The Doctor-Ate, the Body : P H A R M A K O N

Formal play, in writing and image, is the basis of a doctorate exploring mimesis and the problem of tech, (and its relation to the text and image). The work reveals that the difficulty is caught up in a foundational paradox, explored through the form of the pharmakon, (whose status is both medicine and poison).

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The work takes, as its subject, modern science and tech know-how, (now disconnected from notions of spirit—or mind as an aspect of the material—present in pre-modern alchemical understanding), which appear to have, through their materialist vision, born with them a disregard for the living substance of the earth, in its being, and a forgetting of the innate intelligence of mortal forms.

In the research-fiction they are viewed as a form of writing upon the world. Rather than simply providing that which fulfils the needs of the body, contemporary science and technology are seen as having flipped into the role of Plato’s image maker, or grapher, and are not seen to merely reveal what ‘is’, allowing us to perceive a singular true picture, but rather act as an inscription (cut out of/derived from and expressed through the world), which corresponds to a simultaneous concealment of what is (or what might be).

It is this objectification, without self-reflection, which corresponds to a failure, to perceive depth beyond a projected (mental) image, and may be viewed to have allowed for the scale of the unconscionable horrors of a contemporary which sees no wrong in the plunder, surveillance, brutalisation and massacre of earthly life, (and the mediation of the perception of these actions), for the sake of power, and control.

If the human animal is indeed lost inside the image inscription, there is the need for a coming into consciousness, to see images at work, to see language and its machinations, to witness the inscribing of perception, in order to become, in some way, free of them.

The artwork is considered a tool for reflection, beyond the limits of current orthodoxies, and intends to open up a portal for reflection upon form. To contrast those forms, which seek to uncover a ‘true’ or verifiable, picture of the world, (though without reflecting on the form(s) used to produce them), with those forms which intend to present an image, alongside a reflection upon the same image being made.

The work is, at its foundation, is a reflection upon form, through form, (perceived through the form of the mind-body, directed towards other mind-bodies) whose ‘knowledge’, is not reducible to a systematic interpretation. Though it counters the ‘objectivity’ of the methods of the scientific, it nevertheless intends to find a form for reflection, not simply to the point of instability, but in a way that allows us to perceive a ground.

The reimagining of historical painting becomes a means for reflection upon the paradoxical beauty of the image, and the systemic violence (past and present) that it may serve. The sublimated horror of the image becomes a call to an awakening of consciousness; the activation of a sensibility able to perceive life, beyond the earthly paradox; a foil to the sacrifice of tech and the image inscription.

[Practice-led PhD, Royal College of Art, London, 2026]