The Mutable Archive Brings Arts Research into Dialogue with Medical Humanities

Organized by Associate Dean of Research and Innovation Jesse Colin Jackson and  Director for the Center of Medical Humanities, Dr. Kelli Sharp, the Feb. 12–13 xMPL program features Patricia Olynyk and Adam Hogan in a two-day expanded cinema event

UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts will present The Mutable Archive: A Cure for Immortality, an expanded cinema installation and performance work that examines how unstable narratives shape what we accept as truth. Organized by UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts Associate Dean of Research and Innovation Jesse Colin Jackson and Director for the Center for Medical Humanities, Dr. Kelli Sharp, the program is supported by UCI Illuminations and the UCI Center for Medical Humanities and will take place Feb. 12–13 at the UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts Experimental Media Performance Lab (xMPL).

“The Mutable Archive asks us to sit with uncertainty, and to notice how quickly we fill gaps with assumptions,” said Jackson. “By bringing artistic practice into dialogue with medical humanities, ethics, and the politics of evidence, this event shows what research can look like in the arts: rigorous, collaborative, and deeply human.”

Written and edited by media artist Patricia Olynyk and produced and directed by Olynyk and Adam Hogan, The Mutable Archive: A Cure for Immortality is a collaborative, trans-disciplinary multimedia installation that asks what unstable narratives can reveal about truth. Drawing from photographs housed in anatomical museums, the project pairs skulls marked by post-mortem inscriptions with archival cards containing only fragmentary information about the subject. Working from these partial records, Olynyk invites collaborators across fields to write and perform speculative narratives, foregrounding how assumptions and subjectivity shape what we accept as knowledge.

The main performance will take place on Thursday, Feb. 12, from 5:30–7:30 p.m., beginning with a reception at 5:30 p.m. that welcomes attendees into the installation environment. At 6 p.m., Hogan will activate the installation through a live diffused electroacoustic score that incorporates narrative monologues. At 6:30 p.m., a panel discussion will bring the artists together with invited UC Irvine respondents to consider questions of evidence, ethics and interpretation. The discussion is aligned with critical fabulation, a concept developed by scholar Saidiya Hartman.

A matinee screening will take place on Friday, Feb. 13, from 1–2 p.m., followed by an informal Q&A with Olynyk and Hogan. This secondary screening is oriented toward students and class participation, offering additional opportunities to engage with the installation and its research questions.

The Mutable Archive is significant for how it connects the history of anatomical collecting and medical display to present-day conversations around colonial violence, race, gender, class disparity and cultural bias. Rather than treating archives as neutral, the work highlights uneven documentation and the enduring impacts of taxonomic thinking, including early eugenic frameworks. In the spirit of UCI Illuminations goal of creating meaningful arts experiences for students across majors, this event demonstrates how creative practice can sharpen critical inquiry and deepen understanding of how institutional records might be approached with greater care and accountability. 

This event is the first of two planned arts-centered medical humanities collaborations with Washington University in St. Louis under the initiative, The Role of the Arts in Medical Humanities. In Fall 2026, members of the UC Irvine medical humanities community will travel to St. Louis for a second symposium event organized in part around Jackson’s Marching Cubes.

Event Information

Free Admission
Reception and main performance: Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026, 5:30–7:30 p.m.
Matinee performance: Friday, Feb. 13, 2026, 1–2 p.m.
Venue: Experimental Media Performance Lab (xMPL)
Presented in collaboration with: UC Irvine Departments of Art and Drama

This is a free event and open to the campus community. Advance registration is recommended. Register here to attend The Mutable Archive: A Cure for Immortality.