Fracking the Body
Fracking The Body is a new work-research project about ways our body heals from surgery and its connection to our region's hydraulic fracturing--Fracking. We let others cut, go in, move, remove, add, subtract, re-create and replace our inner bodies; sometimes with much intent and choice, but often without attention about the actual actions that take place to the surrounding systems, and the healing of those systems toward full recovery. For example; to remove the uterus in a hysterectomy, a surgeon may need to cut through layers of skin, muscle, fat, fascia, nerves, lymph nodes and move muscles, intestines, stomach and other parts of our inner body to do the work - this creating a need to restore complex body mechanisms that will re-establish our body to full capacity and heal it.
The similarities of processes, between medical procedures to our inner body and what is happening to our eco-system during the extraction of natural gas from our near-by Marcellus Shale deposits is the focus of my current work. I am at the beginning stages of this new project, I call it Fracking: the Body. It is a research, photography, systems study, personal examination, material exploration, drawing, archiving and open dialogue project with the intent to bring forth a new body of work and the re-construction and healing of our body, mind, land and eco-systems.
