Soma

Overview

“Soma” presents an archaic language of bodily symptoms. In comparison with contemporary medical symptomatology more dependent on quantitative measures, this archaic language of the human body and its suffering seems equally, but more qualitatively, observant. “Soma” goes further, however. These language-encodings of symptoms – Soma’s micro-narratives of pain – must be injured in their turn by the lexical confusion of jokes. The video, “Soma”, was made in 1988 on a Chyron text generator, a hybrid analog-digital device commonly used at that time in television studios and public access cable facilities such as the one in Lockport, New York, where I was able to try one out. “Soma” was originally to be one of a series based on 19th-century medical symptomatology, but this is the only one that was completed.