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 [...]
Category: ICU
Blood on Silk: The Violence of Medicine, Part III Being Deprived of Sleep
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. [...]
‘nobody is dead until warm and dead’
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/cold-trauma-suspended-animation A great article written by Natalie Healey published on the wired.co.uk site, raises some interesting questions starting with the basis of the definition of death, through to possible roles for body cooling in the treatment of trauma particularly when trying to increase the odds of survival for patients who have bleed out half of [...]
ICU – Being asked to step outside while some procedure or other is being carried out
A paper from 2019 from the Intermountain Healthcare's Center for Humanizing Critical Care in Salt Lake City questions this traditional practice of exclusion. Click on the title below to be linked to the article online on Medical XPress. 'Do family members belong in ICU during procedures? Study finds clinicians mixed on practice.' My experience in [...]
Work in Progress: Time of Death – Series Three
Working on a Time of Death series is a recurring event in my practice. First occurring in 2010 they circle around to be remade every two to three years. A video work will accompany these still images from Series Three and be overlaid with the sound track of the reading of a fairy-tale Once Upon [...]
Start of the install – Site 1 at the State Silk Museum Tbilisi.
Before the weaving starts and the pattern becomes complicated the strength of a simple black and white stripe carries the day.
From Day One of the Install at The State Silk Museum in Tbilisi – Choose the First Site.
This is the first of three sites at the State Silk Museum in Tbilisi choosen for the site specific work Woven Architecture . Thinking more and more about the power structures of architecture and the ways this is carried over to the contemporary architectural response and of course how that is translated into hospital and [...]
Video of Stage One in the Performative Lecture ‘ Cast a Cold Eye on Life, on Death is online.
https://vimeo.com/340154593 From May 10th to 18th, 2019.the artist, Fiona Davies, undertook a series of performative lectures within the exhibition Cast a Cold Eye on Life on Death: The Remake Medicalised Death in ICU. This is Davies's examination exhibition, the culmination of four years of practice-led research into medicalised death in ICU. There are a series [...]
Images of the Exhibition – Cast a cold eye on life, on death: The Remake: Medicalised Death in ICU online.
online at http://www.fionadavies.com.au videos of the performative lecture will be online by the end of this week
Cast a Cold Eye – Last Days
This exhibition and program of performative lectures enter their last few days . Cast a Cold Eye on Life, on Death: The Remake - Medicalised Death in ICU finishes on Saturday 18th May at 4 p.m. Until then the exhibition is open 11-5 and performative lectures are programmed for 1 pm on Thursday, 11 am [...]