From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
The Makeshift Clinic
This article documents the 2022 Sydney instantiation. The work has been adapted for multiple venues since; see Immersive works and Beach Surgery for the complete list.
A participatory immersive work occupying an unfurnished 1960s suburban house in Marrickville for three months. Visitors (booked in small groups) moved through minimally transformed rooms: a fold-out medical stretcher in the living room; a field of bandages and gauze in the kitchen; a bedroom where a live performer sat wordlessly on a mattress; a hallway filled with low-frequency humming. Rather than narrate the novel, the installation created sensory and emotional de-familiarisation. Drawing on immersive-theatre and participatory art traditions, as well as Australian site-responsive practice, the suburban interior—a space of privacy, domesticity, unease—became the site where surgical touch and recurrence could be felt as bodily phenomena. A live performer, present in one or two rooms per session, might offer a hand to hold, guide visitors through corridors with eyes closed, or simply sit present. No script governed interaction; the performer's cues came from the visitor's pace and presence. Critical responses diverged sharply: some praised the ethical attention to vulnerability and disabled embodiment—the refusal of narrative, the non-hierarchical encounter—while others found it unsettling, raising questions about consent in immersive contexts.[1] The work enacted, spatially and temporally, what the novel calls the wound's slow opening.
See also
- Immersive works and Beach Surgery
- Participatory art and Beach Surgery
- Durational performance
- Consent and immersive art
- The surgical caress
References
- ↑ Artforum Australia, ██ , October 2022.