Body Worlds.....thoughts.

I was going to reply to Fi's comment in the little box, but I filled it up...so instead I decided on a copy and paste job:

I came out of the exhibition curiously unmoved and spent some time unpicking what the thought processes had been and why the reaction had been so flat.

Some of it was due to the ambiance - black backgrounds to show off the plastinates...this made a womb like quality to the exhibition and people were very much quieter than my previous experience of Body Worlds in Brick Lane. Whispered comments...quiet interaction. It was very different to the mirth and light I had witnessed in 2002 (I think that's when it was).

The other thing was that the venue (the O2 Dome) is/was just like a circus tent...this and the fact that some of the plastinates were encased in highly reflective glass cases - which reflected not only the plastinate that was enclosed, but also the onlooker and other adjacent specimines too - made the fairground/circus effect all the more surreal - it was sometimes almost like being in a hall of mirrors. This photo of an artist at work at the exhibition gives a taste of the reflections I refer to:






I think as a tool for medical students plastination is very valid........
BUT, on the whole, I think that the public market is a niche that has been jumped into and exploited without much thought as to the future.

Many plastinates are being produced - not only by the 'Body World machine', but other rival businesses....and they will be on earth for who knows how long. They will not decompose....they are truly non bio-degradable.

How will these plastinates be 'curated' in the future - what are the ethical/practical considerations behind this aspect of the legacy?

More interesting is the re-constructed concept of death being taught to a world wide audience. The didactic shows a clean, grief free demise...Death is displayed as upright, inert - having lost any abject or emotional quality.

We are told that death is represented in the exhibition, specifically by a plastinate shown walking up the steps of a tomb (designed after an anatomical image from the renaissance)......we are told that this makes us consider our own mortality...does it? Did it?

Don't get me wrong - the invention is brilliant - the positioning of the whole body plastinates is breathtaking - the anatomy very - very interesting.....well, for the likes of me, fascinating....but there is something missing.

From the perspective of someone who has had quite a broad experience of death......

Something really is missing.

Prof. von Hagens speaks of the "...need for unadultarated reality..."

I believe that the plastinates are, not unadultarated realities, but rather - as Bazon Brock terms "...real virtualities...".

Adittionally they might be seen in a way that Baudrillard used to describe onscreen or photographic images - as 'hyperreal'. They are indeed spectacular, however, they have lost the vital nature of death and sadly I think, we (the paying audience), have been lead to believe that it is not actually terribly important, it is something to wipe out and hide.

As such, the plastinates are works against death...they portray a skinned version of life and living, looking out at us and future generations through plastic eyes. They promise a new afterlife in a strange kind of posed limbo. These body donors, will become more like the people of an eternal carnival.

We learn about anatomy - possibly, but do we really learn about ourselves and our relationship with mortality?

I don't think so...I am with the little boy who shouts "look, the Emperor has got no clothes on..."

Happy Easter.....

I have been a bit quiet on the blogging side - but busy enough elsewhere.
Pink balls on the golf course show up better in the 'rough' than the others and essays have been flowing thick and fast out of the house.

Death - well, I have cared for a number of folk this year, but most of them have been very much alive and unlike the embalming clients, have asked for return visits. Looking after feet has been a pleasurable experience on the whole and I look forward to collecting more regular clients as time goes on.

What else has been happening?.......the usual - scrabble on FaceBook....and River of Life in Dorchester
which has proved to be a real joy.........it is so, so lovely to be involved in a church that doesn't consider a multifaith multi-path soul like me as a threat......in fact, I get to be involved on a very profound level, which makes me feel really humble and proud all at once! Somewhere buried on the site you even get to hear me preach, I have blogged about the AIDS service last December.

So, back to death. Hmm - I am currently writing about 'The Abject Didacticism of 'Body Worlds' and Bread Works'. Looking at Gunther von Hagen's plastinated corpses:
and the bread sculptures of Kittiwat Unarrom

This link is just one of many on the net - I just selected it at random as the pictures were quite fresh looking!

The essay is proving to be quite a challenge; while it's very easy to be descriptive - and I so want to be - it's a different matter when it has to be argued through the work of accepted death theorists and other philosophers......I have just finished a first draft and am going to sit on it for a bit, look again...make changes, then send it off for comments - I have hopes that my tutor will accept the tack I have taken!

So - lots of death theory. A trip to london to see the current Body World presentation at the 'Dome'.....you want to know what I thought of it? Just don't get me started..........it's another post in itself I recon, however, why not go and read 'The Emperor's New Clothes' by Hans Christian Andersen - here's a link:

That ought to give you a bit of a clue.....!!!!

Paris Catacombs

Back from Paris.....and we went to the Catacombs

It was quite an experience. Here are some of the pictures I took - they are blurred, but my excuse is that it was very dark and I had to crank the poor camera into open eye mode, while trying to hold it still........on the other hand, you may think that it added to the atmosphere!













The entrance, is via an
un-prepossessing green tin shack - then after a steep decent down a spiral stone staircase you enter the tunnels....there are a maze of them down there, but for the sake of visitors, a route has been selected that eventually leads to the Ossuary section. Bones from cemeteries all over Paris have been moved there and stored decoratively. The uncountable piles have been arranged in such a way that the bulk of smaller bones have been walled in behind piled up femurs, interspersed with skulls - some facing, staring oddly and others showing only occipital blank curveture. Individuality between the skulls is present if one peers closely enough - a phrenologist's joy - if only they could speak!

Fascinating and possibly grim, but of course we loved it!

Angry!

Sometimes I get frustrated by peoples attitudes.......rarely do I get truly angry.

Today just at the moment, I am really angry. I know it will blow over, but before it does, I thought you would like to share the cause of it!

Thanks a bunch Pope and a happy Christmas to you too.

Right - that's it for now.

But as 'er Indoors says "It's all very well - but we need 'straight' people to speak out against this."

Know any?

Rattus Flattus......Mus Musculus!

I am just so excited!
From my sick bed I write.....

Just read Chris Quigleys Rat post......of course, we all know Americans like to 'do it big' so I don't mind - Chris has Rats in her collection and so, of course, in little Britain, I have a small version..a flat mummified mouse.......Framed, I might add, in a red velvet victorian frame.

I found my mouse under the carpet at the bottom of the stairs, when I sneaked 1/2 an hour in this house before I bought it.

Having found the mouse, I named him Cedric and promised to rescue him if he was still there when the deal went through.....he was and I did! (The carpets were all chucked in a skip...and the many mouse nests sorted. Cedrics friends have not been back to see him - to my knowledge).

Yo ho ho Chris! Meet Cedric...I did contemplate sending him to you for Christmas - but I just couldn't part with him!

Harrods

Harrods was bombed when in 1983 the IRA planted explosives in a car outside. The blast blew heavy parts up onto the roof of the building opposite... and it abruptly ended several unsuspecting lives.

Having spent an uncomfortable couple of days re-living my past, I thought I would share this with you - and I promise, I won't delete it!

I worked in Harrods myself for five years, doing all sorts of things - which I will tell you if you want - I was there from 1980. But then,.....on that particular day, I had taken time off, because my husband (yep!) had taken it into his head to have a concert at our home, starring all his piano pupils. My job he declared, was to feed them....In all we expected about 28 people to turn up and participate in the 'grand' production. The studio had been re-organised - chairs set up in the (thankfully) long room - a piano at each end and...(I have to say, this was not an unusual happening at the time; however, - I wonder if wife 2 has to do such impromptu event catering? I doubt it, I've tasted her cooking!!!!! (honest, it's truly awful).

when the bomb went off at work, I was in the kitchen, making soup for the masses...in Brentford - thankfully not in Knightsbridge.

Had I been at work, I might very well have been one of the unfortunate people, leaving or entering the staff entrance - and ka-boom, you wouldn't be reading this blog now.

However, I was at work when the IRA bombed Hyde-Park-Corner.

This was the lead up.....

I was standing by a big trestle table in the toy department idly chatting - it was covered in sheets of brown wrapping paper as we were using it as a temporary 'packing' area for parceling up anything that the customers cared to buy.....

Yep, you can ask me to wrap anything from a model car to a rocking horse in corrugated cardboard and brown paper and then to tie string round it....i'm your girl for the job.

I worked in the packing section of the toy department at the big store for years.....I am an expert - but just brown paper and string - parcel stuff, not that 'girly-gift-wrap' crap with tight corners and ribbons!

I had my back to the windows at the rear of the store. The picture here is of the front, on Old Brompton Road. We were on the 4th floor...(the department moved from the 3rd to the 4th floor around that time). Prior to that, the toy department packing room was on the front of the building I think the 4th window along from the curved corner - the row above the 'Harrods' Sign...which in those days had 3 Royal 'By Appointment' crests above it!!!!!!!!!!

There was a loud low, rumbling boom and we all stood still, mid sentence, looking at each other. I said "...that sounded like a bomb..." A couple of moments later,I couldn't tell you how long, we smelled it - acrid, smokey and a bit like bonfire night gone wrong.

That was quite a time for everyone and one of the very many memories I have of the great red palace. The tales I could tell you! Thankfully not all so devastating.

Bedales: this just had to be gotten off my chest...sorry folks!

I was doing a comment on the blog four paws and whiskers...then I realised my ramble wasn't suitable for a little box!

I suggest before you read this that you check out Fi's post.....This is my story.

Actually - that's enough of that.....! Anyone who wants to hear it can ask....!
x
Thanks for those of you who provided an ear or a shoulder today....