Medical performance and the ‘inaccessible’ experience of illness: An exploratory study

© 2016 Medical Humanities. All rights reserved. We report a survey of audience members’ responses (147 questionnaires collected at seven performances) and 10 in-depth interviews (five former patients and two family members, three medical practitioners) to bloodlines, a medical performance exploring the experience of haematopoietic stem-cell transplant as treatment for acute leukaemia. Performances took place in 2014 and 2015. The article argues that performances that are created through interdisciplinary collaboration can convey otherwise ‘inaccessible’ illness experiences in ways that audience members with personal experience recognise as familiar, and find emotionally affecting. In particular such performances are adept at interweaving ‘objectivist’ (objective, medical) and ‘subjectivist’ (subjective, emotional) perspectives of the illness experience, and indeed, at challenging such distinctions. We suggest that reflecting familiar yet hard-to-articulate experiences may be beneficial for the ongoing emotional recovery of people who have survived serious disease, particularly in relation to the isolation that they experience during and as a consequence of their treatment

In situ identification of Gram-negative bacteria in human lungs using a topical fluorescent peptide targeting lipid A

Acknowledgment to AAAS for publishing this manuscript with DOI 10.1126/scitranslmed.aal0033 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aal0033Respiratory infections in mechanically ventilated patients caused by Gram-negative bacteria are a major cause of morbidity. Rapid and unequivocal determination of the presence, localization, and abundance of bacteria is criti cal for positive resolution of the infections and could be used for patient stratification and for monitoring treat ment efficacy. Here, we developed an in situ approach to visualize Gram-negative bacterial species and cellular infiltrates in distal human lungs in real time. We used optical endomicroscopy to visualize a water-soluble optical imaging probe based on the antimicrobial peptide polymyxin conjugated to an environmentally sensitive fluoro phore. The probe was chemically stable and nontoxic and, after in-human intrapulmonary microdosing, enabled the specific detection of Gram-negative bacteria in distal human airways and alveoli within minutes. The results suggest that pulmonary molecular imaging using a topically administered fluorescent probe targeting bacterial lipid A is safe and practical, enabling rapid in situ identification of Gram-negative bacteria in humans.This work was supported by Wellcome Trust, the Department of Health Healthcare Innovation Challenge Fund (HICF-0510-069), and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration “Proteus” (EP/K03197X/1). The GMP activities were supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) BRC GMP Unit at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and NIHR Biomedical Research Centre based at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London

Acts of communion: encountering taste in Reckless Sleepers’ The Last Supper

An article about the aesthetics, politics and dramaturgy of taste implicit in Reckless Sleepers’ The Last Supper (2003). The authors explore notions of gustatory taste and the multi-sensory potential of serving food in performance and the ethics of (mis)representation of real life events; the assassination of the Romanovs and Che Guavara proving to be the most unreliable narratives. The piece sits between fact and fiction, the found and the fabricated, and is punctuated with the arrival of the real last suppers of convicted felons. The work speaks from a primarily western religious perspective, inspired by Da Vinci’s Last Supper (1498) and the act of communion that takes place in church services. In this way, it leans towards an occidental, spiritual notion of taste, where transubstantiation allows the rice paper script to become both the body of Christ and the symbol of his own last supper. Nietzsche’s notion of intoxication comes into play as performers and audience share wine, or blood, and drink to absent friends. The article proposes that the piece enacts a dramaturgy much like a meal, where conversation ebbs and flows, and a sense of togetherness, or act of communion, is engendered. The authors posit that the tacit contract with the audience is redrawn by food as both an aesthetic and dramaturgical encounter. As such, it becomes an invocation (or intoxication) of taste, mortality and last-ness that continues to resonate thirteen years after its devising. Both Pinchbeck and Westerside wrote about this performance when they first saw it at the same venue in 2006, both conducted interviews with members of the Reckless Sleepers, Mole Wetherell and Tim Ingram, for their ongoing research into dramaturgy, aesthetics and taste in contemporary performance. Now this research is woven together into a tapestry of reflections on the piece, a pentimento of memories

Time-sculptures of Terrifying Ambiguity: Staging Inner Space and Migrating Realities in Analogue's Living Film Set

This article examines Analogue’s Living Film Set, an interactive theatre piece which uses miniature film sets, multi-touch surface technology and live video feeds to reframe my semi-remembered memories from the mid-1980s as a collective participatory experience. Drawing on new wave novelist J. G. Ballard’s notion of childhood memory as ‘time-sculptures of terrifying ambiguity’ [Ballard, J. G. 1963. “Time, Memory and Inner Space.” J. G. Ballard website (originally published in The Woman Journalist Magazine). Accessed August 6, 2015. http://www.jgballard.ca/non_fiction/jgb_time_memory_innerspace.html], I will demonstrate how my childhood town of Shepperton has been overwritten in both Ballardian literary fiction and the incursion of cinematic artifice from the neighbouring activities of Shepperton Film Studios. I argue that the ambiguity of my recollections and the contamination of my lived history with ‘prosthetic memories’ [Landsberg, Alison. 2004. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York, NY: Columbia UP, 20–21.] has provided a creative space to re-enact the blended hyperreality of my early childhood through the work’s intermedial form. I will conclude by examining how the shifting reality status of the media used within the performance intersects with the notion of ‘time-sculptures’ and problematises what Carol Martin [(2013). Theatre of the Real. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.] has identified as ‘theatre of the real’

Five social science intervention areas for ocean sustainability initiatives

Ocean sustainability initiatives – in research, policy, management and development – will be more effective in delivering comprehensive benefits when they proactively engage with, invest in and use social knowledge. We synthesize five intervention areas for social engagement and collaboration with marine social scientists, and in doing so we appeal to all ocean science disciplines and non-academics working in ocean initiatives in industry, government, funding agencies and civil society. The five social intervention areas are: (1) Using ethics to guide decision-making, (2) Improving governance, (3) Aligning human behavior with goals and values, (4) Addressing impacts on people, and (5) Building transdisciplinary partnerships and co-producing sustainability transformation pathways. These focal areas can guide the four phases of most ocean sustainability initiatives (Intention, Design, Implementation, Evaluation) to improve social benefits and avoid harm. Early integration of social knowledge from the five areas during intention setting and design phases offers the deepest potential for delivering benefits. Later stage collaborations can leverage opportunities in existing projects to reflect and learn while improving impact assessments, transparency and reporting for future activities

Marine social sciences for the ocean we want

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