Watching – an opera for children, about sleeping
As the first spring bulbs start to push through the soil and signal that the time for hibernation is over, throw off the lethargy of winter and explore some of the fantastic Wellcome-supported events that are on this month. For those of you not quite full of the joys of spring just yet, there are also plenty of online options to tantalise you and get the cogs whirring again…
Exhibitions
Forensics: The anatomy of crime – Wellcome Collection, London – until 21st June
Our latest free exhibition explores the history, science and art of forensic medicine. It travels from crime scenes to courtrooms, exploring the specialisms of the people involved in the delicate processes of collecting, analysing and presenting medical evidence. It draws out the stories of victims, suspects and investigators of violent crimes, and our enduring cultural fascination with death and detection. The exhibition is free, but timed tickets will be in operation at busy times.
The Institute of Sexology – Wellcome Collection, London – Until 20th September
From Alfred Kinsey’s complex questionnaires to the contemporary National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal), ‘The Institute of Sexology’ investigates how the practice of sex research has shaped our ever-evolving attitudes towards sexual behaviour and identity. The exhibition is free, but timed tickets will be in operation at busy times.
Unseen: The Lives of Looking – The Queen’s House, Greenwich, 5th March-26th July
Contemporary artist Dryden Goodwin creates his first feature-length film, considering the act of looking. Charting a series of close encounters by the artist, the film focuses on three individuals with a particular relationship to looking: a planetary explorer, an eye surgeon and a human rights lawyer. The artist’s own gaze reflects on their endeavours, through his intense drawing and filmmaking activity. The solo exhibition will include drawings produced during the production of the film, as well as artefacts used by all four lookers in their work.
Roman Medicine Roadshow – Big Bang Fair, Birmingham – 11th-14th March
The Roman Medicine Roadshow, explores the science of medicine, bones and healing in the Roman world. This exhibition allows participants to take part in Roman surgery, explore the science of bones and take part in a CSI-style investigation to solve a gruesome 1st century murder… The exhibition will be part of the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham, the largest celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths for young people in the UK.
Lens – Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge – 16th-21st March
Glass artist Livvy Fink and poet Ezra Rubenstein have come together through a collaboration between the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy and Cancer Research UK, to present a series of works exploring the relationship between macro-structures and micro-structures. The works are inspired by the most distant galaxies and the cells within us, frozen moments occurring somewhere between liquid and solid states, where light is diffused through a myriad of intricate surfaces, suspended within glass.
5Hz – Arnolfini, Bristol – 20th March-6th April
5Hz is an interactive exhibition that invites audiences to experience a new human language, by imagining an alternative evolution of voice and creating a language that strengthens human connection. Interactive events and installations will include live choral performances and a sound chamber where visitors can try the language themselves. There will also be a programme of workshops, activities, talks and discussions that will explore aspects of human voice. 5Hz is is the result of a collaborative research process with psychologist Laurence White, cognitive neuroscientist Nina Kazanina, and musicologist Emma Hornby.
LIFELOGGING – Science Gallery, Dublin – until 17th April
A lab in the Science Gallery exploring new ways to track everything from heartbeats to heartbreak, this free exhibition features novel methods for capturing and visualising data, people and the impulses connecting them. Each week, different researchers will takeover the post in the gallery to carry out an analysis on topics such as the size of our digital footprint.
Welcome back, Medicine Man! – Wellcome Collection (permanent exhibition)
After a curious journey of redevelopment, we are delighted to re-open the ‘Medicine Man’ gallery at Wellcome Collection. Avid collector Henry Wellcome created one of the world’s great museums: a vast stockpile of evidence about our universal interest in health and the body. Come and explore a cross-section of extraordinary objects from his collection, ranging from diagnostic dolls to Darwin’s walking stick, and from Napoleon’s toothbrush to George III’s hair.
Performances
Fiction – Battersea Arts Centre – 3rd-21st March
Fiction is the second performance by Glen Neath and David Rosenberg using binaural sound and absolute darkness. It is an anxious journey through the sprawling architecture of our dreams and an exercise in empathy.
This Room – various venues – 16th March-24th May
In This Room, theatre-maker Laura Jane Dean reveals the actualities and artefacts of a therapeutic process. Working with neuroscientists and a CBT therapist, Laura attempts to understand what it means to be ill, what it might mean to get better and invites us all to ask ourselves, “am I okay?” The next performance is at Cambridge Science Festival on 16th March, followed by the Maudsley Hospital in London on 15th April.
Watching – Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh – 18th-21st March
Watching is a new opera, which is aimed at families in Edinburgh. An exciting collaboration between academics, scientists, theatre practitioners and primary schools, Watching will raise awareness of the links between sleep and academic performance. In a series of workshops, children will explore sleep from historical, biomedical, musical, dramatic and literary perspectives, and rehearse a new opera, culminating in four full-scale performances open to the general public.
Shh…BANG! – various venues – 29th March-27th May
A delicate dance-theatre performance for ages 3+, playfully exploring silence and noise. “Quiet” lives in a muffled world of clouds and softness. Next door, “Loud” collects more and more noises and wild sounds. In drawers and suitcases there are boings, splashes, bangs and swooshes. How can these two possibly find a way to listen to each other? Shh… BANG! is created by Peut-etrre Theatre.
Phoenix Dance: Tearfall – various venues – until 28th May
Tearfall is an exploration of science through dance, inspired by the biochemical make up of tears, and how their appearance and composition is affected by different emotional states. It looks at the differences between how tears function and how they are perceived, asking why we cry, and what happens when we laugh until we cry? The next tour date is 3rd March at the Curve Theatre in Leicester.
Events
Biophilia screening – London Electronic Arts Festival – 6th March
Bjork’s Biophilia Live will be screened at the London Electronic Arts Festival as part of ‘Beats on Film’, and will be followed by a panel talk: ‘Technology and Electronic Music: Past, Present and Future’, with Will Gregory (Goldfrapp), Freida Abtan (Music Computing, Goldsmiths), and Guy Harries (Music Technology, UEL).
Awake – Oxford Science Festival – 9th March
Awake explores the findings of the largest ever study of awareness during anaesthesia through music, poetry and discussion in an evening to challenge your very concept of consciousness. Featuring a panel of experts from medicine and research as well as a poet and a composer, who have put together a new musical work based on actual patient experiences of awareness under anaesthesia.
What makes you laugh and cry? – Science Museum, London – 11th March-18th April
How do you feel when you hear someone laugh or cry? Do you sometimes find yourself joining in? Go along to Live Science at the Science Museum, where the new researchers in residence from University College London discover more about how we respond to other people laughing and crying. Live Science is part of the Who Am I?
What is Evidence? – Wellcome Collection – Thursday 12th March, 7pm-8.30pm
A discussion event on what counts as ‘evidence’ in a courtroom. Do forensic scientists, lawyers and the public all have the same understanding of truth and reasonable doubt? Does our notion of ‘evidence’ change over time? A conversation on how objects, witnesses and science fit into the legal process.
Sexology Season Brighton and Manchester – 2nd-25th March
We are partnering with the SICK! Festival in Brighton for the next part of our national Sexology Season. The eclectic programme (including theatre, dance, film, literature and debates) will explore to what extent we are free to explore and enjoy our sexual desires and how much our experience is affected by social codes and personal fears. The Manchester Season also continues until 30th March.
Packed Lunch: Child health – Wellcome Collection – 18th March, 1pm-2pm
Simon Cousens is the lead investigator on a research project in Burkina Faso, West Africa, which aims to investigate how mass media campaigns could improve the health of children under five. Can public health messages really make a difference? Join Simon to hear how the work is going and for a broader discussion about applying statistics to neonatal and child health in low-income settings.
Madness in Civilisation – 25th March, 6.30pm-7.30pm
For the 2015 Roy Porter Lecture, pre-eminent historian of psychiatry Andrew Scull will discuss the history of the encounter between reason and unreason. His lecture will focus on the 18th century, reflecting the interests of the late medical historian Roy Porter, and will look at the ways cultures responded to the seemingly irrational, psychotic and insane.
Library Insights: Graphic sex – Wellcome Collection – 26th March, 3pm-4pm
A taste of sexuality, sexism, censorship, gender identity and sexually transmitted diseases in comics, pulps, graphic novels, magazines, undergrounds, comic strips and postcards, from Aubrey Beardsley’s ‘Lysistrata’ and the ripped shirts of ‘Doc Savage’ to Adam Hughes’s ‘Wonder Woman’ and gay marriage in ‘Astonishing X-Men’.
A Long Table on the Ins and Outs of Sex – Wellcome Collection – 26th March, 7pm-9pm
Conceived by Lois Weaver and inspired by Marleen Gorris’s film ‘Antonia’s Line’, the Long Table is an experimental open public forum that’s a hybrid of performance, installation, roundtable discussion and dinner party, designed to facilitate dialogue by gathering together people with common interests.
Online
Mosaic – compelling stories about the science of life
Celebrating its first birthday this month, Wellcome Trust’s long-form publication Mosaic has more than 50 critically acclaimed features and documentaries exploring the hot issues in science, life, medicine and health – with a new story every week.
The Collectors
A new immersive digital story about the pursuit of knowledge and the compulsion to collect, following Mindcraft: A century of madness, murder and mental healing. The Collectors traces the history of six collectors – including John Tradescant, Francis Bacon, Marie Stopes and Henry Wellcome – whose curiosity drove them to accumulate objects, information, knowledge and notoriety, with some extraordinary consequences.
Sex by Numbers
Based on data from the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal), our interactive infographic invites you to playfully explore these enlightening stats about sex. Have a play with the stats and tweet your results #sexbynumbers
Mind the Sex
As part of our national Sexology Season, Manchester-based women from the Seymour Poets worked with poet and stand-up comedian Jackie Hagan, illustrator Emma Brown Owl and researcher Kathryn Abel to explore sex, mental health and wellbeing and express their insights in a set of digital and printed postcards.
Still on…
History is now: 7 artists take on Britain – Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre – 10th Feb-26th April
In the first ever exhibition in an art gallery to investigate bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and its impact, Turner Prize nominee Roger Hiorns curates a section of History Is Now at the Hayward Gallery. Hiorns provides an artistic exploration of the disease and its human equivalent, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) incorporating biomedicine, agriculture, animal husbandry, food production and consumption.
Investment – Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool – until 15th March
Grab your last chance to see Tabitha Moses’ exhibition, ‘Investment’, which has been extended until March due to a fantastic visitor response. The exhibition is based on Tabitha’s experience of infertility, assisted conception, and successful donor egg IVF.
Brainsex – until 10th April
Timandra Harkness’s Brainsex comedy show starts a UK tour from 20th February, with the first show in Belfast.
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