Archaeology of Desire #2, Adrien Sina Foucault Museum – a history of medical gaze & flesh
	Archaeology of Desire, Adrien Sina Curated by Victoria Golembiovskaya, director of the House of the Nobleman NEO-Bankside, Pavillion C, 19th Floor, Apt 1901 50 Holland Street, London, SE1 9FU (near Tate Turbine Hall) Private view: 9th October (Frieze week) Wednesday 10th October – Saturday 10th November 2012 by appointment only visit@houseofthenobleman.com Archaeology of Desire is an extensive body of research which explores present culture, its historical roots and new ethical challenges. Our civilisation is questioned through its waste or infamous matter (infâme), through the history of madness and sexuality, redefining the political power through its relation to discipline, surveillance, biopolitics or life-control, through normalisations of the deviant... With the Archaeology model elaborated by Michel Foucault, representations, writings, images, objects or spaces are considered themselves as discourses obeying rules. Another conceptual and artistic strategy then becomes possible: a re-writing (réécriture), a systematic rule-based transformation of what is written, drawn or displayed. Anatomy of gaze and touch, 2003-04 Anatomy of gaze and touch will interrogate the invention and schematisation of the ecorché within its own histories of representation: Andreas Vesalius, Amé Bourdon, Jacques Gamelin, Govard Bidloo, Gérard de Lairesse, Albrecht Dürer... reinscribing the ecorché - the lost, skinned figure from classical paintings - in a theatre of desires expressed by looks and touching body parts. The artist functions as both comparitive anatomist and art historian: this project requires further systematic development. Strangely autoerotic, anatomical man with his exposed muscles and intestines, his poses snatched from far-off mythological scenes, functions as a figure of scientific instruction in a blank space. Repeated from various viewpoints, the figure turns from frontal to profile view. The superimposition of these anatomical plates restore strange narratives of passion, alerting us to the expressively of a hand reaching out to touch, a finger placed upon a sex. ‘Science’ rediscovers the language of desire which provoked the first anatomical questions; neutral backgrounds become an intersubjective field traversed by beckoning gestures which control a space now pregnant with meaning. Hypotheses of homosexual encounter broach forbidden territory, and are given graphic power with the intermingling of yearning looks and delicately touching hand. Intimate Landscapes, 1999-2003 These exquisite landscapes originated deep in the sexes of once-identified women: smears on glass made in the 1970s, forgotten in the cellars of a Brussels clinic. Each smear is unique; the medical gesture and the choice of colour stain become an imaginary calligraphed portrait of a woman perhaps inspired by her outward being and her body at its most intimate. Neural Landscapes, 2011 Gyri of the primitive brain, the limbic system and the neocortex Just as with bonsai trees, or rock gardens, these Neural Landscapes are dedicated to meditation. Without histological observation, we would never imagine that the instinct-related gyri in the human brain are so confined, so tortured, while the cognition-related gyri are so spread out, so calm and peaceful... Sections of the various stages of brain evolution – the primitive, limbic and the neocortex - are presented here using the same scale, inviting us to question our behaviour and the origin of our actions. While historically the vanitas make us think about death and the vanity of life, the Neural Landscapes make us think about life growing and evolving, about the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm, about the delicate equations which balances the ratios of intelligence and instinct, of visionary thinking and basic survival reflexes within our behaviour... The skull of the traditional vanitas gives way to gray matter, the container is replaced by the content. These are the vanities of life in its reversible flow. Note. The primitive brain or the reptilian complex, 400 million years old, governs primitive behaviour, basic needs, the survival instinct. The paleo-mammalian complex or the limbic system, 65 million years old, governs instinctive behaviour, emotions, reactions to stress. The human brain itself, the neocortex, 3.6 million years old, governs logical reasoning, language, acts of anticipation.  Endo-Exo-Planets, 2011 In the 1940s, Jethro Gough, developed a rarely used method of conservation, consisting in the application of an ultra-thin layer of an organ on paper protected by transparent film. The result looks like a piece of parchment upon which the flesh itself ‘draws’ the histological and anatomical details. The veins, arteries, folded tissues, filtering networks, excrescences become forms sculpted by forces just like the surface of planets in our solar system, or exo-planets in other galaxies. Once scanned at high resolution, processes of morphogenesis and erosion reveal an endo-landscape with intriguing shapes and a wealth of subtle details. A succession of discs cut from these plates, like pieces of orange peel, transform images into a mapping of unknown exo-planets: the extraordinary sense of accuracy seems to make them almost habitable. Geological formations such as mountain ranges, valleys, rivers, lakes, oceans, ice caps and even turbulent, corrosive or hospitable weather-formations seem to emerge where the cellular flesh has been subject to pathological violence or metabolic exhaustion. Volcano, 2004, video 16/9, 03:00 min Violent explosions... softer and tender eruptions... Volcano explores another point of view on orgasm after Valie Export, Annie Sprinkle and Vito Acconci, remembering the twofold lively and deadly dimesions it acquired in the HIV era. The anatomy of a volcano is close the anatomy of the male genitalia. The same complex structure of tubular conduits, chambers where the pressure is build up. The precursor signs before eruption, the viscosity or the fluidity of both magma and seminal liquid are unique and identify the geological formation or the body to which they belong. Deadly flows... The flow of lava could be deadly, contaminated, beyond the beauty of the spectacle. Beyond the visual fascination for the plumes and clouds of sperm, the same eruption could offer death or life, in a second... Volcanoes, violent agents of destruction, fertilize huge tracts of land for centuries with their ashes. Beyond the visual fascination, both flows of lava and sperm could offer death or life, contaminate, destroy or fertilize... Irruption of identity... The viscosity of the magma determines both the formation of the volcano and its associated activity. The viscosity or the fluidity of the sperm flows is also unique and specific to each male body... It can reveal age, states of stress or confidence, health or disease... The sound composed for Volcano preceds in intensity the sculptural formation of the flows. It follows the variations of bodily feelings under-control, whereas the moving images relate out-of-control climaxes. The disconnection between these two layers create a feeling of unexpectability and undeterminacy.... Mutant Flesh - Archaeology of Clinical waste, 2000 We, future genetic wastes. The more the body becomes clinically transparent the more the social corpus, culturally ritualised, is threatened, dislocated, atomised, and the more the play between identity and alterity is disturbed. The issues of wastes are crucial in this sense that our own body will be a waste of the «normality» which derives from the eugenic and technologised hygienism already in question in the selection of embryos according to their genetic provisional identity. With the cloning of human cells or organs, large parts of our genetic patrimony will be considered as pathogenic or as useless wastes. The histological exæresis will be relayed by the exæresis of the DNA, by the manipulation of the genome, if we are not assimilated into an embryonic or foetal waste before we are born. Adrien Sina is an artist and theoretician. He has curated cross-disciplinary exhibitions involving architecture, performance, video and philosophy: ‘Fugitive Fluctuations’ (1995); ‘Tragédies Charnelles’ & ‘Immanences Spatiales’ (2000); ‘Feminine Futures: Performance, Dance, War, Politics and Eroticism’ (2009) for Performa Biennial, New York, (published by Les Presses du réel, in November 2011). He was ‘Thinker in residence’ at London’s Live Art Development Agency, advisor for ‘PSi #12, Performing Rights Festival’ (2006); ‘Art, Lies and Videotape: Exposing Performance’ (2003), Tate Liverpool; ‘Futurism’ (2009), Tate Modern; ‘Traces du Sacré’ (2008) and ‘Danser sa Vie’ (2011), Centre Pompidou, Paris. ‘Archaeology of Desire’, solo exhibition, t1+2 artspace, London, 2005, followed by ‘Archaeology of Desire #2: Foucault Museum – a history of medical gaze & flesh’, NEO-Bankside, House Of The Nobleman gallery, London. Artist’s residencies: Villa Medicis hors-les-murs, Japan; Art Center Pasadena, exchange programme with Le Fresnoy; Clinique Antoine Depage, Brussels; Dora Maar House, Ménerbes - The Museum of Fine Arts Houston; UCL Art Museum - Pathology Collections, University College London. www.adrien-sina.net Acknowledgments / Remerciements Sally MacDonald, Director of UCL Museums and Collections Jayne Dunn, Collections Manager, UCL Paul Bates, Curator, Pathology Collections, UCL Antony Hudek, UCL Mellon Fellow (Translations/Transpositions) Isabelle des Ligneris  |  La collection de Madame L Sarah Wilson, Kamila Regent & Pierre Jaccaud, Galerie Kamila Regent
	© Adrien Sina