1914FACES2014 project report University of Exeter 1914FACES2014 aims to analyse how the mutilated face of soldiers injured during the Great War influenced medical practice, social and political history, the arts and philosophy. In particular, we consider how the radically new forms of surgery pioneered during WWI owe a debt to artistic practices and practitioners and, conversely, how the cultural legacy of les gueules cassées continues to shape our experience and perception of disfigurement. The 1914FACES2014 research project is funded by the EU scheme INTERREG IVa, for cross-border cooperation, and brings together a UK team led by Professor David Houston Jones, University of Exeter and a French team led by Professor Bernard Devauchelle, Institut Faire Faces (lead partner), who carried out the world’s first partial face transplant in 2005. French partners include the Historial de la Grande Guerre and the Université de Picardie Jules Verne, along with the UK charities Saving Faces and Changing Faces. 1 CONTENTS page Summary…………………………………………………………………………………………………2 Summary of Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………...3 Objectives……………………………………………………………………………………………….4 Outputs………………………………………………………………………………………………….4 Publications…………………………………………………………………………………….4 Educational Resources……………………………………………………………………….5 Research Workshops…………………………………………………………………………6 Representing and historicising les gueules cassées……………………………..6 The face and the passions…………………………………………………………..8 Facial difference and social (re)integration……………………………………….9 Visual testimony and the archive………………………………………………….11 Conference…………………………………………………………………………………..15 Exhibitions and artist in residence…………………………………………………………17 Project team……………………………………………………………………………………………21 Appendices…………………………………………………………………….………………………25 Photography: Suzanne Steele, Cristina Burke-Trees, Mark Austin 2 Summary 1914FACES2014 takes the experience of the facially injured soldiers of the First World War as the starting-point for an enquiry into disfigurement in the broadest sense, arguing that facial injuries in 1914–18 led to both unprecedented innovations in the surgical field and to permanently changed understandings of the face. Just as artistic practice fed into surgical practice (in the work of sculptors as mask-makers or epithesists), so the radically new forms of surgery developed at this time changed the context in which artists represented the face. Looking at art-works and historical objects from the early twentieth century to the present day, we consider both the unique historical situation of facially injured soldiers in World War One, including the complex question of their social (re)integration, and the long-term cultural legacy of that situation. Summary of Conclusions Disfigurement and Society Despite the advances represented by the Equality Act (2010) in the UK, much work remains to be done concerning perceptions of disfigurement. Questionnaires filled in by members of the public during the touring exhibition suggest a gulf in understanding between those well-informed about disfigurement and, on the other hand, others whose knowledge of the subject is minimal. The former group shows both a lack of familiarity with disfigurement as a social issue and limited awareness of how to approach it. Data from the questionnaire, and from that concerning the exhibition Faces of Conflict, suggest that exhibited works and objects contributed to raising such awareness, with many visitors commenting on changes in perception resulting from their viewing of the material. Experimental work in social psychology carried out in the course of the project suggests a further gulf between perception and action. Although many participants ‘knew what to do’ when meeting a person with a disfigurement, in some cases their actions did not bear out this knowledge. In some individuals, the prospect of an imminent encounter with a person with a disfigurement produced cognitive depletion. As well as changes of perception when disfigurement is encountered, changes in behaviour are needed. These findings were put into dialogue with a parallel enquiry conducted by psychiatrists into self-perception of individuals living with a disfigurement. Representing Disfigurement Perceptions of disfigurement are bound up with cultural representations of the face. As the work of UK charity Changing Faces demonstrates, negative and stereotypical representations of disfigurement continue to be made. Challenging such representations remains an urgent priority. Perceptions are simultaneously bound up with long-standing cultural traditions of facial expression and beauty, and these are shaped by the evolution of visual media including painting, photography and film. Understanding these media is key to understanding, and reconfiguring, contemporary perceptions of disfigurement. 3 The enquiry conducted within FACES begins in the first two decades of the twentieth century, but also acknowledges the ongoing role played by nineteenth-century (and earlier) understandings of the passions in early twentieth-century culture. Research workshop presentations have encompassed Duchenne de Boulogne’s work on facial physiology; the connections between this work and photography; the photographic history of facially injured servicemen; the representation, and failure to represent, disfigurement in film during and following WWI; wounded faces and changing norms in the visual arts during and following WWI; and the ways in which visual norms and media continue to be challenged and defined in the century following WWI. Contemporary art, in particular, returns repeatedly to the subject of the gueules cassées in the early years of the twenty-first century. The insistent presence of this subject within contemporary art and literature indicates a deep-seated anxiety concerning the face in contemporary society. Objectives This report details the ways in which the project responds to the overarching objective of INTERREG IVa, to build an attractive region to live in and to visit, by means of Specific Objective 7: shared cultural and heritage-related activities. In particular, the project aims to: -Enhance knowledge of the disfigured soldiers of the First World War by means of a a transdisciplinary and transgenerational approach; -Capitalize on and disseminate the many items available on the subject from documentary, artistic, societal and medical perspectives -Promote integration and understanding of the disability linked to disfigurement -Improve integration of people living with disfigurement. Outputs All of the proposed outputs have been realised and are detailed below. Project outputs take the form of research publications; educational resources; research workshops and conferences; exhibitions. These outputs are complemented by public engagement activities; websites and social media activity; and by concerted attention to the project’s legacy. Our commitment to produce collective research publications takes the form of the following outputs: Books David Houston Jones and Marjorie Gehrhardt, Paddy Hartley: of Faces and Facades (London: Black Dog, 2015). Published. Includes documentation of Hartley’s work as 1914FACES2014 and original research by Jones and Gehrhardt. Journal of War and Culture Studies, special issue, Assessing the Legacy of the Gueules cassées: from Surgery to Art, ed. David Houston Jones and Marjorie Gehrhardt. Includes 5 journal articles of original research by members of French and UK teams of 4 1914FACES2014 plus Introduction by Jones and Gehrhardt. All articles submitted; peer review ongoing. Schedule: peer review completion September 2015; acceptance following revisions by December 2015. Marjorie Gehrhardt, The Men with Broken Faces: Gueules Cassées of the First World War, under contract, Peter Lang, Oxford. Research monograph. For submission July 2015. Publication scheduled 2016. Bernard Devauchelle and Sylvie Testelin (eds.), 1914FACES2014 : La défiguration et ses héritages. Edited volume including articles by members of French and UK teams. In progress. Articles Marjorie Gehrhardt, ‘Le soldat blessé et soigné’, in Philippe Nivet, Coraline Coutant-Daydé and Mathieu Stoll, eds, Archives de la Grande Guerre: des sources pour l’histoire, for the Service Interministériel des Archives de France (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2014), pp. 183-90. Published. Marjorie Gehrhardt, ‘Wounded soldiers’ (2 catalogue entries), in Hélène Guillot, ed., Images interdites de la Grande Guerre (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2014). Published. Marjorie Gehrhardt, ‘Henriette Rémi, Hommes Sans Visage’, Social History of Medicine, 28, 1 (2015), 210 (book review). Published. ‘"Sourire quand même’’ : La reconstruction des Gueules Cassées de la Grande Guerre en France et en Grande-Bretagne’. Submitted, Revue d’Etudes Anglaises et Nord- Américaines. David Houston Jones, ‘Re-examining the Gueules cassées: the medical gaze, the archive and contemporary artistic responses to facial injury’. Under consideration, Social History of Medicine. Readers’ reports received. To revise for publication by September 2015. ‘From Commonplace to Common Ground: Facial Injury in Kader Attia’s Continuum of Repair’, for Journal of War and Culture Studies, special issue, Assessing the Legacy of the Gueules cassées: from Surgery to Art, ed. David Houston Jones and Marjorie Gehrhardt. Submitted, May 2015. ‘Shepherdson’s Aftermath: Facial Injury, Memory and the Problematics of Touch’, for Bernard Devauchelle et al (eds.), 1914FACES2014: