Beauty & Destruction: Artistic and Scientific Perceptions of the Body
Part of the Under Glass season in Salford.
Presented in association with Manchester Science Festival 2017.
Manchester Museum, Kanaris Lecture Theatre
The University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester, M13 9PL
Tickets: £5/£3
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The ways in which we perceive bodies has been explored extensively in medicine and art and continues to be a rich source of interest and fascination. Inspired by Under Glass, this discussion draws perspectives from a long-running debate about whether probing, understanding and knowing more about things expands or destroys their aesthetic value.
Some have divided art and science suggesting that art favours contemplation and even beauty. Whilst science, through its relentless pursuit of knowledge, tends to scrutinise and deconstruct. Yet, humanity is often located within medical laboratories, just as destruction holds currency within art. In this panel discussion, we ask how these different ways of looking at the body can work against or alongside each other, and by extension how they affect our experience of health and illness. Chaired by Daniel Glaser, Director of Science Gallery at King’s College London, with speakers from the fields of arts and medicine.
Speakers include:
Paddy Hartley – Artist and Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Tissue Engineering & Biophotonics King’s College London.
Suzy Willson – Artistic Director of CLOD ENSEMBLE & Performing Medicine, and Honorary Professor at Barts and the London Medical School of Medicine and Dentistry.
Michael Brown – Historian of Medicine and Fellow of both the Higher Education Academy and the Royal Historical Society.
Book tickets to the 8pm performance of Under Glass at The Lowry after this workshop.
