PHANTOM LAB

PHANTOM LAB 2021. Exercises. Die Angewandte, Vienna. Photo: Suchart Wannaset.

PHANTOM LAB | 24TH SEPTEMBER 2021

Our aim is to reveal and reflect upon the psycho-physical phantoms that haunt technologies connected to the human body. This will literally be made tangible through interactions with various prosthetic arm products. The participants are invited to physically relate to familiar and unfamiliar protheses, to stage and orient themselves with them, to play with a newly experienced body image, and to communicate with each other. In doing so, we focus on the subtle rhetoric of our bodies.  Direct video and photo documentation are used to collaboratively analyse the interactions. Painful and controversial questions are to be raised: How much humour can illness tolerate? What makes an ideal patient? What is “sick”, “disabled” or “damaged”?

Workshop held by performance artist Barbis Ruder, industrial designer Walter Lunzer (Ottobock Healthcare Products) and philosopher Lona Gaikis.

PRACTICE(!)WEEK, 20. 09. – 24. 09. 2021, University of Applied Arts, Vienna