“Love and Medicine: An Anthology” (1864-2014)

48 pairs of slides + photoplasticon + moulage

2014

A surreal vision of Bellmer’s carnality and sexuality served as a starting point in a project about a variety of body marking. A map of the boundary between the discourses of love and medicine forms the axis of this concept. The investigation on the interference in the autonomy of the body is stretched on the temporal and regional extent of Upper Silesia. Silesia uncovers its bodies reluctantly, only for special occasions. Peeping at them is an arduous and demanding task, preceded by a research of the materials saved in the source texts and visual archives, as well as an attempt to reconstruct the events. The chronicle of accidents read from the medical, archaeological, criminal, war and love perspectives creates a collection of glances on the territory of the body—the real and the artificial body. Individual stories with different weights constitute the anthology. As the experience of a certain community, revealed one after the other, they form a closed narrative intended for a session which is collective as well as intimate.

Co-operation: Rafał Urbacki

The project was created as part of the Project Metropolis co-organised by the Imago Mundi Foundation and the Kronika CCA in Bytom.

Ewa Opałka, The worst plague of mankind is love. Silesia as suspect body in Patrycja Orzechowska’s exhibition Miłość i Medycyna. Antologia [Love and Medicine: An Anthology], [in] The Metropolis Project, edited by: Stanisław Ruksza and Łukasz Trzciński, Kraków–Bytom–Katowice 2015.

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