ABSTRACT
This text centres upon a 45-minute site-specific performance, Xenograftie (Artificial Sorrow), which took place at the leprosy museum in Bergen, Norway, in 2013. The performance creates a lens to view how bodies pressurised by sickness are further stripped of autonomy when medically claimed as automatic research donors. It explores central characters and subject positions in the nineteenth century that were pivotal in the understanding and treatment of leprosy. These subjectivities are creatively interwoven with the artist’s own experience at a young age of medical institutions. It brings into focus how medical procedures sometimes run ahead of ethics with both noble and base intentions to end suffering and win accolade. At the core of the text lies the potential for historical medical trauma to transition into a culturally significant event. In a knotty relationship with following beneficiaries of medical advancement, it raises to the surface the troubled experiences of usurped bodies and collateral damage that underpins their gain.
