Breaking Flesh: Performance, Anatomy, Memory

Elina Gertsman

Date:	04-05-2012
Time:	4:30 pm to 5:30 pm
Location:	Clark Hall, Room 206
Registration:	Registration is Closed.

In his Christmas sermon Puer natus est nobis, Jean Gerson, the outspoken chancellor of the University of Paris, raged against a vile statue he saw in a local Carmelite church: a sculpture of the Virgin whose body split open to unveil the Trinity placed within. Gertsman will explore one such statue — the so-called Shrine Madonna — within the context of late medieval mnemotechnic discourses, anatomical and childbirth treatises, and performance practices that foreground obsession with uncanny anthropomorphic puppets. Through her study of Shrine Madonnas, Gertsman will explore the processes of empathetic beholding of a performing object, which both controls and is controlled by the viewer.

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