Thinking with the Heart
Professor Susan Brain analysing samples to determine levels of markers associated with heart failure
CAREFUL WHISPER is a new feminist intervention that brings together the expertise of artist and sociologist Professor Nina Wakeford (Goldsmiths) with King’s professors Anne Pollock (Global Health & Social Medicine) and Susan Brain (School of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine & Sciences). We spoke to Nina and Anne about their collaboration, and how a feminist perspective can point toward new ways of doing science.
Tell us more about your collaboration
Careful Whisper is a feminist science and technology studies (feminist STS) encounter with cardiovascular science. We will be tracking current controversies and emergent ideas. Some of the most significant developments in this field are happening here at King’s, such as debates around the efficacy of stents.
The project draws on Anne’s article Heart Feminism which applies a feminist STS lens to cardiovascular physiology. Feminist STS is a multi-disciplinary and dynamic field, which has reconceived how we think about the brain, the gut, and of course breasts and uteruses.
We want to explore how the heart is and has been characterised in medical science. The heart is both electric and hydraulic, and cells can beat in unison with other heart cells. Each representation suggests a different model of thinking. For example, how would we think differently about the heart if we thought of its cells as contagious?
Anne, you have argued that we are in “the age of the brain”. What can a heart-centred approach offer to our understanding of bodies and personhood?
In general, our way of life assumes that personhood is located in the brain. In fact, when the beginning of life is the foetal heartbeat, and the end of life is brain death, this is more ambiguous. In everyday experience, we can feel a heartbeat of someone intimate (whether a lover or a child), so the ‘age of the brain’ doesn’t quite capture how we experience our bodies and personhood.
Feminists stress the need to understand ourselves as embodied humans navigating the world. A numbers-driven analysis isn’t always the answer to figuring out the best way forward. We need to think about humans (and animals) in space, in relation, in community. Historically many voices and experiences have been systematically ignored or silenced by medicine. Turning away from the brain and towards the heart might refocus our attention on particular kinds of inequality and marginalisation.
Careful Whisper is a great name. Why did you choose this?
We are interested in the kinds of noises which scientific authority makes or doesn’t make. We wouldn’t normally assume that scientific knowledge would be shared with a soft intimacy! Also ‘whisper’ brings breath and heartbeat together. We use the word ‘careful’ to acknowledge the complexity that a feminist lens can bring.
This is your latest collaboration that explores how gender interacts with science and technology. What can performance and artistic creation bring to this field?
We previously collaborated on a project about hormones for Science Gallery London’s 2020 season GENDERS, where Nina brought drag kings to endocrinology labs, and endocrinologists to drag king shows.
Anne shared her expertise in all of these encounters. The resulting artworks offered scientists another way of asking questions about the norms of gender and science. This time, driven by the debates that occur in cardiovascular science at King’s, we plan to develop soundscapes from what we encounter in the laboratories. Together art and feminist STS can create something that might touch the limits of what is knowable. But we also hope that these encounters might inform the practices of those working in all the fields involved in the project.
What can visitors expect from your takeover at Science Gallery London?
You can expect sonic experiments drawn from our encounters in the cardiology labs. We will be informed by Nina’s apprenticeship with a feminist music improvisor who has been working with free vocal improvisation since the late 1970s. We will be sharing our investigations - not what we literally hear, but how and when sense is made.
CAREFUL WHISPER is on display in the Takeover Space from 18 June – 3 August.