Indelible evidence

Fabrica presents three or four exhibitions a year, working to locate contemporary art within the broader spectrum of people’s lives by creating projects with artists that explore ideas, questions, dilemmas and perspectives in ways that engage the whole person and are of interest to a broad audience. ‘Indelible: Every Contact Leaves a Trace’ provided the opportunity to present artists’ work within the framework of an art/science interchange, which has been an exciting and relatively new departure for Fabrica, and provided the opportunity for new kinds of creative partnerships and educational experiences for our audiences, staff and volunteers.

Indelible, which included anexhibition, artist residency and one-day conference, took Dr Edmond Locard’s exchange principle as a starting point. His idea, that whenever two surfaces come into contact, a transference of material takes place, laid the foundation for modern forensic science and coined the phrase “every contact leaves a trace”. Carole Hayman’s film installation ‘No-one Escapes’ and textile pieces by Shelly Goldsmith provided the main visual elements of the exhibition. Alison Fendley, a Senior Scientist with the Forensic Science Service, and Anna Motz, a consultant Clinical and Forensic Psychologist in Oxfordshire NHS Trust, shared their work and thoughts through  commissioned texts and discussion.Dance artist Charlie Morrissey also worked alongside the exhibition Investigating the exchange that takes place in our bodies between perception, emotion and anatomy through a series of movement-based discussion events in the gallery.

Since Locard’s time, developments in biomedical science have significantly enhanced forensic scientists’ abilities to reveal previously ‘invisible’ evidence.For example, Low Copy Number (LCN) DNA profiling utilises very low levels of DNA, perhaps from just a few cells, to produce a profile that can be used as evidence. Forensic scientists have begun to store evidence they are currently unable to process, believing
that future techniques will enable them to revisit it. The idea that aspects of the person can be both proved and
imagined to be present in trace evidence is central to the work of both Shelly Goldsmith and Alison Fendley.
Goldsmith uses textile materials and processes as a metaphor for how psychological states, emotions and
memories might be made visible in cloth. Part of Fendley’s work involvesattending crime scenes to undertake blood pattern analyses in order to provide a picture of what has happened or to see if the pattern ‘fits’ with a suspect's version of events. In Motz and Hayman’s work, ‘Locard’s principle’ is proposed as a predominantly psychological trace. Hayman observed how habitual contact with serial killers, and the circumstances of their actions left indelible psychological scars not only on victims and the relatives of victims but on the professionals too.

Working with Charlie Morrissey has heightened the learning experience ofthe exhibition. Charlie uses the genre of contact improvisation, based on the physical contact between dancers, which makes them concentrate on the flow of energy that results from the pressure and shifting of weight as they touch each other. The dancers remain incontact during the entire performance, forming a surprising variety of body links. During his residency Charlie wrote a blog, worked with gallery volunteers and created a space in the gallery for visitors to find out and contribute to his thinking process. He also undertook a series of public dialogues with other movement-based practitioners (Aikido instructors, parkour practitioners and dancers) exploring “the body as a place of exchange”, and involving simultaneous talking and moving as the method of communication. Charlie’sinvestigation of Locard’s principle, both as a way of thinking about the body and the work of the visual artists and scientists, articulated many aspects of this complex project in an immediate and accessible way.