In/human: The Body as Resource at Kelvin Hall, Glasgow

Saturday 11 March 2017
11.30am - 6.00pm
Kelvin Hall

In/Human: The Body as Resource is a one-day event at Kelvin Hall featuring work by Kathryn Ashill, Sarah Browne, Christian Fogarolli, Michael Grey, and Anja Kirschner and David Panos. The event will close with a special screening of a work by Marcel Broodthaers.

In/Human: The Body as Resource is a hybrid of performance, screening and symposium, which explores our understanding of the body and how its evolution is accelerating towards an unknown, post human horizon. The works assembled consider how science, technology and media co-opt individual bodies to monetise expertise, produce ideology and generate content. The day event will centre on themes present in the objects collected by William Hunter (1718-1783) upon which The Hunterian was founded. In/Human: The Body as Resource is underpinned by polymath Hunter’s equal interest in anatomy, art and other objects including coins, bringing together cold hard currency and intimate bodily knowledge.

The location - Kelvin Hall - was built in 1927 and for sixty years housed exhibitions, concerts, circuses and athletics meetings, and between 1987 and 2010 it was home to Glasgow’s Transport Museum. The building, which covers six-acres, is in the process of being resuscitated, with one part now housing art, cultural and health and fitness activities. This unlikely juxtaposition endeavours to increase the human capital of its users, throwing historical artifacts and sweating bodies into close proximity, with modes of historical preservation and self-improvement sitting side by side.

The event will include Sarah Browne’s screening Report to an Academy in one of Kelvin Hall’s Dance Studios, questioning performative practice and its relation to athleticism and labour. Browne will also host a private workshop in the Hunterian anatomy laboratory with a small number of staff and students to explore some of the research and concerns of the film, specifically the possibilities and challenges of free speech in contemporary academic environments.

Glasgow based Kathryn Ashill will present the newly commissioned piece Soothing Suck, the second act of her 2008 performance Lovebite, that will probe behaviours of leeches such as cannibalism and draining other bodies resources.

During the day films by artists Christian Fogarolli, Michael Joaquin Grey, and Anja Kirschner and David Panos will be presented throughout Kelvin Hall, alongside a number of archive films from the National Library of Scotland Moving Image collection.

The day will close with a special screening of Marcel Broodthaers’ quasi-documentary Figures of Wax (Jeremy Bentham), 1974. In the film the artist interviews the wax effigy of the philosopher and architect Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832) who arranged his own body’s dissection and preservation.

In/Human: The Body as Resource is curated by Giulia Colletti, Athena Gerakis, Natallia Nenarokomova and David Upton, current students on MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art), in collaboration with curator and writer Mihnea Mircan. They have worked with The Hunterian’s collections and staff to realise the project.

Kelvin Hall
1445 Argyle Street
Glasgow
G3 8AW