Organ Eyes Peer Amid

2013

Social project / Installation (silkscreens, videos, shelves, mirrors, food, labels, tape, string, tacks)

Dimensions variable

 

Organ Eyes Peer Amid is a collaborative, multimedia installation developed by Suzanne McCullagh, Renee Jackson and Robert Waters. It was curated by James Patten and created specifically for the exhibition Intensities and Lines of Flight: Deleuze, Guattari and the Arts at McIntosh Gallery (Western University), which was held in conjunction with the philosophy conference of the same name conducted by the Centre for Advanced Research in European Philosophy at Kings College in London, Ontario. The installation – which incorporated hanging silkscreen targets, two videos and various other materials – was designed to help develop the ideas that we would later present in our panel discussion at the Intensities and Lines of Flight conference.
Our panel discussion was titled Constitution and Metamorphosis: Intersecting Art, Health and Pedagogy with Deleuze and Guattari. Through a critical and pragmatic engagement with key ideas and concepts from the works of Deleuze and Guattari, our papers developed the themes of constitution and metamorphosis as a way to think significant connections between art, health and pedagogy. The study of art – realizing how diverse compositions produce affects and activate capacities – provides a privileged domain for increasing our understanding of the ways in which capacities are constituted through relations of formation and decomposition. While the development of capacities is a core feature of both health and education, the constructive contributions of art to these fields is under-theorized.
The series of silkscreens that form the facade of the installation are called Dividuals. They combine images of body parts, medical posters, and hunting targets. The installation also contained two videos titled Two More (Breast Self-examination) and Two More (Testicle Self-examination), which use food items that are commonly associated with cancer-prone body parts and help to expand the concept of self into our surrounding environment.
white cube 2×2

To help develop the project, we created two documents that playfully explore the ideas of hierarchy and health:


Hierarchy of Hierarchies (PDF, English)

Pyramid of What (PDF, English)


If you would like to read the paper that I presented at the conference, please consult the following PDF:


An Art of Constitutional Metamorphosis (PDF, English)