Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

On the front page of one of Canada's leading newspapers... is a story about Body World 2.

I did not see Body World 1... and will not be going to see Body World 2. I honestly have not thought alot about it... or my reasons for not having any desire to see the show...

Has anyone here seen either 1 or 2?

Do you have an opinion about this exhibit? Is it art? Why? Is it offensive or not? Why?

It's interesting that in Toronto it is being exhibited at the "Science Centre" and not an art gallery...

I have added a poll question to this post... I hope I did it right!

Below is the article I mentioned... (there is a picture if you click on the link at the bottom of this post)

Toronto exhibit to feature cadavers

By MICHAEL POSNER

Friday, June 24, 2005 Updated at 5:26 AM EDT


A hugely popular but controversial exhibit of human bodies that critics have called macabre, offensive and a commercialization of death is coming to Canada.

Body Worlds 2, which features some 200 plastinated cadavers and body parts, will run at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto from Sept. 30 until Feb. 26, 2006. Science Centre officials will make a formal announcement this morning.

Plastination, invented by German anatomist Gunther von Hagens in 1978, is a process that replaces water and other fluids with plastic, preserving dead tissue indefinitely without odour.

In the past decade, more than 17 million people around the world have seen the show and its predecessor, Body Worlds 1. In several cities, museums and science centres presenting the display were forced to extend viewing hours to accommodate the demand.

But the exhibit has also drawn sharp criticism on several fronts.

Some observers label it a high-tech freak show.

When it travelled in Europe and Asia, religious leaders condemned it as "trampling on the human rights" of the dead and they demanded that the plastinated corpses be buried.

When the show was exhibited in Edinburgh two years ago, a Scottish parliamentarian accused Dr. von Hagens of crass self-promotion.

"This is someone who is trying to capitalize on horror," Conservative Phil Gallie said. ". . . Human beings should be respected in every stage of life and death."

But when the show came to Los Angeles this year, one commentator said it fills a void in a violent world.

"Americans have been remarkably shielded from the most visceral imagery generated by 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, which has been printed and broadcast elsewhere," David Skal, a scholar of horror, told the Associated Press.

"People are being torn apart daily, but the only places to bear witness seem to be exhibits like Body Worlds and splatter movies."

Medical ethicists have decried the exhibit as a crass, commercial exploitation of the human body. Nevertheless, the Body Worlds shows are reported to have grossed about $200-million worldwide.

Others have questioned the provenance of the bodies. This week, a court in Novosibirsk fined a Russian medical examiner the equivalent of $1,850 for illegally shipping 56 corpses to Dr. von Hagens's plastination facility in Heidelberg, Germany, four years ago.

Dr. von Hagens insists -- and organizations working with him have confirmed -- that he works only with the consent of body donors or their families.

Body Worlds has been plagued by unauthorized copycat exhibitions that have used improperly plastinated specimens. In one such show in San Francisco this month, several corpses on display began to leak original body fluids.

Dr. von Hagens's show features more than 20 full body specimens, stripped of skin and set in a variety of arresting poses, including figure skaters, a baseball player, a skateboarder and a chess player. Viewers see every organ, muscle, nerve and ligament.

Designed to teach people what has long been the preserve of medical science, the show allows viewers to compare a healthy lung, liver or heart to diseased organs of the same kind. It includes a five-week-old fetus as well as cross-sectional body slices frozen in transparent resin that indicate how fat affects organs.

"After a few of us [saw] Body Worlds in Los Angeles last July, we concluded that it was important to bring this exhibition to Toronto," Lesley Lewis, CEO of the Ontario Science Centre, said. "[It's] a compelling experience that will give visitors a new perspective on their body and the importance of healthy lifestyle choices."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... tory/Front

I guess it all depends on what you consider art? I've had several discussions about what art is at different forums, and one here with e-dog, all leading to no real clear cut answer in my opinion. So perhaps art falls into the realm of opinions. Take nudes for example, to some its pornography because they find it offensive, for some its a beautiful artistic expression. I guess if there is an art to everything, then everything, presented in the right context, is art. I dunno, ask me this again in a week and I'll probably give you a different answer. Such a tricky topic that I think often boils down to personal opinion. In one thread e-dog had said that often the spectrum of art melds into the rest of the world and the division line is blurry....I think this is a good example of that.

I shall write a brief impression of "Bodyworlds 1", Whitebird, which I saw in Los Angeles at Exposition Park a few months ago.

First, I was urged by some academic colleagues of mine in Math and Science to attend. They had taken their own children ( naturally these were bright and inquisitive and even science- oriented kids) to the show and found absolutely nothing offensive about it.

I spent several hours looking at the exhibits, and I can make a few observations. Some of what I will say occurred to me only after I exited the exhibit, which was extensive, vast in size and densely crowded
with exhibit-goers.

One of the first things to notice is how the exhibit is arranged.

The initial preserved bodies are "scientifically exhibited". That is, they are posed very conservatively and the emphasis is on scientific information about human anatomy.

Once one left the first segment of the show, the second part was devoted to anatomical pathologies-- exhibits of both healthy and diseased organs and tissues.

Finally, presumably after the viewer was accustomed to the unusual sight of exhibited corpses preserved in this high-tech way, the exhibit-goer was presented with unusual, and even comic, exhibits of corpses: corpse skateboarders, ballet dancers, horse riders ( the horse was plasticized too, and selectively flayed to display its anatomy).

When I left the exhibit, where I stayed over two hours, I remarked to my wife that two things were obvious:

One: The "horror" of death and decay were absent from the exhibit. Even the bodies which featured, for example, cancerous lungs of smokers who had died from their disease, were presented in an abstracted, "scientific" spirit.

Two: Any "disrespect" that might have been a concomitant and inseparable part of the exhibit was lessened by the slow process of accustoming the audience to anatomical specimens before arranging them "narratively"-- i.e. playing chess or skateboarding.

I might also remark that the heads and faces of the specimens had been plasticized in such a way as to render them anonymous as individuals. One corpse looked pretty much like another.

In some specimens ( I remember one anatomical figure "riding" an antique bicycle) the body parts had been "exploded"
to create the effect of the corpse flying apart in a static way. Those were among the more dramatically arrayed exhibits.

The last segment of the exhibit featured an "evolutionary" and developmental narrative, showing a human fetus at various stages of its progress toward fruition and birth. The last body exhibited was a full figure of a pregnant mother with her abdominal area cut away, showing an unborn child within her body. All "real", of course-- in three dimensions, life size and in color.

I choose those final phrases to describe the mother and her unborn baby advisedly. There was an odd air of "unreality" about the whole Bodyworlds One exhibit for me. Perhaps part of this has to do with my lengthy work in a hospital as a young man.

Because I worked in every part of the hospital, from the OB ward to the crematorium where tissues and body parts were incinerated ( some of them by yours truly), I had seen some of the "real" thing before, as many in the audience for this exhibit had not.

Needless to say, there is a vast gulf between living or newly dead tissue exposed to the eye and these highly arranged and curated exhibits, all groomed so carefully for the eye and prepared in a sequence designed to ease the viewer psychologically into the unusual series of sights he is about to encounter.

Well, I find I have rambled on a bit here. Perhaps it's because I've been waiting for the chance to write something about this "show", and you have given me the opportunity, Whitebird.

As far as a suspect profit motive Dr. Von Hagens and his enterprise may issue from, or the general or spiritual morality of exhibiting bodies, I shall pass.

But one observation:

I said to my wife as we viewed the exhibit:

"You know, these bodies are arranged with an eye to presenting death and the finitude of human life as something impersonal. Deep inside I find myself saying" this couldn't be me. This won't happen to me."

I found a little voice saying that in spite of the facts. And of course, a plasticizing process preserving my tissues indefinitely from decay won't happen to me.

That is, unless you fill out one of the readily available forms at the exhibit offering to donate your body .

Even then, Dr. Von Hagens would have to find you suitable.



--Zlatko

I havent' even heard of this show! But from Zlatko's description I find myself imagining a creepy scientist dressed up in an artist's smock, showing off his artwork subjects.
Heh.
I dunno. It doesn't sound that "creative" to me.
But I'm sure it will be big, maybe even all the rage, for a minute.
H

Here is the link to Von Hagens's English language site, if anyone cares to peruse photos from his exhibit. There are also links to FAQ, etc..

(link)


http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/pages/home.asp


Here, from his own text on the website, is somewhat of a "refutation" of some of my remarks after my visit ( above) by Dr. Von Hagens:


(paste)

The illusion of movement suggested when viewing specimens positioned in lifelike poses is based on unconscious memories of visual images of motion. Such specimens are animated by poses of motion in the imagination of viewers. This succeeds especially when typical aspects of movements are magnified or even exaggerated. With The Runner, this means concretely that the length of the stride has to be exaggerated to a fantastic degree. Generally speaking, this is the same technique as that used by sculptors to bring life to a kinetic sculpture hewn out of a block of marble. The lifelike poses of gestalt plastinates are so similar to the living that viewers can actually recognize and even feel their own corporeality and can identify with it.
Gestalt plastinates are not objects of mourning; they are instructional specimens. Mourning would interfere with learning; our thoughts would digress. Consequently, I have attempted to make gestalt plastinates appear as lifelike as possible. Freed of the stigma of revulsion, such vital, holistic anatomy thus becomes feasible, with which viewers can be fascinated by its authenticity.
It is just this holistic, lifelike presentation that does not let viewers forget that each gestalt plastinate represents a unique and individual life. Each gestalt plastinate is an anatomical treasure, unique down to the microscopic, indeed down to the genetic and thus the molecular levels. Hence, the design efforts of a plastinator actually affirm his intention to upgrade the value of the human body. The ethical reservation that with gestalt plastinates “the human corpse […] is degraded to an object” is thus refuted.(5)

(end paste)


As you can see, his intentions are somewhat at odds with my reaction to his exhibit.

Each observor would, I think, collect his/her own impression.





--Z

Hi Zlatko,

Great review, that's for the first hand low-down about the exhibit.

Personally I'm fine with the sight of a medically disected corpse, even to the point where its posed on a skate board, and wouldn't care if my body ended up like that to help further science and knowledge of the body -- after my death of course....however, one thing that strikes me as bothersome about the whole thing is the profiteering from it. In the article above it says that its grossed over $200 million and counting. On the Body World website it says under body donations:

"They belonged to persons who declared during their lifetime that their bodies should be made available after their deaths for the qualification of physicians and the instruction of laypersons. Many donors underscore that by donating their body, they want to be useful to others even after their death."

Now for me, cut me up into small chunks and plasticise me, shit, hit my dead body with a tennis racket for all I care, but when I sign my donor card, I don't want my body to be a part of making a small group of individuals extremely wealthy. Take out my organs and give them to someone who needs them, dissect me a hundred times for a medical class, put my cock on a stick and roast it, but for god's sake, don't charge tickets for something I gave away for free, unless of course that money was put directly back into the system -- say for example the money went to scholarships for physicians or keeping an extra hospital open. I wouldn't even care if my body was part of an exhibit like Body World, I think its great for the general public to be able to see what the medical profession does...its great to have a better understanding of the internal workings of the body....however, it kinda irritates me that like most things these days, it has become an opportunistic way to make money and lots of it. Body World sounds like a great idea, however it kinda sours my taste for it when I hear body donations are turned into lucrative ticket sales (General Admission -- $21 US a ticket). If its truly about education like they claim, why profit from it especially since everything on exhibit has been donated? Anyways, perhaps they do a lot of good with the profits, I dunno enough about it to say with certainty, and perhaps I'm being my cynical usual self when I say I doubt the money is going back into the medical system, but instead ends up in the pocket of a few individuals.

Anyways, interesting stuff as usual.