ROUNDTABLE

This roundtable session welcomed guest Prof. Dr. Franz Kainberger from the Diagnostic Radiology department, AKH. His participation lead to a fruitful exchange concerning the works in progress presented by the students Slawomir Bobola and Matéusz Kula who are developing artistic ideas to be implemented within a medical institutional context.

 

“Journey and identity” is the working title of Bobola’s latest artistic production. During his talk he constructed an artefact: “Quipu”, a cord of knots pointing out seven key moments in a trajectory of time from 2011 until present. The word “Quipus” (or khipus) comes from social anthropology and were recording devices historically used in the region of Andean South America, sometimes called also “talking knots”. The “Quipu” in Bobola’s presentation tracked back several journeys and was directly related to seven projects: “Exploratory Music From Poland”, “Totem”, “Source”, “Cake for the 50th Anniversary of Starfish Prime”, “Rough Sleepers”, “Winterreise” and “Somwhere Else”.

 

Bobola’s project in context of the cooperation program could be developed at the AKH. He would like to play the role of a “fake patient” and submit to medical tests using medical imaging methods. The materials would be processed with artistic intentions.

 

Matéusz Kula presented his upcoming work that deals with the “embodiment of the illness” and it would take the form of an “Opera-performance”. His main driving questions are focused on “How body becomes story” and “how story becomes body”. From the very beginning Kula was impressed by the data of the radiology images. He was precisely interested in the “data base” and how it becomes a “massive data of human stories”.
Based on Thomas Bernhard’s writings, he started to create collages using imaginary actors to speak about the narration of the illness using the AKH as a stage.

 

A debate about story telling and who is telling the story emerged. Multiple questions and ideas coming from different members of the audience were pointing out the role of the author in the work and how does he find the actors as creative issues to be explored. Dr. Kainberger concluded: “one is the story of the researcher and other the one of the patient”.

 

"Roundtable concept"