Research insights
Based on interviews with heart recipients and donor families, our research showed 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”. We discovered that 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.
The key question in the Canadian study out of which the UK network emerged is that of anonymity: should donor families know where the organs are going, and should recipients know where they have come from? Although in the UK the rules around anonymity are currently less stringent than in Canada, they are becoming more so and the question of what degree of anonymity works best is a crucial one that could affect future policy in both countries.
The work-in-progress exhibitions in the second phase (2014 – 2020) aimed to enable heart donor families and others affected by organ donation to play an active role in the communication and expression of their experiences. The exhibition, symposium and workshops format surpassed our intentions to provide non-hierarchical settings, fostering informal interactions between professionals from a variety of disciplines, heart recipients and donor families. This allowed for an enhanced understanding and communication between donor families and health care providers.
These methods can be applied to difficult questions that arise in any scientific context where these questions involve patient experience that cannot be adequately addressed using traditional scientific methods of enquiry. Examples include mental health and cancer care.
Our interdisciplinary practice provides insights into both the significance of heart transplantation and the demanding process of close collaboration. Finding common ground can be hard to achieve. Nonetheless, it was evident that the inclusion of artists as integral researchers in a major scientific study provided benefits to a range of stakeholders. By creating a nonhierarchical, non-institutional space in which donor families and professionals could reflect on heart transplantation, donation and issues of anonymity, kinship and intercorporeality, the research activities and outputs have already contributed to new thinking in this area that include use of the arts in medical sociology, new strategic approaches to documentation of transplant in the media and the opening up of medical ethics to new positions informed by the arts.
At the closure of official funding of the Hybrid Bodies project, I had further established my profile as an artist whose insights into complex medical issues are acknowledged across disciplines. As a result I was invited to give talks and carry out workshops, including at the annual meeting of heart transplant recipients at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, in November 2018. Here, participants once again were very keen to tell their stories and reported that they found the process cathartic. This has led to Object Stories, a series that includes the voices of these participants and develops an ethical approach to co-researching to produce insights into the challenges that transplant patients and their families face.
| 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 |
