Performing Surgery: Exploring Gestures in the Operating Theater

Abstract

In my arts-based research Performing Surgery (2015-2018) I investigate the gestures of surgeons. For this I attend different types of surgeries with a digital or a 16 mm camera. This article will present scenes of a 16 mm series of black and white short movies lasting four minutes with the title Matters of the Heart I-VI of a heart surgery, an operation on the pancreas, an intervention on the blood flow, a surgery of the spine, a reconstruction of the eyelid after facial palsy and a brain surgery. I am particularly interested in the aesthetic aspects of surgery. How do surgeons connect with the bodies of their patients while operating on them? I suggest an approach that brings together art and surgery as parallel stories. Inspired by Jacques Derrida’s essay Memoires d’aveugle. L’autoportrait et autres ruines (1990), by Jean-Luc Nancy’s texts L’Intrus (1999) and Le Plaisir au dessin (2009), I develop close-up images of the surgical act. In the recordings of surgeons’ hands performing intricate maneuvers during operations I address the humane dimensions of surgery. Thus I regard the medical ‘operating theater’ as a site of empathy, tenderness, intimacy and sensibility where the harmonious orchestration of hands generates the focus of attention. Since I do not like the manipulations on analogue film material in the editing room, the 16 mm movies are all done ‘in the camera’ while watching the surgeries. The idea behind this concept: In terms of the material body of the film – I do not use the knife, only the imaginary one.