Project framework: context, research questions, summary of research insights
Since 2007, I have been a core member of an international, interdisciplinary team of medical practitioners, social scientists, artists and philosophers, who have worked together to investigate the phenomenological effects of heart transplant on recipients and the bereaved families of donors. There followed a series of international exhibitions and events exploring hybrid bodies, funded in part by the British Council. In 2017, I was awarded an AHRC Research Network grant, which funded a series of international networking events and work-in-progress exhibitions – and the AHRC Hybrid Bodies Network, an artist-led interdisciplinary study into the effects of heart transplantation on donors’ families, came into being.
Context
While significant bio-scientific research had been conducted into the procedures of heart transplant and its medical outcomes, there had been very little research into the emotional and psychological impact of transplantation on the families of donors. On a broader level, organ transplantation signifies a shift in the way the body is viewed and raises questions around bodily boundaries, identity, and new nonbiological kinship relationships. The project therefore responds to these challenges by bringing together medical practitioners, visual artists, a philosopher and social scientists to study transplantation from multiple, interwoven perspectives with the aim of understanding the procedure within a broad social and psychological context. The international research meetings were integrated with exhibitions and contributed to published outputs across a number of platforms to create new insights for academics and deep encounters with participants and the public alike.
Hybrid Bodies: The Heart Project broke new ground in the study of heart transplantation through the positioning of artworks at the fulcrum for interdisciplinary exchange while engaging with wider issues of inter-corporeality and kinship.
Influenced by British philosopher Margrit Shildrick’s research, this project brings artwork as a process-led investigation into productive encounters with standard scientific and humanities research methods in order to rethink the ways we address biomedical interventions that transform the nature of our embodied identities. If, as Shildrick argues, we think of ourselves as being rooted in our bodies, the research asks how merging one body with another through transplantation might affect identity? The response to such inquiry presents patient and medical practitioner with issues ranging from “How does this make us feel?” to “How should the medical profession help patients to prepare for the disruption that may occur when they start to consider themselves as spread across more than one body, or made up of different or disparate parts?”.
The way in which the project entangles research from the arts, biosciences and humanities through the medium of artworks, but without privileging any one discourse, is unprecedented in this area of study. The process extends concepts of what constitutes a boundary object in art/science collaboration through a focus on participation by and with those who have undergone – or have close relationships with – transplantation.
Researchers in the Department of Primary Healthcare Sciences at the University of Oxford have carried out a similar interdisciplinary study (healthtalk. org/organ-donation/overview) into patient and donor family experience with the purpose of improving the quality of care and donation rates. But with a team entirely made up of clinicians, scientists, medical practitioners and scientific and medical researchers their methods are more conventional. Within this project the artworks have been developed iteratively and responsively, using a research process I designed to address both practical and philosophical questions.
Key questions
1 How might art act as a bridge between the experience of heart-donor families and medical professionals?
2 What forms and methods of artistic practice are most appropriate in this context?
3 What are the implications of considering organ transplant as a form of intercorporeality?
4 Could we consider a new kind of kinship that views transplant as a reciprocal relationship rather than one based on giver and receiver?
5 How can the visual and media arts be used to address such questions in a way that will have significant social impact?
Summary of research insights
Our research has shown that, as well as blurring the boundaries between self and other, organ transplantation has deep implications for our understanding of the relation between death and “staying alive”. Recipients of donor organs often find the experience of surviving an otherwise certain death is fraught with complex emotions about the relationship between the self and the now dead other, while donor families understandably wish to see the donor living on in another. Through art we found we could tackle these emotive aspects of transplantation that resist verbal or textual communication in new and accessible ways.
| Creators | Wright, A. |
|---|---|
| Description | In 2017, Wright was awarded an AHRC Research Network grant to bring an interdisciplinary study into the effects of heart transplantation on donors’ families that originated in Canada to the UK for the first time. The Network grant enabled Wright to develop a wider interdisciplinary network, enabling further insights into the effects of heart transplantation on recipients and donor families. Key questions asked include: How might art act as a bridge between the experience of heart-donor families and medical professionals? What forms and methods of artistic practice are most appropriate in this context? What are the implications of considering organ transplant as a form of inter-corporeality? Through exhibitions, symposia, workshops and other activities, the project shows that as well as blurring the boundaries between self and other, organ transplantation has deep implications for our understanding of the relation between death and “staying alive”. Recipients of donor organs often find the experience of surviving an otherwise certain death is fraught with complex emotions about the relationship between the self and the now dead other, while donor families understandably wish to see the donor living on in another. Through art, Wright and collaborators found that they could tackle these emotive aspects of transplantation that resist verbal or textual communication in new and accessible ways. Comparison between Canada and UK transplant regulations led to new insights on future policy. |
| Portfolio items | Messy entanglements: research assemblages in heart transplantation discourses and practices |
| Hybrid Bodies at KKW | |
| Hybrid Bodies | |
| Heart of the Matter | |
| Cadenza | |
| BBC Radio 4: interview and excerpts of audio from Heart of the Matter in Print Me A new Body programme | |
| The Heart Project (exhibition and symposium) | |
| Cut | |
| Not Gone Not Forgotten | |
| Still Live | |
| Heart of the Matter - The Flesh of the World | |
| Heart of the Matter PHI exhibition | |
| Heart of the Matter - Crafting Anatomies | |
| Hybrid Bodies laser talk | |
| When Words Fail, an interdisciplinary investigation into the phenomenological effects of heart transplantation | |
| Hybrid Bodies Chiasma Exhibition | |
| Sutured Selves, Remapping the Boundaries between our bodies, our selves and our kin | |
| Art/Sci Nexus, 9 Evenings Revisited | |
| Papworth Hospital Heart Transplant Recipient Workshop | |
| Parallax, a story in two parts | |
| Hybrid Minds, Hybrid Bodies | |
| Object Stories | |
| Donor Family and Recipient Anonymity: Time for Change | |
| Year | 2014 |
| Publisher | University of Westminster |
| Web address (URL) | http://www.hybridbodiesproject.com |
| Keywords | collaboration; interdisciplinary; art science |
| CREAM Portfolio | |
| Funder | AHRC (Arts & Humanities Research Council) |
| Arts Council England | |
| Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.34737/qqw60 |
