Heartbeats in the Arts : The Pulse of History

Abstract

The heart has long been a recurrent motif in paintings, drawings and sculptures, yet its actual physiological functioning is rarely represented. Heartbeats (the contractions of the heart) and the pulse (the force of blood flow through the arteries) are signs that show the work it does rather than depict the heart per se. Technoscientific advances in monitoring heartbeats and pulses in the nineteenth century—such as René Laennec’s stethoscope, Étienne-Jules Marey’s sphygmograph and chronophotograph, and Willem Einthoven’s electrocardiograph—transformed the movements of the heart into audible and visual representations and in turn, transformed humans into technological entities. Artists would later recognize in the language of these scientific technologies a way of mingling the inner with the outer, the physical with the technological, and data with flesh. Artworks using heartbeats were most importantly manifested in media arts, conceptual art, works in music and sound, installations and performances starting in the late 1950s, with an increasing frequency to the present. Scientific and medical instrumentation combined with time-based media and events (texts, durational performances, film, video, audio, digital technologies, etc.) in important works by Yoko Ono, Mark Boyle, Joan Hills, Heinz Mack, Brian O’Doherty, Allan Kaprow, Éliane Radigue, Jean Dupuy, Linda Montano and Teresa Burga incorporated heartbeats and pulses, a legacy continued by Catherine Richards, Mona Hatoum, Sasaki, Christian Boltanski, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, among other artists. These works reveal the heartbeat as a catalyst for complex entanglements between technology, corporeality, and ontology that demolish binary thinking. Despite the abundance of artistic activity and the centrality of heartbeats as our most vital sign, Heartbeats in the Arts is the first historical study of ‘heartbeat artworks’ over that last half-century. Using archival research, interviews and correspondence, the thesis describes works in detail, discusses their contexts and development, and examines the larger classes and contours of this neglected area of artistic activity.