I T U Installation by John Wynne/Tim Wainwright part of Deep Wireless festival May 28, 2008

"I T U " by John Wynne and Tim Wainwright
May 28 - June 8, 2008, opening May 29th 7-9pm (FREE)
Gallery 1313, 1313 Queen Street West, open Sunday - Wednesday, 1-6pm

In the ITU (Intensive Treatment Unit), where this piece was shot, both the sound and the treatment are intense. When a patient is wheeled in from the operating theatre, curtains are drawn around the bed for the sake of privacy, and to minimise potential distress to other patients as the newcomer is attached to various monitors, pumps, suction devices and drips. But the curtains do nothing to attenuate the sound; indeed they heighten auditory sensitivity and arouse the imagination. ITU patients spend much of the time heavily sedated on strong pain killers, and they often suffer from paranoid, sometimes violent hallucinations, moving in and out of consciousness amidst what anthropologist Tom Rice has called the “cacophony of disease”.

Official Website: http://www.naisa.ca/deepwireless/Installations.html#itu