You've likely noticed that we've been on bit of a hiatus - but we're still committed to the Drawing Blood project and we're hoping to come back with a new season soon! In the meantime, we're on the lookout for someone to help us outfit the pod with new music as we move forward. If that's you, get in touch with us at [email protected] for listening! Keep sharing with your friends and enemies!

Emma and Christy discover Margaret Watts Hughes's beautiful 'voice figures', a series of images made through the direct action of her voice between 1885 and 1904. In this episode, we discuss the earliest sound recordings, scientific 'instruments' (it's a pun), cat pianos, severed ears, occult science, seaweed scrapbooks, women in STEM, logos and the word of God, visualising the invisible, the Little Mermaid, clairvoyant research, 'thought forms' and the death agonies of pigeons, science and feeling, and why sonic media is always already haunted.

Emma and Christy watch David Cronenberg’s 2022 film Crimes of the Future, exploring the themes of this work while also connecting to some of the director’s earlier movies. In this episode, we discuss the fears and the pleasures of the human body and cutting into it; surgery as sex; Cronenbergian body horror; the monstrous as art; being and becoming cyborgs; evolution and pain; technology as prosthesis; the posthuman; contemporary performance art (good and bad); the cosmetic gaze; the body as text; and meaning making.CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE IMAGES WE DISCUSS, as well as complete show notes, references, and suggestions for further reading.MEDIA DISCUSSEDDavid Cronenberg, dir., Crimes of the Future (2022)First scene with boy playing on beach, cruise ship overturned in waterSaul Tenser in the Orchid BedTVs showing ‘BODY IS REALITY’ during Saul and Caprice’s performanceScuttling, insect-like bureaucrats of the National Organ RegistryBureaucrat of the National Organ Registry telling Saul that ‘surgery is new sex’David Cronenberg, dir., Crash (1996)Saul Tenser in the BreakFaster ChairSaul Tenser’s facial expression at the end of the filmGian Lorenzo Bernini, The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa (1652)David Cronenberg, dir., Videodrome (1983)The hand-gun in VideodromeDavid Cronenberg, dir., The Fly (1986)Odile (decorative surgery) performance artKlinek (ear man) performance artORLAN, The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan (1990-1993)Stelarc, Ear on Arm (2007 - )The Swan reality show (2004)The autopsy scene Follow our Twitter @drawingblood_Follow our Blue Sky @drawingbloodpod.bsky.social‘Drawing Blood’ cover art © Emma Merkling, image courtesy of the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive, and Aesthetic SurgeonsAll audio content © Emma Merkling and Christy SloboginIntro music: ‘There Will Be Blood’ by Kim Petras, © BunHead Records 2019. We’re still trying to get hold of permissions for this song – Kim Petras text us back!! 

Emma and Christy present a brief history of tattooing in Europe. We talk tattoos as art history; sailors and soldiers; the archival (in)visibility of tattoos; the ‘Cook myth’, colonial contact, and contagion; syphilitic tattoos and pathologisation; working class bodies; tattoos and material culture; criminal anthropology; pain; the skin ego; danger and deviance; the limits of interpretation and (il)legibility of signs; ‘fugitive’ images; pilgrim tattoos; and art histories from below.

In this episode, Emma and Christy look at the complex paintings of the Spanish-Mexican Surrealist painter Remedios Varo (1908-1963). During our conversation, we discuss female alchemists, artist’s studio-as-laboratory, science and occultism, the overlapping practices of spiritual and material transformation, Carl Jung and esotericism in psychoanalysis, the Fourth Dimension, ‘objective art’, and alchemical androgyny.CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE IMAGES WE DISCUSS, as well as complete show notes, references, and suggestions for further reading.WORKS DISCUSSEDRemedios Varo, Useless Science, or The Alchemist [or, La Mujer Alquimista] (1955)Example illustration of a Rube Goldberg Machine (1931) Evelyn De Morgan, The Love Potion (1903)Remedios Varo, La Llamada (The Call) (1961)Remedios Varo, Creation of the Birds (1957)Albrecht Dürer, Saint Jerome in His Study (1514)Adriaen van Utrecht, Still Life with Parrot, or Allegory of Fire (1636) David Teniers the Younger, The Alchemist (1650)Kati Horna, Portrait of Remedios Varo in her Studio (with crystal on easel) (1963)Remedios Varo, The Juggler (The Magician) (1956)Remedios Varo, Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst (Could Be Juliana) (1960)Marc Chagall, Homage to Apollinaire (1911-1912)Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915-1923)Remedios Varo, Harmony (1956)Example of an alchemical androgyne from Aurora consurgens (15th century)Remedios Varo, The Escape (1961)REFERENCESCaitlin Haskell and Tere Arcq, Remedios Varo: Science Fictions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023)Sven Dupré, Laboratories of Art: Alchemy and Art Technology from Antiquity to the 18th Century (London: Springer, 2014)Pamela Smith, ‘Laboratories’, in The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 3: Early Modern Science, ed. by Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 289–305Mary Anne Atwood, A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1918 [1850])Pamela Thurschwell, Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 1880–1920 (Cambridge University Press, 2001)Carl Jung, On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena (1902) Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy (London: Routledge, 1980 [1944])Linda Dalrymple Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (Boston: MIT Press, 2018)Charles Howard Hinton, The Fourth Dimension (London: George Allen, 1912)George I. Gurdjieff, In Search of Being: The Fourth Way to Consciousness, ed. Stephen A. Grant (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2021)Salomon Trismosin, Splendor Solis (1582)FURTHER READING Tere Arcq, ed., Five Keys to the Secret World of Remedios Varo (Mexico City: Artes de México, 2008)Micah James Goodrich, ‘Trans Animacies and Premodern Alchemies’, in Medieval Mobilities: Gendered Bodies, Spaces, and Movements (London: Springer, 2023)Emma Merkling, ‘Physics, Psychical Research, and the Self: Evelyn De Morgan’s Spiritualist Portraits’, Art History 46.3 (2023): 458–83You can read more about Emma’s project on alchemy here!Mark Morrisson, Modern Alchemy: Occultism and the Emergence of Atomic Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)Ricardo Ovalle, et al., Remedios Varo: Catálogo Razonado / Catalogue Raisonné (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1994)Lawrence M. Principe, ‘Alchemy I: Introduction,’ in Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism (London: Brill, 2005), 12-16Arturo Schwarz, ‘Alchemy, Androgyny and Visual Artists,’ Leonardo 13, no. 1 (Winter 1980), 57-62Pamela Smith, The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1994)Remedios Varo, Letters, Dreams, and Other Writings, trans. Margaret Carson (Cambridge, MA: Wakefield Press, 2018)

Emma and Christy watch Julia Ducournau’s first feature film, the cannibal coming-of-age body horror flick 'Grave' (or 'Raw'), 2016. In this episode, we cover cinéma du corps and New French Extremity, empathy and monstrosity, the horrors of being a girl, the horrors of being in a body, eating disorders, veterinary science, ‘being meat’ and becoming animal, vegan cinema, self control, desire, and what it means to be a moral cannibal — and a moral subject.

Emma and Christy look at dental phantoms — terrifying but ubiquitous tools in dental education since the nineteenth century that feature humanoid heads made out of metal or wood, and a gaping mouth full of teeth. With these objects as our starting point, we talk about why dentists and dentistry are so scary, collectors of vintage medical devices, mouth erotics, the history of simulation and ‘machines’ in medical education, ghosts of the face and the word ‘phantom’, faciality and animality, face transplants and facelessness, dental horror (particularly Little Shop of Horrors) and fetish, and teeth as ‘luxury bones.’CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE IMAGES WE DISCUSS, as well as complete show notes, references, and suggestions for further reading.MEDIA DISCUSSEDColumbia Dentoform Corp of New York, Mid-century Dental Phantom Head Model on Custom Stand (c. 1960s)Agent Gallery Chicago, ‘Dental Phantoms’Agent Gallery Chicago, Group of Dental Phantoms, KaVo Professional Dental Phantom Simulation (twentieth century)Brian Kubasco, Steampunk Skull Dental Manikin Oxygen Version 6 (2013)Constantin Brancusi, Sleeping Muse (1910)‘Teeth on a Stick’ Dental Phantom: E. Oswald Fergus, ‘Neue Erfindungen und Verbesserungen - Zahnaerztiliches Phantom’ (1894)‘Skull’ Dental Phantom: Eduard Fleischer, Ein zahnaerztliches Phantom (1878)‘Wig Maker Model’ Dental Phantom: Utrecht University Museum Collection, Phantom Head (late 1800s)‘Realistic Face’ Dental Phantom: Utrecht University Museum Collection, Phantom Head (date unknown)‘Realistic Face (contemporary)’ Dental Phantom: Unknown, Dental Phantom Head and Rubber Shroud (1990s)ASMR cavity removal example (2022)Example of memento mori painting: Edwaert Collier, Vanitas (1663)Fox Photos / Getty Images, ‘Two trainee dental hygienists operating on a dentist's dummy’ (1960)‘Xenomorph’ from the film Alien (1979)‘Demogorgon’ from the show Stranger Things (2016)Madame du Coudray, Obstetric Phantom / Machine (mid-eighteenth century)Koichi Shibata, Geburtshülfliche Taschen-Phanome (1892)Kevin James Thornton video: Tammy the Face Ghost (2024)Mark Gilbert, ‘Saving Faces’ series (1999)ORLAN, Surgical Series (1980s/1990s)Frank Oz, dir., ‘Dentist!’ from Little Shop of Horrors (1986)Gore Verbinski, dir., Dental Scene and Mouth Scene from A Cure for Wellness (2016)The animal mouth the dentist shows Seymour in Little Shop of HorrorsThomas Rowlandson, Transplanting of Teeth (1787) CREDITSFollow our Twitter @drawingblood_Follow our Bluesky @drawingbloodpod.bsky.social ‘Drawing Blood’ cover art © Emma MerklingAll audio and content © Emma Merkling and Christy SloboginIntro music: ‘There Will Be Blood’ by Kim Petras, © BunHead Records 2019. We’re still trying to get hold of permissions for this song – Kim Petras text us back!!

Surprise — it’s a minisode! In our very first interview, historian of early modern mining Dr Gabriele Marcon (I Tatti / Harvard University) shows Emma and Christy a painting from early modern Spanish America. Join us as we learn about the erotics of mining, the power of menstrual blood, early modern medicine, female alchemists, the long history of women’s invisible labour, elixirs of life, midwifery, and (somehow) Mount Rushmore.

Emma and Christy look at Alfred Gilbert's sculpture Mors Janua Vitae (c. 1905–1907) at the Royal College of Surgeons, London — a life-sized bronze which houses the remains of the couple Edward and Eliza Macgloghlin. We talk relics and transi tombs; Victorian atheism and the history of unbelief; cremation, miasma, and lead-lined coffins; books bound in human skin; Victorian sex (and free love!); affairs between artists and patrons; Welsh druids; paganism; birth control and the throuple; infidel feminism; and abolishing the family.

Emma and Christy use Eugène Grasset's lithograph Morphinomaniac (1897) as a starting point to talk about artistic depictions of morphine and historical opioid addiction, as well as decadence and degeneration in fin-de-siècle Parisian society. In this episode, we cover vampires, hypodermic syringes, Orientalism and Japonisme, 'dangerous' women, masturbation, pleasure, and sex work, true crime waxworks, and gendered consumption — of women, goods, and drugs.