Split-screening the Body: Intermedial Epistemic Practices in Neurology

Among all medical fields, epileptology – a sub-field of neurology that studies epilepsy – maintains a particularly close historical relationship with audiovisual media. Film, television and video have played a threefold function in epileptology: as a primary etiological cause of pathologies, as object of study, and as instrument of research. This paper will present a cross-section of some of the epistemic tools and media practices used in 20th century neurological research in order to reflect on the role of intermediality within medical science.

In its quest to make the brain legible, neurology has been very adept at appropriating, inventing and reassembling a range of moving image media. The techniques and technologies have involved not only reconfigurations of conventional media such as film, video and photography, but also a broad range of other, less usual light-emitting, light-projecting and light-modifying devices. Many of the procedures developed in the context of brain research have also resonated outside of it, leaving an indelible mark on the history of cinema and video art more broadly. Conversely, historical epileptological media dispositifs not only passively represented bodies under what Lisa Cartwright has termed the ‘neurological gaze’, but often actively disturbed their corporeality. Bringing these intermedial practices into view can allow us to explore novel ways of writing archaeologies of the moving image.