An except from Virilio, P. (1994). The Vision Machine. (Trans. Julie Rose). Bloomington, Il; Indiana University Press, pp. 1-2. 'The arts require witnesses,' Marmontel once said. A century later Auguste Rodin asserted that it is the visible world that demands to be revealed by means other than the latent images of the phototype. In the course of his famous conversations with the sculptor, Paul Gsell remarked, apropos Rodin's 'The Age of Bronze' [available to view here] and 'St John the Baptist' [available to view here] , 'I am still left wondering how those great lumps of bronze or stone actually seem to move, how obviously immobile figures appear to act and even to be making pretty … [Read more...] about The truth of movement in sculpture
Anatomy – old and new
The human body has fascinated people for as long as we have had recorded history, but never more so than over the last 400 years. Since the Renaissance, artists, performers, and natural philosophers (who would later just be called 'scientists') drew their inspiration from the mysterious inner workings of the body. There's some great recent writing about the history and philosophy of anatomy, including studies of anatomy in Britain from 1700-1900 (MacDonald, 2014), critical analyses of anatomy lectures (Frieson and Roth, 2014), and Andreas Vesalius's public anatomy lessons (Shotwell, 2015). But there are also two new resources on the web that I came across recently that are quite amazing … [Read more...] about Anatomy – old and new
Re-inventing artisans for 21st century health care
Each day over the next week I'll post up an abstract for a paper being presented by a member of the Critical Physiotherapy Network at the In Sickness and In Health conference in Mallorca in June 2015. (You can find more information on the conference here.) Re-inventing artisans for 21st century health care By David Nicholls Calls for health professionals to be more than ‘technical rationalists’ have been prominent in professionalization literature for more than half a century. Professions with a strong history of skills-based competence have struggled more than most to respond to these calls. Those that have been heavily influenced by biomedical discourses - professions like … [Read more...] about Re-inventing artisans for 21st century health care
Artisan practitioners
It's been a very busy few weeks. AUT students have finished all their exams and we're nearly done with all the marking and exam board reporting. I step down from my role as Head of Department at the end of the year, so there is a lot of tidying up to do. I've also just put the finishing touches on a book chapter that I've written for Franziska Trede and Celina McEwan's upcoming book Educating the deliberate professional: Preparing practitioners for emerging futures, which will be published by Springer and will hopefully go to print early next year. The book is going to ask some important questions about the past, present and future of professional practice, particularly about the need … [Read more...] about Artisan practitioners
ISIH conference abstracts submitted
I've decided to submit two abstracts for the ISIH conference next year. The first follows some work I've been doing for a chapter I'm writing for an upcoming book by Franziska Trede and Celina McEwen titled 'Educating the deliberate professional: Preparing practitioners for emergent futures', and looks at the historical role played by artisans and whether professions like physiotherapy might find some meaningful and interesting ways to reinvent this role in 21st century health care. This is the first abstract: Re-inventing artisans for 21st century health care Calls for health professionals to be more than ‘technical rationalists’ have been prominent in professionalization … [Read more...] about ISIH conference abstracts submitted