Salk Institute

The video work 'Salk Institute' sits within a larger body of works that utilize the human body as a research tool of modernist architectural spaces. The way in which actor Regan Linton, who is paraplegic, moves across the Salk Institute plaza brings up issues and expectations around accessibility and purpose-built space related to the disabled body. By choreographing the other/handicapped/dis -abled body, Henthorn readdresses notions of physical capacity and affordance*. Tokenism and marginalization and can be eschewed simply by the way a built space is engaged kinesthetically by an other-abled performer. By discovering how otherability can expand the meaning of physical, cultural and social spaces, we can begin to take this on as a choreographic objective. *According to J.J. Gibson, affordances are what our environment provides each individual in terms of the possibilities of action and movement ('The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception', Lawerence Elrbaum Associates, New Jersey, 1979, p. 127). Please note: higher resolution version of the video available

The Salk Institute was founded by Dr Jonas Salk, credited with the polio vaccine. Dr Salk worked closely with architect Louis Kahn on this commission for this biomedical research institute.

This intervention is performed by actor Regan Linton, who has paraplegia beginning at the fourth thoracic vertebrae. The asymmetrical quality of her movement in contrast to the symmetry of the architecture motivated this performer-site pairing and this brought up interesting questions regarding the influence of Salk’s research on the building project.

Presented as a video, the footage was edited together with dancer and architect Shireen Talhouni. The video challenges the habitual response to the disabled body and heighten the viewer’s experiencing of gravity and its defiance.