four humors

I like the ideas generated by the medieval view of health and illness. People were understood to be either in balance, or out of balance depending on the four humors, or fluids in the body. They were blood, yelow bile, black bile and phlegm. Any imbalance in the fluids created different illnesses and hence the practices of bleeding, leeches and purging. While the ideas behind this approach faded in the 18th century, with the development of medical and scientific techniques, some of its influences are still around. So for example peoples personality may be described as sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic or choleric. There are also some links to astrology and in certain cultures these practices still exist. In western societies, particularly with experiments in alternative medicine, some of these ideas are still explored and used. Interesting how ideas and knowledge develop, evolve and go full circle sometimes.

normal/abnormal

Who sets the boundaries, are they fixed forever or do they change? where are they now? are they personal, moral, physical, mental, environmental, cultural, financial, class based, gender based. do these boundaries involve intelligence, looks, speech, dress, posture, colour, age, ability, disability. who decides on them and their use? can you change them? have you changed them? how? why? why not? when. how about tomorrow?

the new canvas

I'm still exploring ideas for the project and this caught my imagination. It is a representation of the face transplant area that was replaced last year on a French woman. I believe it was the first successful face transplant in the world and I wonder what its significance might be. Are we moving into an era where body parts can not only replaced, which has been aroucd for certain organs for about 50 years, but where surgeons act as sculptors, or artists, redrawing/reshaping peoples bodies. Are we the new canvas? Is this the Burke and Hare of the 21st Century? Is it live art? Is it art? Discuss.........

metamorphosis by bridget riley

Each month, TATE ETC. publishes new poetry by leading poets such as John Burnside, Moniza Alvi, Adam Thorpe, Alice Oswald and David Harsent who respond to works from the Tate Collection. Subscribe to the Poem of the Month RSS feed.

In April 2006 Lawrence Sail presented his poem based on Bridget Riley’s Metamorphosis, on display at Tate Britain from March 2006 – February 2007.





Considering Bridget Riley’s Metamorphosis

Here it is, in black and white –
the optic nerve seduced into playing
a blinder. Pressures out of sight
mill all images back to latency,
the mind’s series, treacherous and true.

Yet definitions are at their sharpest
when speeding towards the point where disks
of silver and black throng to the mesh
of something like judgement, then a remix
of tried perceptions, making them new –
as, say, the image of holes in a colander
themselves drained away; or a swarming stream
of fish-eggs; or a geometer’s world
of ciphers somehow unhooked from time,
an eternity made of in betweens.

Now you don’t see it, now you don’t –
the invisible ink which you know is there,
the oxygen of desire, which can’t
be denied; that gasp of mortal love, or
the momentary gift of all its meanings.

metamorphosis of narcissus

I've always liked Dali's ability to manipulate images, to challenge the eye to look again at a picture. I particularly like how he has made these two images reflect each others but also remain so totally different. Wonder how this might feed into my thinking about the project, "body as a site of cultural representation"? Who knows where I'll end up with this one. I like the idea of metamorphosis, the process of change, of your body or character undergoing fundamental changes. Suppose we all have a bit of that at times, a wee touch of metamorphosis, but for a fundamental change, that would be something.

culture

In 1871 E.B.Taylor defined culture as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and many other capabilities and habits acquired by...(members) of society."

"Culture means the total body of tradition borne by a society and transmitted from generation to generation. It thus refers to the norms, values, standards by which people act, and it includes the ways distinctive in each society of ordering the world and rendering it intelligible. Culture is....a set of mechanisms for survival, but it provides us also with a defintion of reality. It is the matrix into which we are born, it is the anvil upon which our persons and destinies are forged."

body images

Marisa Maza seems to be an artist and teacher who has studied the body as cultural means of expression. Much of what I have seen already is about dance, so I'll have to continue searching.

self assessment

This is how you do it. As you can see this is stage one. Stage two I'll leave to your biological imagination.

Gravitacion : Eduardo Chillida

I like this piece, simple, strong, thought provoking, full of memory.

words and pictures

"Art used to have issues....art will become the occasional gesture of the isolated person."(Donald Judd)