one-to-one performance + installation, duration: 2 days
Commission for "BLOOD: Life Uncut" for Science Gallery London; Copeland Gallery; London, UK. 2017
Developed in collaboration with Prof Carmine Pariante, this work is a metaphorical blood exchange. It draws from Prof Pariante’s research at King’s College on blood inflammation in patients with depression, Stanford University’s studies that show transfusion of young blood in old mice reversed aging, and Lund University’s proposition that a protein found in beetroot (incidentally an anti-inflammatory food) could substitute human blood.
I invite participants to tell me about a significant personal regret - Prof Pariante has found this to be a theme plaguing depressed patients - as I transcribe it onto sheets of vellum.
I then prick their finger and place a drop of blood in a petri dish. In exchange, I offer them a shot of anti-inflammatory beet juice.
Over the weekend, the petri dishes fill with blood "inflamed" with lament, while vials of detoxifying beetroot empty one by one.
The speakers murmur binaural layered verses of ‘what might have been’ (with text contributions from poet Francis Byrne), and the wall gradually fills with anonymous regrets collected from participants.
For of all sad words... was produced by Stress, Psychiatry and Immunology Lab - SPI Lab together with Science Gallery London for the Becoming Blood Weekender.
This work won the 2018 Art of Neuroscience competition held by the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, and was featured in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN magazine.
photos by: Vestal McIntyre, Giulia Lombardo, Alessandra Cianetti, Annie Kwan
*Special thanks to Prof Pariante, Anna McLaughlin, Daniela Enache, Maria Nettis, Giulia Lombardo, Vestal McIntyre, and Fran Byrne.