My work challenges the discursive construction of the human body in medical contexts, with an emphasis on the ontological reliance on posthumous human material for curative knowledge claims. Running parallel to my research interests in American pathology at the turn of the twentieth century, this installation engages with the visual ephemera collected and displayed for medical argument and pedagogy. A found footage documentarian by training, I am turning toward site specific media installations to practice means of engaging publics with the routinely gruesome history of medicine. The prospective installation will use digital video projection within a gallery or museum space to reflect on found historical materials, acquired in archives, textbooks, and journal articles to critique the image of the human as it is found in medicine, and to reimagine how that image may be understood when integrated into an empathic, non-medical context.
SEAN PURCELL
Ph.D. Candidate, Media School
