Every Body is an Archive
Exhibition Dates
September 18th 2019 - November 29th 2019
Liz Orton’s project Every Body is an Archive explores the bounds of medical imaging data, entangling the biological, digital and social body. In mis/using professional radiology software, Orton’s work makes visible the spaces and limits of medical data reconstruction.
Medical imaging technologies such as CT and MRI produce detailed imagesof specific areas of the body so that radiologists can see inside the personwithout cutting. By accessing patients’ scan data (with permission), Liz Orton experiments with software, searching for and making visible the human elements of medical data.
Refusing medicine’s usual interior gaze, she makes visible the body’s surface, a digital skin which tends to erase the usual traces of identity. The result is a combination of software outputs that explore the liminal space between data and the human body, alongside performative re-enactments with patients based on memories and images of medical experiences.
This project has received support from the Wellcome Trust, University College London and University Arts London.
