#10

This procedure may best be understood as notes towards a film about withholding.

1. A volunteer will be selected from a pool of applicants, gathered through the usual means (advertisements in the classified section of newspapers, online forums, the bulletin boards of laundromats, etc).

2.The volunteer must consent to be filmed for an unbroken period of no less than two hours. During this time, on of his limbs will be withheld from him. For purposes of this procedure we will assume the limb to be the right arm; in practice any limb can be used. We suggest that the arm be withheld through the simple process of tying it behind the back of our volunteer in a brace, but any other measure (deadening the arm with a local anesthetic, for instance) taken may be used so long as this measure fulfills the following criteria -- it must be temporary (so no amputation), and it must not significantly affect any other portions of the volunteer's body (it should not be a drug that would act on his entire nervous system, for example).

3. The camera crew following him as he moves through his day, minus one arm, will make sure to carefully track all of his movements and interactions; the volunteer will be instructed to move through his life during this portion of filming exactly as he would if he were not being filmed, and one of his limbs was not presently restricted. These instructions will be more or less impossible for the volunteer to carry out "to the letter," but we will consider the intention of carrying them out to be our primary concern.

4. The filmed footage will be logged, with careful notations describing the setting and actions. The footage and notations will then be given to another camera crew, who will operate under a different state of instructions. To whit:

5. This camera crew will follow the actions of another volunteer. This volunteer must be recruited based on the following criteria: they must be missing, through whatever means, the very same limb withheld from our first volunteer; in this case, they must have no right arm, from the shoulder on down. This volunteer will also view all of the tapes and notes, and be given this task -- dressed in black from head to toe, like a kuroko stage hand in a kabuki drama, they will be given a prosthetic limb to replace the one that is missing; they will proceed to act out the motions of the first volunteer in perfect symmetry, except that they must complete all actions of the missing arm as if the arm had been there all along. The camera crew will be instructed to follow the arm above all, including the world apart from the arm only as much as is needed for context.

6. All footage used for the final, edited version of this film will be the footage shot by the second camera crew; the footage shot by the first will be placed in storage and forgotten. Edited into the form of a 90 minute feature, the footage will be accompanied by the testimony of prominent neuroscience experts asked to explain "the inner life of the arm, from moment to moment," and by a soundtrack consisting entirely of the prosthetic arm played as a percussion instrument.