Anatomical Minutiae and Cannular Self-experimentation

Abstract

This article focuses on anatomical minutiae: small physical processes or features, as seen through micro-scale interventions on the author’s body. These include the sprouting of a begonia seed inside a tear duct and the extracorporeal circulation of blood through non-mechanized processes. Drawing from self-experimentation as an embodied research practice, this article explains how ocular germination and autologous transfusion are possible via the use of standard stainless-steel cannula, such as hypodermic needles and ophthalmological applicators. The repurposing of these medical devices expands on French philosopher Gilbert Simondon’s formulation of ‘techno-aesthetic objects,’ a means from which to appraise the physical and physiological limits of a human body in relation to an external machine. In so doing, this article identifies how cannular self-experimentation holds subtle yet effective potential for intrabody repositioning in artistic and scientific contexts alike, all while occurring primarily in a space less than a millimetre in breadth.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my appreciation to Florence Jung and Dr H. H. F. (Bert) Derkx for their careful reading of the final version of this text, as well as for providing important suggestions that contributed to its improvement.

Notes

1 A highly detailed exposition on the British development of the gauge is provided by Velkar (2012). For an article on the development of the hypodermic needle, see Iserson (1987).

2 The following are the future websites for Inoculate and Punctum: http://manual.vision http://vascular.systems

3 All versions of Punctum were made possible through ongoing collaboration with Jelle de Wit, medical resident at the Academisch Medisch Centrum (Academic Medical Centre) in Amsterdam, and benefited from the professional advice of Dr H. H. F. (Bert) Derkx.

4 Additional details on Julian Fabricius and the aforementioned artists are included in Gómez López (2019).

5 For further information on Alexander Bogdanov, see Krementsov (2011) and Voehringer (2007). See also Forssman (1974).

6 Although not a cannular self-experiment involving her circulatory system, Marianna Simnett’s The Needle and the Larynx (2016) also bears mention. This video shows the artist receiving a Botox injection to her cricothyroid muscle in order to lower her vocal pitch to a traditionally masculine range.

7 Allusions to the term likely evoke Roland Barthes’s study of punctum and studium in his book Camera Lucida (1981 [1980]) or Walter Benjamin’s Little History of Photography (1999 [1931]).

8 Simondon was not solely a theorist but a hands-on tinkerer. He built a television receptor while teaching at a French lycée and drew up applied experiments in the Laboratory for General Psychology and Technology at the Université Paris V – René Descartes, which he ran from 1963 to 1983. See Simondon (n.d.).