On Saturday April 30 from 5 p.m. at the Rhomboid Studio in Mount Victoria, NSW Australia I'll be presenting a brand new performative work. Its very exciting to have this opportunity to be part of the Lumiere Festival of the Moving Image in Mount Victoria. Below is the link to where you can get tickets [...]
In an article published on the 15th December 2021 the writer Benjamin Plackett outlined the current position on the viability of producing synthetic blood or blood products ethically and successfully. Really interesting and reinforces my view that blood is amazing. http://www.insidescience.org/news/whats-stopping-scientists-making-viable-synthetic-blood The article states 'The pursuit of these lab-made blood products has branched into two [...]
New work in progress Blood on Silk: The Uniform of the Patient, focusing on the knot tied usually loosely at the back of the hospital gown in order to maintain the privacy of the patient. The fabrics chosen for this project range from translucent silk mesh, to thin white cotton and a more solid hospital [...]
Kit - cut it out, sew two pieces together, and fill. Size variable.
The factors driving the allocation of resources within the medical system is often not obvious or transparent to the outsider, the patient or their family. One area where it is openly acknowledged is in the media coverage of transplant medicine. There it is repeatedly stated that the number of organs donated or supplied is significantly [...]
Being deprived of sleep is not only experienced by the patient as discussed in the last post but also by those working within the hospital. This fourth of a series of short essays or reflections on aspects of what could be understood as forms of violence within the practice of medicine turns to the experience [...]
Patients often report serious difficulties with sleeping while in hospital and this experience of deprivation is even more profound when the patient is in ICU. While there is evidence for the impact of sleep deprivation on cognitive functioning in ICU patients it is only ‘associated’ with the onset of ICU delirium or intrusive hallucinatory experiences. [...]
The American medical humanities scholar Kathleen Powers questions the notion that the violence within hospitals or within medicine is tempered by metaphor and discretion. Rather, she considers the metaphoric language used in hospitals to be a language of violence, or a language of war. In a 2017 paper she outlined the militaristic and violent frameworks [...]
Fiona Davies, Blood on Silk: The Violence of Medicine I (detail) 2020. Conceptual Background: The American academic Johanna Shapiro in a 2018 essay establishes a framework of types of violence in medicine that ranges from the systemic bureaucratic “organisational violence”, originating from the hospital’s architecture and design, noise levels, access to public transport, and the [...]
Fiona Davies Coughing up Blood ( Detail) 2019 silk paper, aluminium, found objects and light, 300 x 600 x 600(h)cm. Photo Credit: Pamela Kleemann My mother's slightly yellowed tupperware container has become the makeshift Xray reader in this desolate, isolated space within the gallery at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre.
bloodonsilk 