Toronto artist Andy Patton’s account of breaking his back was adapted to performance by Judith Doyle in 1981. Mounted at the now-legendary Funnel Experimental Film Centre in Toronto, “Transcript – On Pain” was presented in the form of recorded voice-over with slides of text. Andy Patton described his trauma with extraordinary clarity and insight. For “the last split second,” Judith Doyle uses her original voice recording from “Transcript” as a base for imagery. Glass shatters into light. A hospital corridor is reframed into the “tunnel vision” of shock. Medical scans, anatomical drawings, and animations of the brain and spine reveal luminous details within the body. Meanwhile, a hospital worker uneasily removes a brace from a patient’s skull with a standard-issue hardware store screwdriver. As the story moves from shock to pain, we return to the collision scene and to personal identity and history.
