gave me an insight as to how my body can take over my movements based on previous spatial memories. The tool of re-doing allowed me to create a physical link between my body and the findings of my research. The [m]-bodied process tool allowed me to use the body of performers and their experiences as a material for new artistic work. The speech transplantation tool worked as a bridge between two different bodies that managed to transfer emotional and body reactions through the meaning of words. And the tool imageograms, suggests a link of speech back to the fundamental material of memories which is the images. If we decide to entertain the hypothetical scenario that cellular memory is a scientific fact, this may provide a fresh understanding into the human body and provide new insight into the functioning of body organs and their interaction. The antithetical hypothetical scenario would be that cellular memory does not exist and that its reports stem from illusions and autosuggestions rooted in pop culture. Would this mean that we need to stop the research? Medical research would in this case not have much room for new findings, but artistic and psychological research on the other hand would have a new territory in which to examine the foundation of such large scale and wide spread illusions and autosuggestions. Artistic research has the freedom to investigate deeper into rejected theories, magical thinking and forgotten practices. In the end it is the unknown and its mysteries/challenges that both artists and scientists are seeking to explain.
The Play Black Box
Dramatic Personae: Mnemosyne Genie Clive Wearing Henry Molaison. Claire Sylvia Paul Orlac Chorus Researcher Narrator
Act I The body in oblivion
Narrator: An old man sits on the edge of the narrow bed, palms spread out on his knees, head down, staring at the floor. The room is small and square, like a cube, he has no idea that a camera is planted in the ceiling directly above him. Clive: Now I am awake Clive: I just woke up Clive: To be perfectly honest I don't remember going to sleep. Clive: It feels more like sleep crept up on me. -pauseClive: Now I am awake. -pauseNarrator: Clive sits at the edge of the bed placed inside a white room, we still don't know if it's a hospital room, a hotel room or a similar space. Cameras are attached to every object and to every corner of the room. The only certainty is that he is being watched. -pauseClive: I just woke up, and to be honestly true I don't remember how I got here. Narrator: He looks at the room, opposite to him there is a door, but he can't remember if it's the bathroom door, the kitchen door or an exit. Next to the door is a grand piano. Clive: Strange Narrator: He thinks. Clive: How can’t I remember the piano! Narrator: He is trying to think of a melody, but nothing comes to his mind! -pause-
Clive: Now I am awake, now I know that I am awake. Narrator: He stands up from the bed, for a moment there he thought that he can't walk, but he is more than capable of walking, maybe he could also go for a small run in the park!! Clive: But where is the park? Narrator: He stands still like a thunder stroke him. -PauseNarrator: He looks at the piano and sees a picture on a black frame. Clive: Is this me? Narrator: He wonders as he walks towards the piano. Narrator: He stands in front of the picture and he stares at it. Clive: Is this me? Narrator: He wonders. Clive: Where is the bathroom? -pauseClive: I just woke up! Clive: Why am I standing next to the piano? Narrator: He is looking at the picture! Clive: Is this me? Narrator: He wonders. Clive: And if it's me, who’s the woman in the photo with me? Narrator: The picture shows Clive holding a woman in his arms. The picture is black and white, and despite the fact that the photo looks really old, it's from 1980s as Clive wears a t-shirt of a punk group of that era. The background of the picture is a little strange, as it shows a big underground river; very quiet but almost magical, like it’s not from this world. Narrator: Clive has a smile of accomplishment in his face, and the woman next to him has no
expression, almost like the photographs we use in the passports and identity cards, where you don't smile and you look straight into the camera lens. She wears a white body suit and maybe we could say that she is a kind of a security guard form a science fiction film of the 1930s. As Clive turns from the piano back to bed, he freezes once again, like he did before, almost as if he were daydreaming. At the same time the cameras inside the room turn facing Clive. Narrator: Does he know he is being watched, who placed those cameras there, and who is behind all this? All those questions remain while Clive continues his walk to the bed and sits down. -pauseClive: I am awake now. Narrator: The room, is quite large for a hotel room, it's almost like a hospital room, but only with one bed. The walls and the furniture are all white, even the piano is white. The only non-white object in the room is the black frame with the picture of Clive and the unknown woman. It looks almost like a window, like a black window into his white environment. Narrator: The room is completely square, like a cube. The walls looks like they are made of square blocks of almost a meter by a meter across. One of those blocks looks like it could be a window, but an opaque white roller blinds completely block it. Only a stripe of light around the block makes me think that there is a window there! Does Clive know about the window? I wonder! All this time Clive sits at the bed almost staring at the gap, almost, because I am sure he is not staring anywhere, it's more like his gaze turned the other way round and he looks inside his head! -pauseClive: I am awake now. I know. Now I wake up. Narrator: He is dressed in pyjamas. They are mostly white with blue thin stripes. He is wearing white snickers, and white socks. Everything looks pretty new like he is wearing them today for the first time! One more mystery for him to solve! Is someone bringing him clothes everyday to wear?
And if yes, who is that person? Suddenly Clive stands up with full confidence, walks toward the piano and picks up a white telephone that he didn’t realize was there before. He dials in a phone number. The phone on the other side rings, but there is no answer. The answering machine picks up. Clive: Hi darling, Clive is here, it is ten to seven, I don’t know nothing about this case, I know nothing about this case, and I just wanted to speak to you about it basically, can you come and see me please as soon as you can? I don’t care about anyone one else in the world, please come. Love you. Narrator: As he speaks he freezes again. The only move he can is hang up the telephone. -pauseNarrator: He picks up the phone and dials the same number. Clive: This is Clive here. I don’t want to speak to anyone else. I just want to speak to you darling. Can you come and see me please? Can you darling? Narrator: Clive freezes again and he puts down the phone. A melody comes to his mind, a classical piano piece and after that nothing. -pauseNarrator: He picks up the phone and dials the same number. Clive: This is Clive here; I don’t know what’s going on. Can you come and see me? -pauseNarrator: He picks up the phone and dials the same number. Clive: Clive here. It is four to seven. Darling can you come and see me please? I love you. Narrator: Who is this woman that Clive keeps trying to contact? Is it the same woman from the picture? Or is it his wife? Narrator: But maybe it's time for me to introduce myself! And explain why I am telling you everything I know about Clive, and also how I ended it up here!
Narrator: But because I don't want to complicate things it is better to start from the beginning. -pauseNarrator: In a complete white environment a human figure starts to appear from far away, walking towards us. Researcher: It is commonly accepted as true that a goldfish memory only lasts for three seconds. In actual fact, goldfish have been shown to retain information for about 24 hours, but for someone living with severe amnesia, the life of the fictional goldfish, thinking that on every lap of its tank it sees a plastic scuba diver figurine for the first time, is a bizarre reality. Clive Wearing used to be a successful British composer and musicologist, who lost his ability to form new memories when part of his brain was destroyed by a virus. On very rare occasions, it attacks the nervous system. In technical terms, Clive has anterograde and retrograde amnesia. Anterograde refers to long-term memories and means that he is unable to store new memories, and retrograde describes the inability to recall past memories. According to his wife Deborah, the span of Clive’s memory is thirty seconds at most, often much less, and he will frequently have forgotten the beginning of a sentence by the time he completes it. Most of his former life is also lost to him, including how many children he has from a previous marriage, their names, ages and what they do. The only person Clive recognizes is his wife – he greets her with exuberant delight every time she enters the room as though he has not seen her in years, no matter how brief her absence has been. Clive Wearing is going to live forever within the present. Narrator: A group of people enter the room. A woman is leading them, and they all are dressed alike. They all dressed in black, as if the were returning from a religious funeral. The woman steps in front of everybody and leads the others to a strange choreography. They all move in a circular path, in each circle one of them stays outside of the circle. At the end of their choreography though, the woman is found in the centre of the human circle. Chorus: The queen of heaven I invoke, mother of the nine lovely muses, free from the oblivion of
the fallen mind, who joins the soul with intellect and increases reason.
 To you belongs thought, all powerful, pleasing, vigilant goddess, who wakens from apathy all thought residing within, neglecting none.
 From the night of dissolution, You excite the mental eye. Come, blessed power, and waken the memory of your mystics to the holy rites, and break the chains of the river Lethe. Mnemosyne: To all of you, who think that I belong to the past, one thing I have to say. I 'll live forever. Narrator: As the group of people slowly exit the room, the researcher comes in. Researcher: Remembering was so important to the ancients that it was embodied into a goddess. In Greek cosmogony Mnemosyne was the daughter of Uranus and Gaia, a pre-Olympian divinity who personified Memory. Mnemosyne, a Titan herself, part of the earliest deities, is the custodian of our memorabilia before the advent of writing, literacy, books, recordings and photos. She inhabits the pre-literate, right-brained world where memory is not cognitive but feeling, evocatively recounted, imaginatively pictured and inspirationally sung. Memory is not just of the past, but the poignant beginning of musing. Embodying the voices of an oral culture that communicated through narration, images, metaphors and odes, Mnemosyne reminds us that our soul's history is revealed through dreams, oracles, feelings, responses, reveries, synchronicities or sudden images that dart into awareness. Embedded in the fragments of songs, myths and fairy tales, linger ancient truths that awaken the intelligence associated with this goddess. Mnemosyne unexpectedly arouses memory through our reactions and responses. Narrator: Fade out.
Act II Memory as a biological function
Narrator: A young man sits on the edge of the narrow bed, palms spread out on his knees, head down, staring at the floor. The room is small and square, like a cube, he has no idea that a camera is planted in the ceiling directly above him. Narrator: The room is completely square, like a cube. The walls looks like they are made of square blocks of almost a meter by a meter across. One of those blocks looks like it could be a window, but an opaque white roller blinds completely block it. Only a stripe of light around the block makes me think that there is a window there! Narrator: A large mirror is placed at the end of the room. While Henry stills stares at the floor the Researcher comes into the room dressed in a white medical coat. Researcher: Hallo Henry, I am the Researcher. How are you? Henry: Hi my name is Henry, I am very well, thank you. How are you? It's a pleasure to meet you. Narrator: Henry stands up from the bed and shakes the hand of the Researcher. They both walk towards the mirror where a table with two chairs are placed right next to it. The Researcher sits on one of the chairs and Henry follows him and sits on the other. Researcher: Can I ask you a question Henry? Henry: Of course you can! Researcher: What do you remember about yesterday? Narrator: Henry takes a minute to think about it. Henry: Now that I think about it I don't remember a lot from yesterday. Narrator: But the truth is that Henry cannot create new memories at all. Researcher: How about this morning? Narrator: Henry smiles.
Henry: I don't remember. Narrator: The next day and while Henry eats his breakfast on the table the Researcher opens the doors and comes in. Henry looks up at him. Researcher: Hi Henry, how are you? I am the Researcher. Henry: Hi there, nice to meet you, my name is Henry. Researcher: May I sit down with you? Henry: But of course, please join me. Narrator: Henry continues eating his breakfast. Researcher: May I ask you a question? Henry: Please do. Researcher: What do you remember about yesterday? Narrator: Henry takes a minute to think while finishing his breakfast. Henry: Not a lot, now that I come to think of it. Researcher: How about this morning? Henry: I can't remember. Researcher: Henry can you just tell me what you just had for breakfast? Narrator: Henry looks down at his empty plate with such surprise as fear is drawn upon his face. -pauseNarrator: The room, is quite large for a hotel room, it's almost like a hospital room, but only with one bed. The walls and the furniture are all white, even the piano is white. The only non-white object in the room is the black frame of the mirror. It looks almost like a window, like a black window into its white environment. Behind the mirror a camera is placed, but Henry knows nothing about it. -pauseNarrator: The Researcher opens the door and enters the room. Henry lies on the bed looking at a
magazine. Researcher: Hi Henry, I am the Researcher. Henry: Hi, nice to meet you, I am Henry. Researcher: How are you? Henry: I am fine thank you, how are you? Researcher: Fine, just fine. Can I ask you a question? Henry: Of course. Researcher: What do you remember about yesterday? Henry: Not a lot, now that I come to think of it. Researcher: How about this morning? Narrator: Henry takes a minute to think about it. Henry: I can't remember. Researcher: Ok Henry I would like you to remember the number 586, can you do that? Henry: Got it, yes, 586. Researcher: Right, I will be back in ten minutes. Narrator: The Researcher starts walking towards the door. Researcher: Don't forget 586. Narrator: The Researcher comes back after ten minutes and finds Henry at the exact place he left him. Researcher: And the number is? Henry: 586 Narrator: Says Henry with a bit of hesitation. Researcher: Right...how did you remember it? Henry: I just kept thinking about it. Researcher: That's wonderful.
Narrator: Henry smiles. Henry: Hi, I am sorry have we met? My name is Henry. Narrator: The Researcher smiles, while they shake hands. -pauseNarrator: The Researcher and Henry are both in front of the mirror. Researcher: Good morning Henry, I am the Researcher and I want to ask you to take this marker and draw a black line around your figure in the mirror, as best as you can ok? Henry: Ok.That looks really interesting and by the way I am Henry, nice to meet you. Researcher: And I am going to take some notes. -pauseNarrator: The Researcher comes in the room. Researcher: Hi, I am the Researcher. Henry: Hi, I am Henry. Researcher: Do you want to take this marker and draw in the mirror around the figure of your body? -pauseNarrator: Henry has no idea he tried this before. His defective memory prevents him from remembering his numerous previous attempts. And each time Henry's skill improves. It is as though this body remembers what his mind cannot tell. -pauseNarrator: The researcher comes into the room, but Henry is not there. Researcher: Henry Molaison, was known to the medical community as "Patient HM", and was the most-studied individual in the history of brain science. In 1953 Henry Molaison underwent an experimental surgical brain operation to cure the epileptic seizures from which he had suffered as a result of being knocked over by a cyclist when he was nine. He woke up having lost the ability to
form new memories, a condition known as profound amnesia. At the time of the surgery, which involved the removal of much of his temporal lobe, including the hippocampus, the study of memory was mostly limited to psychoanalysis, and little was known of the physical processes involved. When word spread of a patient who had suffered localized brain damage resulting in extreme memory loss, scientists queued up to research the nature of his amnesia. Henry remained lucid, and willingly agreed to be a guinea pig. Over the next half century he participated in hundreds of studies. He could remember events before the operation but from then on every time he met a friend or took a walk, it was as if he were doing so for the first time. It was not that he could not form memories at all. He had no problems with language, could get the point of jokes, and was able to hold memory in storage for short periods in order to carry out such tasks as dialling a phone number which had just been read out to him. He could form new memories for procedures. Yet he could not convert short-term memories of events into permanent storage. For 50 years he guessed his own age was 27 years (old) and was always surprised when he looked in the mirror. He relived his grief over the death of his mother every time he heard about it. Studies of Patient HM led to the discovery that the hippocampus is required for the formation of conscious, long-term memories, but not for unconscious, long-term skill memories, memory maintenance and retrieval, or short-term recall. Perhaps more importantly, he demonstrated that memory has a biological basis. Narrator: The Chorus and Mnemosyne are entering the room, while the Researcher fades away. They all dressed in black, as if the were returning from a religious funeral. The woman steps in front of everybody and leads the others to a strange choreography. They all move in a circular path, in each circle one of them stays outside of the circle. At the end of their choreography though, the woman is found in the centre of the human circle. Mnemosyne: Memory is a domain where past, present and future coexist in the same moment. In essence, the recalling of a memory is an action moving into the future rather than into the past.
When you register an experience as a memory it is instrumental for future use. The very moment at which you recall a past experience or event, memory comes into operation with an image of the initial event, shaped by present conditions. At this moment, the initial event is reshaped incorporating present characteristics. Narrator: As the Chorus and Mnemosyne are slowly exiting the room, the researcher comes in. Researcher: To the ancient Greeks, Memory was a goddess residing in the heart, the poignant aspect of psyche that threads the fragments of our lives together with the passing of time. Creative, emotive and evocative, the ancients also knew her as the mother of the Muses. The Muses were
the inspirations that allow the soul to remember. There where seven Muses. Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, narrates the soul’s story with deep feelings and integrity. Euterpe is the muse of music who evokes the rhythms of the soul. Clio is the muse of history who remembers the soul’s past so we are free to be in the present. Erato is the muse of lyrical poetry who reminds us of the qualities of the soul. Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, recalls the dimensions of our soul experience that are cathartic. Polymnia is the muse of many hymns who keeps in mind sacred poetry, chants and songs. Terpsichore, the muse of dancing, brings to mind the folk dances and sacred movements of our past. Thalia, the muse of comedy, reminds us of the connective and liberating power of laughter and fun. Urania is the muse of astrology and astronomy who, through the mnemonic of the stars, reminds us of the order and blueprint of our lives. Narrator: Fade out.
Act III My heart has his brain
Narrator: Sylvia wakes up in a small and square room, almost like a cube. All the walls are covered with white tiles and the only think she can see above her head is a blank monitor. Machines are ticking away, recording the life inside her, through a myriad of tubes. A man is in the room wearing a green gown, a green mask, a green cap, green booties and latex gloves. She wants to ask so many things but with the breathing tube in her mouth she cannot say a word. She needs to know. Although she realizes that her hands are tied, she manages to wiggle her fingers in a writing motion. The Researcher who is also in the room notices and brings her a pen and paper. Sylvia grabs the pen and writes down “did I get it?� Researcher: Oh yes, everything is fine. -pauseNarrator: The Researcher turns around, facing the audience, while Sylvia lies on the bed behind him. Researcher: A former professional dancer, Sylvia Claire was working as a teacher when, in 1983, she was diagnosed as having primary pulmonary hypertension, a rare progressive disease which causes blood vessels in the lungs to collapse and is often fatal. Her condition slowly deteriorated until she was forced to give up her job and was left house bound, dependent on oxygen and only able to move around with difficulty in a wheelchair. A heart-lung transplant was her only hope, although the risks were considerable. When she was driven to Yale hospital with her teenage daughter, Amara, after being told that a donor had been found, she noticed a brilliant rainbow arching across the sky. She viewed it as a good omen and was confident she would survive the surgery. Claire Sylvia was divorced and lived in the small seaside town of Hull on the Massachusetts
coast. She candidly admitted to being a 'spiritual' person, much more predisposed to new-age mysticism than the unforgiving rigours of medical science. She was certainly predisposed to believe that transferring organs from one body to another might Involve complications no doctor would admit than any doctor would admit. From the moment she learnt she might need transplant surgery, she made it her business to read everything she could about the subject and soon became conversant with the theory of "cellular memory", the controversial notion that human experience is instilled in the cells throughout the body, rather than just stored in the brain. Five days after the operation, journalists were invited into the hospital to interview her in the intensive care unit, where she is sitting on an exercise bicycle wearing yellow silk pyjamas and a pink dressing gown. During this bizarre press conference, a reporter asks: "Now that you've had this operation, what do you want right now more than anything? Sylvia: To tell you the truth, right now I'd die for a beer. Researcher: She is momentarily stunned by what she has said, not so much by its flippancy as by the fact that she does not like beer, indeed has never liked beer. It is this incident what first prompts Sylvia to believe something strange has happened. She knows, because she has wheedled the information out of the nurses, that her new heart and lungs were removed from an 18-year-old youth killed in a motorcycle accident in Maine. It is, she thinks, safe to assume that he had liked beer. Five weeks after the operation, when she was allowed to drive for the first time, she went straight for Kentucky Fried Chicken, a fast food she had never previously enjoyed. She could never explain it. Nor could she explained many other apparent changes in her personality: why she was starting to look at women the way a man might look at women, for example, or why her favourite colours are now green and blue rather than the hot shades of pink, red and gold she used to prefer. Months later, she had a dream about a young man called TL. Sylvia: I am in an open, outdoor place with grass all around. It's summer. With me is a young man who is tall, thin and wiry, with sandy-coloured hair. His name is Tim. I think it's Tim Leighton but I
am not sure. I think of him as Tim L. We are in a playful relationship and we are good friends. It's time for me to leave to join a performing group of acrobats. I start to walk away from him but suddenly felt that something remains unfinished between us. I turn around and go back to him to say goodbye. Tim is standing there, watching me and he seems happy when I return. Then we kiss. I inhale him into me. It feels like the deepest breath I have ever taken and I know that Tim will be with me forever. Researcher: Determined to learn more about him, she told her story to a psychic, who promptly had a dream in which he saw Tim's obituary in the middle of a page in a Maine newspaper. Sylvia looked up the back issues in her local library and found a brief report about a fatal motorcycle accident that occurred on the day before her operation. The victim was a young man, aged eighteen. His initials are TL, his full name, Tim Lamirande. Sylvia visited the Lamirande family and discovered that, yes, Tim liked beer and loved chicken nuggets; in fact, he was carrying a box tucked inside his motorcycle jacket when he crashed. His favorite colors were blue and green. If Sylvia had really inherited characteristics from her donor, the implications are astounding, not just for all transplant patients but for medical science, which at present states firmly that such an event is impossible. It would mean re-evaluating the accepted view that all memory is stored in the brain, like data held on the hard drive of a computer. And it would seem that further transplant patients might want to know quite a bit more about donors before accepting an organ. Sylvia was an intelligent and sincere woman, and no doubt she genuinely believed that she had inherited personality traits from the unfortunate eighteen year-old Tim Lamirande. But there are some more prosaic explanations for what has apparently happened. The first, and most obvious, is that people who undergo the profound experience of transplant surgery feel different when they have recovered simply because they feel better, often after years of debilitating poor health. If they then take up some sporting activity and discover that the donor enjoyed a similar sport, it might be tempting to conclude that the donor's enthusiasm has been transferred with an organ.
Drugs used to help prevent the rejection of transplant organs also have side effects that might appear to cause personality changes. A drug called Prednisone, for example, creates a craving for sweet food. If a transplant patient suddenly discovers he or she cannot get enough chocolate, it is more likely that Prednisone is the cause than the fact that the donor liked chocolate. Since the human mind is highly suggestible, hospitals strive to keep details of organ donors strictly confidential, in the belief that nothing can be served by putting organ recipients in touch with the donor families. Sylvia not only disagreed but claimed that learning about her donor had played an important psychological role in preventing the rejection of his organs. More than one thousand heart and lung transplants have been carried out around the world, and Sylvia was among those who had survived the longest. Sylvia: Being in touch with the family has helped me enormously, and I believe it could help others. My story is individual and I cannot speak for everyone; all I can say is that this is the way it happened to me. But research has uncovered other people in similar situations saying similar things. This is blossoming all over the world. Narrator: The Chorus and Mnemosyne are entering the room, while the Researcher fades away. They all dressed in black, as if the were returning from a religious funeral. The woman steps in front of everybody and leads the others to a strange choreography. They all move in a circular path, in each circle one of them stays outside of the circle. At the end of their choreography though, the woman is found in the centre of the human circle. Mnemosyne: And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Narrator: As the Chorus and Mnemosyne are slowly exiting the room, the researcher enters. Researcher: Dr. J. Andrew Armour first introduced the term heart brain in 1991. Armour showed that the heart’s complex intrinsic nervous system qualified as a “little brain.” This heart brain, “is
an intricate network of several types of neurons, neurotransmitters, proteins and support cells, like those found in the brain proper. Research has shown that the heart communicates to the brain in four major ways: neurologically (through the transmission of nerve impulses), biochemically (via hormones and neurotransmitters), biophysically (through pressure waves) and energetically (through electromagnetic field interactions).” Its elaborate circuitry enables it to act independently of the cranial brain – to learn, remember, and even feel and sense. One important way the heart can speak to and influence the brain is when the heart is coherent – generating a stable, sine-wavelike pattern in its rhythms. When the heart is coherent, the body, including the brain, begins to experience all sorts of benefits, among them greater mental clarity and intuitive ability, including better decision-making. Although the heart and brain are in constant communication, each of us also has the capacity to consciously and intentionally direct our heart to communicate to the brain and body in beneficial ways. When we intentionally experience sincere positive emotions, such as caring, compassion or appreciation for someone or something, the heart processes these emotions and the heart’s rhythm becomes more coherent and harmonious. The heart then sends this harmonious information throughout the entire body via the processes mentioned above– neurologically, biochemically, biophysically and energetically. Narrator: Fade out.
Act IV The hands of a stranger
Narrator: A young man sits on the edge of the narrow bed, his hands are covered in bandages, head down, staring at the floor. The room is small and square, almost like a cube, he has no idea that a camera is planted in the ceiling directly above him. He brings his hands in front of his face. He stares at them. Orlac: I was inside the taxi. I had finished my recital on the grand auditorium, and I was going to meet her. The driver asked me if I was the guy on the billboard. At first I didn't realize, then he explained to me that he seen my picture outside the theatre, he refers to me as the man with the piano. He told me that his son loves music, and that he started last year taking piano lessons. I remember telling him to bring him to my next concert. He reached for his wallet to show me a picture of his son, that's the last thing I remember, and now I am here. My hands, what happened to my hands. Narrator: The researcher enters the room. Good morning mr Orlac. Orlac: My hands, what happened to my hands? Researcher: There was a car accident. Don't worry some of your fingers were broken. You are going to be al right. Orlac: The taxi. That fool driver. Why are my hands wrapped like this? Researcher: We knew who you were. What your hands meant to you. We've immobilized them so your fingers will recover as soon as possible. Orlac: I have a concert in few days, I have recordings. Researcher: Those things need to be postponed for a while. Soon you will play again. Orlac: Don't lie to me.
Researcher: I don't. Doctors did a beautiful job. Your hands will be perfect. Orlac: Are they? In which terms perfect? Doctors terms or mine? Researcher: Yours. In few weeks you will have full flexibility again. Orlac: Why did it have to happen to my hands? Researcher: You will play the piano very soon. You just need to keep your belief and some patience. Orlac: Does my wife know about this? Researcher: I don't know about that. Orlac: Thank you. Researcher: It will be almost a month before we can remove the bandages. You will be able to go home in a week. I believe you will be more comfortable there. Orlac: Home! Where I can stare at the piano! I wonder how long it will take! And how well I will be able to play again! Researcher: As long as it will take. You will keep your patience and you will remember what is important to you. You will fight for something that is important...and beautiful. -pauseNarrator: The Researcher turns around, facing the audience, while Orlac lies on the bed behind him. Researcher: Cellular memory is a theory that states the brain is not the only organ that stores memories or personality traits, that memory as a process can form in other systems in the body and can be stored in organs such as the heart. This theory is not new. Imaginative fiction writers probably were writing about the concept as early as the 1800′s, long before transplants of anything were even considered plausible. Perhaps it was Maurice Renard’s “The Hands of Orlac” that popularized the idea for the first time. In the story a concert pianist Paul Orlac loses his hands in a horrible railway accident. His wife Yvonne pleads with a surgeon to try and save Orlac’s hands.
The surgeon decides to try and transplant new hands onto Orlac, but the hands he uses are those of a recently executed murderer named Vasseur. From that point forward, the pianist is tortured by the presence of a knife he finds in his house, just like the one used by Vasseur, and the desire to kill. He believes that along with the murderer’s hands, he has also gained the murderer's predisposition to violence. He confronts the surgeon, telling him to remove the hands, but the surgeon tries to cnvince him that a person’s acts are not governed by his hands, but by the head and heart. This is an extreme and over simplified version of what cellular memory could be. The first hand transplantation was performed in Ecuador in 1964, but the patient suffered from transplant rejection after two weeks. The first short-term success in human hand transplantation occurred with New Zealander Clint Hallam who had lost his hand in a circular-saw accident while in Rolleston prison. The operation was performed on September 23, 1998 in Lyon, France by a team built from surgeons from different countries around the world. Narrator: The Chorus and Mnemosyne are entering the room, while the Researcher fades away. They all dressed in black, as if the were returning from a religious funeral. The woman steps in front of everybody and leads the others to a strange choreography. They all move in a circular path, in each circle one of them stays outside of the circle. At the end of their choreography though, the woman is found in the centre of the human circle. Mnemosyne: There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery. Narrator: Fade out.
Act V Speech as an organ
Narrator: A young girl at the age of thirteen lies on a narrow bed. Her head is covered in white bandage. The room is small and square, almost like a cube, she has no idea that a camera is planted in the ceiling directly above her. A yellow helium filled balloon is tied on her bed. Narrator: The Researcher enters the room and walks towards the audience. Researcher: Genie was the fourth and last child of parents living in Arcadia, California. Her father worked in a factory as a flight mechanic during World War II and got a job in the aviation industry after the war ended; her mother, originally from Oklahoma, had come to Southern California as a teenager. Both of them came from highly unstable family backgrounds, and neither had any meaningful education. From the start, the family and friends of Genie's mother had strongly opposed their marriage because her husband was around twenty years older than her. She began suffering increasingly frequent beatings by her husband, which progressively became more severe. From the outset of their relationship, Genie's father made it very clear that he neither liked children nor wanted to have any. Still, after about five years of marriage he impregnated his wife. Genie's father continued to beat her throughout her pregnancy, and near the end apparently attempted to beat and strangle her to death. -pauseResearcher: Genie's birth was a standard caesarean section with no complications. When Genie was 20 months old, her paternal grandmother was killed when a pickup truck ran her over in a hitand-run traffic accident. Genie's father already had difficulty controlling his emotions, and his mother's death deeply affected him. This event made Genie's father feel as if the outside world had failed him. Genie's family moved into the two-bedroom house her grandmother had been living in, and her father insisted on leaving her grandmother's bedroom completely untouched as a shrine to
her. Genie was increasingly confined to the second bedroom, while the rest of the family slept downstairs in the living room. -pause Researcher: During the daytime, for approximately 13 hours a day Genie was tied to a child's toilet seat in a makeshift harness which, according to Genie's brother, their father forced his wife to make. The harness was designed to function like a straitjacket to prevent her from moving her arms or legs, and while in it Genie wore only diapers and could only move her extremities. At night, when her father remembered to move her, she was put into a sleeping bag where she would be bound and placed in a crib with a metal-screen cover, her arms and legs immobilized. We, believed that at times she was simply left tied to the child's toilet overnight, although her mother disputed this. Genie's mother said that at first she could take Genie out to the back yard and put her in a small playpen, but she reportedly angered her father because she frequently took the structure apart; although Genie's mother said she was allowed to stay with her daughter while in the yard, doctors who worked with Genie believed this was a sign that she was often left there by herself for extended periods of time. After a short period of time, Genie's father decided not to allow her outside her room at all. -pauseResearcher: We concluded that, if Genie vocalized or made any other noise, her father beat her with a large plank he kept in her room. To keep her quiet he would show his teeth and bark and growl at her like a wild dog and he grew his fingernails out to scratch her. If he suspected her of doing something he did not like he would make these noises outside the door to intimidate her, and beat her if he believed she had continued to do it. The exact reason for his dog-like behaviour was never definitively discerned, but at least one scientist speculated he may have viewed himself as a guard dog and was acting out the role. This instilled an intense fear of cats and dogs in Genie that persisted long after she was freed. Doctors also gave serious consideration to the possibility that
Genie's father subjected her to sexual abuse although they never uncovered any definite evidence of it. -pauseResearcher: In late October 1970, Genie's mother and father had a violent argument in which she threatened to leave if she could not call her parents. He eventually relented, and shortly thereafter Genie's mother was able to get herself and Genie away from her husband while he was away from the house. She and Genie went to live with her parents. Three weeks later, on November 4, Genie's mother brought Genie along while seeking disability benefits in nearby Temple City, California. On account of her near-blindness, she inadvertently entered the general social services office next door. The social worker who greeted them instantly sensed something was not right when she saw Genie; she was shocked to learn Genie's true age was thirteen, having estimated from her appearance and demeanour that she was around six or seven years-old and possibly autistic. She notified her supervisor, and after questioning Genie's mother and confirming Genie's age they immediately contacted the police. Genie's parents were arrested and Genie became a ward of the court, whereupon a court order was immediately issued for Genie to be taken to Children's Hospital Los Angeles. Her physical condition and near-total unsocialized state provided the immediate impetus for her admission, but authorities also noted her complete lack of speech at the time. -pauseNarrator: Genie stands from the bed and approaches the Researcher, facing the audience. Genie: ( in sign language) How do people learn to speak a language? Nativist Noam Chomsky suggested that the acquisition of language could not be fully explained by learning alone. Instead, he proposed that children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD), an innate ability to understand the principles of language. Once exposed to language, the LAD allows children to learn the language at a remarkable pace. Researcher: Despite scoring at the level of a one-year-old upon her initial assessment, Genie
quickly began adding new words to her vocabulary. She started by learning single words and eventually began putting two words together much the way young children do. Curtiss began to feel that Genie would be fully capable of acquiring language. After a year of treatment, she even started putting three words together occasionally. In children going through normal language development, this stage is followed by what is known as a language explosion. Children rapidly acquire new words and begin putting them together in novel ways. Unfortunately, this never happened for Genie. Her language abilities remained stuck at this stage and she appeared unable to apply grammar rules and use language in a meaningful way. At this point, her progress levelled off and her acquisition of new language halted. -pauseResearcher: Genie is a ward of the state of California, and is living in an undisclosed location in the Los Angeles area. In May 2008 ABC News reported that in 2000, someone who talked to them under condition of anonymity had hired a private investigator who located Genie. She was reportedly living a relatively simple lifestyle in a small private facility for mentally underdeveloped adults, and appeared to be happy. Although she only spoke a few words, she could still communicate fairly well in sign language. Genie: ( in sign language) Is speech an organ? Narrator: The Chorus and Mnemosyne are entering the room, while the Researcher fades away. They all dressed in black, as if the were returning from a religious funeral. The woman steps in front of everybody and leads the others to a strange choreography. They all move in a circular path, in each circle one of them stays outside of the circle. At the end of their choreography though, the woman is found in the centre of the human circle. Mnemosyne: What separates humans from all other animals is language and the use of it in order to communicate. Narrator: Fade out.
Act VI Anywhere the body can act, an image can be made.
Narrator: The are no lights in the room. It's the absolute black. Clive, Henry, Genie, Paul, Claire, Mnemosyne, the Chorus, the Researcher and my self, we are standing in front of you.
A projection starts where images are projected. All this time the Researcher was wearing a camera which is able to make an image every fifteen seconds.