Lachgas

For a long time, the fear of surgery was closely linked to the fear of pain. Pain that could lead to people dying of shock during the operation. The possibility of surviving an operation in temporary unconsciousness without pain was a milestone in the history of civilisation, a leap forward innovation. Alongside diethyl ether, which was used by William Morton, nitrous oxide is one of the earliest anaesthetics. As nitrous oxide has no side effects, it is still used today on a situational basis. Although Morton's discovery of general anaesthesia made medical history, surgical procedures remained the exception for a long time due to the high blood loss of patients. The breakthrough came with the discovery of the AB0 blood group system in 1901 by the Viennese pathologist Karl Landsteiner, which made the first canned blood transfusion possible in 1914 and saved the lives of millions of people during the First World War. Regarding the title of her installation, Manon says: ‘The word laughing gas has a double meaning. It's something very scary and at the same time something funny. And I find this interplay exciting.’ [1] These are atmospheric keywords for this spatial installation. A hospital bed stands in the centre, raised on a plinth with light bulbs running around it. The image of a pedestal in a table dance bar, immortalised in art history by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, comes to mind. In addition, the chessboard-patterned floor has a vibrating, one might even say hypnotising psychedelic effect when viewed intensively. At the edge of the ‘sickroom’ is an old-fashioned, elegant clothes rack on which a dazzling yellow party dress had to be slipped off its glamorous wearer – at least for the time being. In her art, Manon often thematises the connection between body and soul, often via the diversions of eroticism. The nightclub setting now heightens and eroticises the hospital bed. Any viewer could lie on this bed, lost in thought, and whoever is lying on this bed is the centre of the action. But this ‘stage’ is always associated with a deep loneliness. For many, being ill means being dependent on care and attention in an unpleasant way. The cultural critic Susan Sontag, who had suffered from cancer herself, summarised the aspect that this concerns us all in her groundbreaking essay ‘Illness as Metaphor’. Her point was not that illness is a metaphor, but that its reality must be named [2]: ‘Illness is the night side of life, a rather troublesome citizenship. Everyone who is born has two citizenships, one in the realm of the healthy and one in the realm of the sick. And even if we all prefer to use only our good reputation, sooner or later each of us is forced, at least for a while, to identify himself as a citizen of that other place.’ [3] Manons installation raises numerous questions about what the space should look like for us when we are ill, so that we do not simply feel at the mercy of others, but can also gain trust, strength and confidence. How are hospital rooms designed today? Consider the new development of the university hospital under the aegis of Christ & Gantenbein.[4] Is Manons ‘Lachgas’ a tableau, a fictional performance, a sculpture, or all of these at the same time? The artist once formulated an uplifting conclusion from this multi-perspective image of the hospital bed, which we are basically all familiar with, as follows: ‘I always have to make something good out of my negative experiences, to perform a creative act. I have no other choice. That has been essential for survival since the beginning, the only viable path.'[ 5] Source