Earth Bodies: The Poison Cure

The recursive cycling through living things of earthly minerals, constitutes our own bio-minerality, signalled by the re-emergence of fields like Medical Geology (the metallurgist Paracelsus is here owed a great debt), forging links between bodily and earthly ‘health’, proximal basilean heritages of the bodies of knowledge from which strange strands of both earth and human sciences derive. The word “recursion”, with its origins in the “cure”, speaks to potent recoveries from illness or suffering, as well as the expiration and exhaustion that results from a mis- or over-applied antidote.

On the 14th of December the Pharmacy Museum in Basel, Switzerland will host a discussion event and presentation, culminating in experimental physical-chemistry demonstrations of alchemical processes.

Martin Howse and Jamie Allen from the project Shift Register, along with Dr. Flavio Häner and the Museum staff and researchers, invite you to investigate with them how human media, technological and infrastructural activities have marked Earth’s body, effected its health, and the health of its resident bodies.

5:00-5:30
Introduction to Museum and Themes

5:30-5:45
Shift Register

5:45-7:00
Pharmakologies: Terra Sigillata, Geognostics, Historical Geology, Medical Geology

7:00-7:30
Refreshments

7:30-8:00
Demonstration/Performance