November 2012 Public Engagement Events
It’s time for our round-up of the science and medical-themed events funded through our public engagement awards that are coming your way this month. If you’re inspired to go to any of the events or exhibitions listed here, do leave a comment and let us know what you thought.
This month we’re celebrating two nominations for art awards for Wellcome Trust funded projects. Artist and film-maker Luke Fowler is one of the finalists for this year’s Turner Prize, for his film based on the RD Laing archive footage at the University of Glasgow. The Telegraph review of the exhibition describes him as ‘a superb film-maker with a subtle mind and a lot to say’. The film, titled All divided selves, will be shown at Tate Britain from 2 October to the 6 January, and we’ve got our fingers crossed for 3 December, when the Turner prize winner will be announced.
Artist Aura Satz was shortlisted for the 2012 Film London Jarman Award, and as such her film Sound Seam, funded through a Wellcome Trust Arts Award, is included in a day of events at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Sound Seam explores the anatomy of hearing and the material qualities of sound and memory through haunting sounds, uncanny echoes and the acoustic inscriptions of bodies. The film is part of several events profiling the ten artists on the shortlist for the Jarman Award.
There are several exhibitions to look out for in the north of England this month. The Wasted Works, an art installation by Gina Czarnecki, is on diplay until 27 January at the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in Manchester. PALACES, one of the projects within The Wasted Works, is a unique arts-science project that aims to create a magical sculpture using thousands of baby teeth donated by the public.
Re-framing disability: portraits from the Royal College of Physicians is being displayed across the UK and Ireland and is now in the Thackray Museum in Leeds. It will be on display there until 27 January 2013. The exhibition uncovers the extraordinary hidden histories behind the 17th-19th century portraits of disabled people, many of whom earned a living exhibiting themselves to the public.
Wakefield Council and You Are What You Ate have organised an activity for children and families to have some fun with food and history. Find out how people ate in the past and make something smelly to take home at this drop-in event taking place between 11am and 3pm on Saturday 17 November at the new Wakefield Museum.
Have you ever stopped and thought about how light affects us? Heliotrope by Trigger at Kibble Palace, Glasgow Botanic Gardens, explores our relationship with light through a 12-minute immersive installation being shown 24-27 November. It has been created by a team of artists, designers and scientists working together to explore the impact of light on our health, and investigate Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Back down south, at the Science Museum in London, PAIN LESS: the future of relief is a new and free exhibition, which opens on 8 November and runs until the end of July 2013. Through four main areas of research into pain and consciousness, Pain Less looks at personal stories that highlight them, as well as the future of pain relief.
For film buffs, The Underwire Festival, a women’s short film festival based in London (20-24 November), presents The Art of Science – a programme of shorts that looks at how female filmmakers have used the medium to explore biomedical science.
Following the screening of the BBC2 documentary ‘Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell’ on 21 October, the associated interactive website, Secret Universe, has been launched. The film follows the story of a viral infection from the point of view of the infected cell and reveals the machinery of the human cell and how it defends against such an attack.
For the more musically minded, The Voice Symposium by James Wilkes will be performed on Friday 16 November at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre. It is a one day symposium and evening performance bringing together scientists, artists, researchers, musicians and poets around the common topic of the voice.
Still on
There’s still time to see two powerful plays in November. Wounded is a site-specific play running until 10 November. Based on the experience of medical treatment in war since 1914, the play will be performed at the Territorial Army Field Hospital in Kings Heath, Birmingham. Future Delivery, a play exploring the decisions associated with discovering your unborn child has Down’s syndrome, is in Liverpool for its final performance tonight.
Body Pods, a 12-month series of podcasts by artists and scientists from Fuel Theatre, continues in November. The most recent Body Pod is by performer Stacy Makishi and dermatologist Michael Klaber, who focus on the skin.
Over in West London, Shock Head Soul by Simon Pummell will be screened at the Institute of Psychoanalysis on 17 November. Shock Head Soul tells the story of Daniel Paul Schaber, a lawyer who was confined to an asylum for nine years in 1903. The film will also be screened at Cinecity in Brighton on 1 December.
At the Museum of London, Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men is running until April 2013. It will bring together human and animal remains, exquisite anatomical models and drawings, documents and original artefacts. Keep a watchful eye out for our sponsored film installation which brings contemporary voices to the exhibition.
Still to come
If you missed the premiere of Lexicon, by Andrew Lewis, there’s time to catch it later in the year. Lexicon is based on a poem written by a 12-year old boy, Tom, in which he articulates his personal experience of dyslexia. The performance explores not only the challenges, but also the life-affirming creative potential that a full understanding of dyslexia can bring, through a sonic and visual journey. Performances are taking place in Birmingham on 1 December, Leicester on 16 January, Sheffield on 30 January and Huddersfield on 16 March.
Going Dark, an innovative theatre production returns by popular demand to the Young Vic from 4 to 22 Decmeber. It toured the UK in the autumn of 2011 and the spring of 2012, selling out its three week run at the Young Vic’s Clare Theatre. It now returns to the Maria, a larger space, for three weeks in December. Sound&Fury use their inventive theatre vocabulary of immersive surround sound design, total darkness and imaginative lighting to reawaken our wonder at the cosmos and reveal how one man’s vision becomes illuminated by darkness.
