Output details

Measures of Bodies

Developing ideas first explored in ‘Smudged’ [Output 2], ‘Measures of Bodies’ examines how the design of an exhibition and the curatorial and choreographic process of selection may affect an individual’s understanding and experience of both the exhibition and of themselves. Commissioned by the European Academy of Childhood Disability to form part of their 22nd International Annual Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference, ‘Measures of Bodies’ comprised a site-specific exhibition of original artworks and a performance that engaged directly with the contents of the Museum of Medicine, Brussels.

It responded to what is known in medical science as the ‘deficit model’, challenging both the museum’s preoccupation with scientific explanations that represent disability as ‘wrong’, and by questioning medical understandings of disability. Instead, Fox introduces a counter discourse about individuality and identity by providing a creative and conceptual structure through which able-bodied artists, artists with disabilities and audiences could explore ideas about what such exhibits might say.

Mirroring the various specimen jars found within the museum, Fox invited members of the Rocket Artists and University of Brighton staff and students to fill a specimen jar with autobiographical information and objects. These were placed within the museum, locating individual ‘jar’ representations among the exhibits. The installation was complemented by the ‘Jar-dance’, a live site-specific performative experiment, which drew on Darwin’s theory of natural selection; it used posture, props and plinths to reinforce the blurring of boundaries between the artists and the objects, and which Fox made accessible to artists with disabilities through a narrative of ‘yes and no’ and ‘calm-to-catastrophe’.

The findings of this project have been subsequently presented at three conferences in Prague (2011), Leicester (2012) and Lancaster (2013), and have led to both Fox: Output 1 and the establishment of a partnership with Grundvik Foundation. SEE DIGITAL OUTPUT.