INTRA call 2021
TOWARDS AN AESTHETICS FOR PROSTHETICS. How to Hack Medical Product Engineering for Artistic Research and User Benefit
Contact: Barbis Ruder (project contact), Walter Lunzer, Lona Gaikis
This research
integrates artistic and philosophical practices with design strategies as a novel paradigm for the development of medical
products—in particular arm prostheses. We propose a framework for medical engineering that considers performance art practices
as a means to get a better understanding of the needs of traumatized and damaged bodies.
We raise attention
to marginalized bodies in medical design processes and question the foundations upon which aesthetics itself, as a theory
of
feeling, is based on. Not only do we envision its idealist limits by asking how much further the damaged body
can feel, and whether the medically imposed task to
un-feel one’s body in prosthetics wearers can be a commonly shared
experience, but we recognize parallels in the promises of the industrialized fabrication of objects that virtually touch the
body (as they are worn directly on the skin and are incorporated in body movement), and today’s commercial production of evocative
art objects. In both, we see a need to exorcize an aesthetics that has lost touch with the ‘pathological’.
phantom-lab.uni-ak.ac.atKEYWORDSPerformance Art, Experimental Aesthetics, Medical Design, Pathology Idea, Hand
Prosthetics
TEAM BARBIS RUDER (*1984, Heidelberg) lives and works in Vienna.
As a performance artist, Barbis Ruder uses her body as well as artificial corporate bodies to tackle and fuse issues such
as the value of labor, bodily limits and intimacy with humor and foresight. Unlike the richness of these topics and their
associations, her performances for two or more participants, her installation works, videos and sculptures articulate in a
rather subtle rhetoric. Barbis develops performances for exhibition spaces and stage pieces for theater.
https://barbisruder.com/LONA GAIKIS (*1982, Toronto) is a philosopher and curator in media and fine arts. She gives lectures on current debates
in philosophy, society and the arts, and holds a doctoral degree (Dr. Phil.) in Philosophy, Art and Cultural Studies from
the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (2017). Her research focuses on the “new key” in the American philosopher Susanne K. Langer.
In light of recent discourses on the ‘affective turn’ and new materialist encounters between politics, bodies and the arts,
Langer's idea of art as a 'carnal rhetoric' is mobilized and further excavated for this discussion on the division of the
pathological from aesthetics and prosthesis design.
http://lonagaikis.info/WALTER LUNZER (*1980, Graz) is a designer and textile engineer. His expertise rests on more than 10 years of training
as a fashion designer and lecturer at Die Angewandte (since 2006). As an entrepreneur, he has experience with projects in
the fields of fashion and technology, custom design, corporate fashion, functional clothing and functional textiles. As a
textile engineer and designer, he supports various companies and is involved in several research projects in the industry.
He works for Ottobock Healthcare Products, the world market leader in the field of prosthetics and orthotics, since 2011.
www.walterlunzer.comPicture: ADPC Collage (Lona Gaikis) based on DOWN
DOG IN LIMBO (Barbis Ruder) Still: (c) faksimile digital
