The fabulously named Congress for Curious People get physical with Art Macabre, academics and anatomy.

Make your way up the vertiginous winding staircase of the atmospheric Old Operating Theatre – the oldest in Europe, in the roof space of an English baroque church – for a night dedicated to Spectacular Anatomies.

First, join Art Macabre for a drawing workshop in which you will have the opportunity to draw a real life Anatomical Venus. Drawing materials provided by Cass Art (pencils, charcoal and drawing boards). Bring along a sketchbook/paper.

Following, enjoy two illustrated talks on the human body as spectacular object with; Anna Maerker, Senior Lecturer, History of Medicine, King’s College London  AND

John Troyer, Deputy Director, Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath, who will give a talk entitled ’Spectacular Human Corpses: Looking at Death, Seeing Dead Bodies’.

Nineteenth century preservation technologies radically changed and mechanically altered the human corpse, producing new kinds of postmortem conditions for all dead bodies. These technologies of preservation effectively invented the modern corpse; transforming the dead body into something new: a photographic image, a train passenger, a dead body that looked alive. These technological innovations were also used by early twentieth century postmortem technologists to turn the preserved human corpse into a dead body that was atemporal.

Once the human corpse could exist outside the normal biological time that controlled the body’s decomposition, it became a well-suited subject for unfettered public display. These technologies augmented how an individual could see the dead body and in ways that we living humans still use today (albeit without noticing) when looking at death.