Morbid Anatomy

"Morbid Anatomies and Anatomical Theatres: A Guided Tour through the World of Medical Museums," Lecture, "Adult Education," Tues. December 1

2009-11-23T10:15:00.000-05:00

I would like to cordially invite all Morbid Anatomy readers to Adult Education's monthly lecture series at Park Slope New York's lovely Union Hall next Tuesday, December 1st. The theme for this month's installment is "Death," and I will be contributing to the evening's festivities with a heavily-illustrated lecture on the art and history of medical museums, with a special focus on the most spectacular examples of anatomical artworks and the great artists of the genre, as observed on the one-month pilgrimage to medical museums around the world I embarked upon in the development of the Anatomical Theatre exhibition.

Also featured in the evening's line-up will be Dorian Devins, Margaret Mittelbach, & Andrew Templar on the Carnivorous Nights taxidermy contest (as discussed in this recent post), Katherine Heller on "Le Petit Mort: Death as a Metaphor for Orgasm in Popular Culture and Literature" and Alex Pareene on "Homicidal Tendencies In Electronic Information Networks."

Adult Education describes itself as "a useless lecture series" and presents "brief, multimedia lectures on a shared theme" by a variety of speakers. As you can see by the full line-up below, this one is sure to be good! Hope to see you there!

ADULT EDUCATION PRESENTS:
"Death"
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 - 8 pm (doors at 7:30)
Union Hall in Park Slope, New York
702 Union St. @ 5th Ave
$5 cover

DORIAN DEVINS, MARGARET MITTELBACH, & ANDREW TEMPLAR
"Death and Taxidermy: The Ape That Launched 1000 Quips"
Devins, Mittelbach, and Templar discuss observations gleaned from four years of Carnivorous Nights, an annual taxidermy contest held in Brooklyn.

ALEX PAREENE
"Everyone Is Trying To Kill You: Analyzing Homicidal Tendencies In Electronic Information Networks"
The most dangerous people in America today are celebrities. And Arianna Huffington is letting them blog. Alex Pareene assesses recent threats to our national health from Suzanne Somers and Canada.

KATHARINE HELLER
"Le Petit Mort: Death as a Metaphor for Orgasm in Popular Culture and Literature"
Heller looks at the various ways in which death, much like everything else, is tied to sex.

JOANNA EBENSTEIN
"Morbid Anatomies and Anatomical Theatres: A Guided Tour through the World of Medical Museums"
What is the difference between a wet and a dry specimen? Why did people make life-sized, recumbent wax women whose insides could be taken apart into dozens of pieces? Where did Gunther von Hagens (Body Worlds exhibit) get his schtick? Joanna Ebenstein presents a virtual tour of great medical museums of the western world.

Hosted, as always, by the inimitable Charles Star

* * * *

BIOS

DORIAN DEVINS and MARGARET MITTELBACH are cofounders of Secret Science Club, a monthly lecture series at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Devins is a radio producer and host of WFMU, 91.1 FM's "The Speakeasy," a weekly arts and cultural interview program. Mittelbach is co-author, with ANDREW TEMPLAR, of Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger and author of Wild New York: A Guide to the Wildlife, Wild Places and Natural Phenomena of New York City. Templar is co-owner of Union Hall, the Bell House, Floyd, and the mysterious 'rump ape.'

JOANNA EBENSTEIN is a Brooklyn based artist. She runs the Morbid Anatomy blog and the Morbid Anatomy Library. She is also the founding member of Observatory, a collaborative Gowanus-based exhibition/presentation space where she presents lectures on a variety of morbid topics. Her recent exhibition, Anatomical Theatre, is a photo survey of great medical museums of the western world.

KATHARINE HELLER is a writer, actress and comedian. Most recently, she wrote and produced an award-winning show at the New York International Fringe Festival, The Boy in the Basement. Heller has been a regular theater and nightlife reviewer for the online magazine New York Cool and is working on her first one-woman show, My Dad's Crazier Than Your Dad.

ALEX PAREENE writes about politics for Gawker and is author of the blog Everyone Is Trying To Kill You. Formerly, he was Editor of Washington DC gossip website Wonkette.com. His writing has appeared on many famous and popular internet sites, on the World Wide Web. He is not a doctor and, in fact, did not even finish attaining a BFA.

CHARLES STAR (HOST) is a lawyer sans portfolio and a stand-up comedian sans recognition who lives in Brooklyn with his excellent wife, his awesome cat, and a budding baby genius. He's on the web at charlesstar.com.

Full information about the event and more about the Adult Education series can be found by clicking here. You can find out more about the venue, including directions, by clicking here.

The image you see above is drawn from the "Anatomical Theatre" exhibition; click here to view the full exhibition. The model pictured is called "The Slashed Beauty" and is a life-sized wax anatomical model with human hair which reclines on a silk cushion in a rosewood and Venetian Glass case; she was probably modeled by Clemente Susini around 1790 and is housed at "La Specola” (Museo di Storia Naturale) in Florence, Italy. You will hear the story behind this model and many others of equally spectacular nature in my lecture next Tuesday.

Papier-Mâché Anatomist Louis Thomas Jérôme Auzoux's Epic Atelier

2009-11-22T14:34:00.000-05:00

Of all the anatomical modelers I know, Dr. Louis Thomas Jérôme Auzoux is one of my least favorites, due to his medium of choice being not the uncanny and fine wax of his precursors but prosaic and utilitarian Papier-Mâché. That said, I really do love this photo of Auzoux's atelier, which one of the presenters at the Auzoux conference at the Boerhaave Museum last year included in their lecture. I was finally able to find a copy online as of this morning; The caption reads "Etablissement du Dr Auzoux - Modèles fabriqués dans les ateliers de Saint-Aubin-d'Ecrosville (Eure)." Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

More on Auzoux and his work can be found on this recent Morbid Anatomy post. Click the image--found it on Arehn's Picassa gallery--to see much larger, more detailed image.

"From Pastels to PDA's: Medical Education from Pennsylvania Hospital's medical library the 18th C. to the 21st C." Exhibition, Philadelphia

2009-11-21T11:28:00.000-05:00

I just learned of a very exciting art/medicine exhibition opening on December 1st at the Pennsylvania Hospital's medical library in Philadelphia, PA. The show, entitled "From Pastels to PDA's: Medical Education from the 18th C. to the 21st C.," will features 16 original Jan Van Rymsdyk anatomical drawings that reside in the permanent collection of their historic collection but are almost never shown, due to their extremely fragile nature. These exquisite crayon drawings were created in the late 18th Century, and their provenance traces back to the personal collection of Benjamin Franklin, who founded Pennsylvania Hospital in 1751. The artist Jan Van Rymsdyk is best known for his sensitive and ground-breaking illustrations 18th Century surgeon William Hunter's Anatomia uteri humani gravidi, or The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus; you can see the best known of those illustrations by clicking here.

The exhibition will be on view until January 2010. This show looks seriously not-to-be-missed.

Here is the full description of the exhibition, from the library website:

From Pastels to PDA's: Medical Education from the 18th c. to the 21st c. exhibits our collection of sixteen Jan Van Rymsdyk anatomical drawings for the first time together in one display. Opening to the public on December 1, 2009, this exhibition is sure to engage visitors interested in the history of medicine.

Long before the use of the X-ray, CAT scan, ultrasound and digital technology, the use of images played an important role in the medical education of students. Anatomical illustrations were cutting edge in the eighteenth century, and Jan Van Rymsdyk was known as one of the best anatomical illustrators in the world. Van Rymsdyk has kept his stature over the past two and a half centuries.

These illustrations were created with crayon making them very susceptible to damage, however, they survived a trip across the ocean in 1762 to become a center of the medical education young men received. In a letter dated April 7, 1762, Fothergill stated, “I need not tell thee that the knowledge of anatomy is of exceeding great use to Practionors in Physic and Surgery & that the means of procuring Subjects with you are not easy.” Medical education was about to change forever in Philadelphia.

Fothergill further offered his opinion that the drawings “not to be seen by every Person but with the Permission of a Trustee & for some small Gratuity for the Benefitt of the House.” Heeding Dr. Fothergill's warning, the drawings were viewed on a limited basis and carefully housed to protect them. Today, as 247 years ago, the drawings are viewed on a limited basis making this exhibit a rare treat for the public. The exhibition will run until December 2010.

For more information please call 215-829-5434.

You can find out more about the exhibition, and how to visit it, by clicking here. You can read more about the show--and much more about the history of the collection--by clicking here.

All images from the Museum Website; Captions: Top: Jan van Rymsdyk (fl. 1750-1788) created the oil drawing shown here, which is part of the Pennsylvania Hospital Historic Collections.; Bottom: Jan van Rymsdyk (fl. 1750-1788) was the primary illustrator for William Hunter's noted work, Anatomia uteri humani gravidi, or The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus. The oil drawing shown here is part of the Pennsylvania Hospital Historic Collections.

'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die,' Umberto Eco Guest Curator at the Louvre!

2009-11-20T12:50:00.001-05:00

The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order... And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries...We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die. --Umberto Eco, on his current guest-curated Louvre exhibition “Mille e tre," Spiegel, 2009

It has just come to my attention that Umberto Eco has guest curated an exhibition at The Louvre in Paris. Entitled “Mille e tre" or "The Infinity of Lists," the exhibition is on view in the prints and drawings section of the Louvre from November 7th 2009 until February 8, 2010 and will includes poetry, text, multi-media projects, and artworks selected by Eco to illustrate his chosen theme.

To my knowledge, this is Eco's first officially curated exhibition, though fans of his books On Beauty and On Ugliness already know him to possess an idiosyncratic and sensitive curatational mind. For those of us unable to make it out to view the exhibition in person, Rizzoli has kindly produced a lavish exhibition catalog to add to the already rich oeuvre of Eco's multi-disciplinary, highly-illustrated forays into philosophy and theory.

More on the exhibition, from the Louvre's website:

Having extended an invitation to Umberto Eco, who chose to work on a theme described as “The Infinity of Lists”, the Louvre presents an exhibition of ancient and contemporary graphic works, as well as around 20 multidisciplinary events in the auditorium and the rooms of the museum.

The exhibition “Mille e tre” traces the evolution of the concept of a list through history and examines how its meaning changes with the passage of time: from its ancient use in funerary traditions to its present-day use in everyday life, via the creative processes of contemporary artists, the list is a vehicle for cultural codes and the bearer of different messages.

Read the entire Spiegel interview with Eco--which contains many more pithy and insightful comments than the one I included above--by clicking here. More about the exhibition can be found on the Louvre exhibitions webpage by clicking here. Purchase the exhibition catalog, published by Rizzoli, here. You can see more about his other illustrated volumes by clicking here. Via Metafilter.

Art Opening at Observatory This Saturday: "All Sorts of Remedies" by Herbert Pfostl

2009-11-18T15:47:00.001-05:00

Hope you can join us at Observatory for our second ever art opening: "All Sorts of Remedies," an exhibition by Observatory member and book entrepreneur Herbert Pfostl. The event takes place this Saturday, November 21st at 7:00pm, and is free and open to the public. Hope to see you there!

Full details below:

"All Sorts of Remedies," Herbert Pfostl
Observatory
543 Union Street – at Nevins
Brooklyn, NY 11215

Opening: Saturday, November 21st at 7:00pm

Exhibition: November 21, 2009 – January 8, 2010
Thurs & Friday 3–6pm
Sat & Sun 12–6pm

Small paintings as parables of plants and animals and old stories of black robbers and white stags. Fragments on death like mirrors from a black sleep in the forests of fairy tales. All stories from the dust of the dead in fragments and footnotes like melodies of heartbreak and north and night and exploration – breakdowns. About saints with no promise of heaven and lost sailors forgotten and the terribly lonely bears. The unknown, the ugly – and the odd. Collected grand mistakes, noble errors from many sources. Sinking signals – conscious or not – sonatas and last letters and great insults. The impossible tears in landscapes of ocean or stranded whales. A going far back to coals and cruelties and sobbing like songs in whiskey and blood. Of soldiers' last letters and all seven seas. With pirates and wars and prayers in holes in the ground. Of fallen women and orphaned children and drowned slaves and burned saints.

Herbert Pfostl is the creator of Blind Pony Books and the Paper Graveyard, and is also the buyer for the store at New York's New Museum.

Observatory is a presentation and exhibition space in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn. The space seeks to present programming residing at the interstices of learning and amusement, art and science, and history and curiosity.

Directions to the event can be found here. All images sourced from A Journey Round My Skull's post on the exhibition, which features many additional images and which can be viewed in full by clicking here. Click on images to see much finer larger versions.

Totentanz, Niklaus Manuel, 16th-17th C

2009-11-16T10:48:00.000-05:00

Totentantz {German for "Dance of Death" or Danse Macabre} is the common title of a fresco by Niklaus Manuel Deutsch made in the Berner Dominikanerkloster, which the artist began in 1516/17. The sequence of images (80 meters and 24 scenes) was destroyed in 1660.What remains is a copy (1649) by Albrecht Kauw (1621-1681).

Via Jahsonic. More on the Dance of Death/Danse Macabre phenomenon can be found at this recent post.

Wife of Bluebeard? Photo, Late 19th or Early 20th C

2009-11-14T15:18:00.003-05:00

Uncanny and delightful. Sadly, however, un-captioned.

Via, again, the wonderful Wurzeltod.

Antique "Cuppers and Leeches" Business Card, 19th C?

2009-11-13T12:37:00.000-05:00

Click on image to see larger version. Via The Mouth and the Knife.

"All Souls’ Day," William Adolphe Bouguereau (1859)

2009-11-12T22:24:00.001-05:00

Lovely mourning painting, courtesy of the incomparable Wurzeltod Tumblr Feed. Thanks, Suzanne, as always!

Super Sunday Brooklyn Lineup: This Sunday, November 15th

2009-11-10T15:51:00.000-05:00

This Sunday, November 15th is going to be a big day in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn. First up, at 6:00 PM, Observatory will be hosting an illustrated lecture entitled “Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius” by author Colin Dickey. Dickey will discuss "the history of skull thefts and the motivations of their perpetrators, as well as tracing the long and bizarre odysseys of several famous heads, including those of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Sir Thomas Browne." Copies of his book of the same name will be available for purchase and signing.

Next up--and stumbling distance away--The Secret Science Club will be hosting their 4th-annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest at the Bell House at 8 PM, where spectators will be able to cheer on Obscura Antiques and Oddities co-owner Mike Zohn as he defends his hard-won championship garnered back in 2007; click here for a full report on that contest. Entry fee is waived for contestants, so bring along, in the words of the call for entries, your "beloved moose head, stuffed albino squirrel, sinuous snake skeletons, jarred sea slugs, and other specimens" and save $4.

This leads me to my humble proposition to you for a Gowanus-centric Sunday: why not begin your day's festivities at Observatory and join us in a group pilgrimage to the Bell House in time for the Secret Science Club Taxidermy Contest? To have 2 such wonderful events back to back--both $5 or under, both book related, and both simultaneously of an educational and a spectacular nature, with both also including alcohol (!!) and, best of all, walking distance of one another--is a rare treat indeed. I also offer to personally lead the way from Observatory to Bell House, so no-one need fear becoming lost forever in the toxic wilds of the Gowanus.

Full details on both events follow:

Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius
Date: Sunday, November 15th
Time: 6:00 PM, Doors at 5:00 PM
Admission: $5
Address: Observatory: 543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215 (View Map)
By Colin Dickey, author of “Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius” (copies of the book will be available for sale)

With the rise of phrenology, the early 19th century saw a host of bizarre grave robberies, in which the graves of famous men were plundered for their owners’ skulls. Both scientific curiosities and morbid fetishes, the skulls became subject to extended legal battles between religious and secular authorities over who owns these remains, while phrenologists continued to study them for visible proof of genius. Colin Dickey will discuss the history of these skull thefts and the motivations of their perpetrators, as well as tracing the long and bizarre odysseys of several famous heads, including those of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Sir Thomas Browne, who had famously written what a “tragical abomination” it is to be “gnawed out of one’s grave,” some 150 years before his own skull was plundered in 1840. Copies of his book, “Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius,” will also be available for sale and signing.

Colin Dickey is the author of Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius, and the co-editor (with Nicole Antebi and Robby Herbst) of Failure! Experiments in Aesthetic and Social Practices. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Cabinet, TriQuarterly, and The Santa Monica Review. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, he now lives in Los Angeles.

Directions
543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215

Enter Observatory via Proteus Gowanus Gallery

R or M train to Union Street in Brooklyn: Walk two long blocks on Union (towards the Gowanus Canal) to Nevins Street. 543 Union Street is the large red brick building on right. Go right on Nevins and left down alley through large black gates. Gallery is the second door on the left.

F or G train to Carroll Street: Walk one block to Union. Turn right, walk two long blocks on Union towards the Gowanus Canal, cross the bridge, take left on Nevins, go down the alley to the second door on the left.

The 4th-annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest
Hosted by the Secret Science Club @ the Bell House
Date: Sunday, November 15, 2009
Time: Doors open 7:30 pm, Taxidermy talk at 8 pm. Contest at 8:30 pm
Admission: $4
Address: The Bell House: 149 7th Street, Brooklyn NY 11215 (View Map)

• Calling all science geeks, nature freaks, and other rogue geniuses! Enter your taxidermy to win!

• Show off your beloved moose head, stuffed albino squirrel, sinuous snake skeletons, jarred sea slugs, and other specimens. Compete for prizes and glory!

• The contest will be judged by our panel of savage taxidermy enthusiasts, including Robert Marbury, co-founder of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists, and Dorian Devins, WFMU DJ and Secret Science Club co-curator

• Prizes for best stuffed creature, most interesting biological oddity, and more!

• Don’t miss the feral taxidermy talk by beast mistress Melissa Milgrom, author of the forthcoming book, Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy

• Plus:

◦ Groove to taxidermy-inspired tunes and video

◦ Imbibe ferocious specialty drinks!

Contest Rules
The contest is open to taxidermy (homemade, purchased, found), preserved and jarred specimens, skeletons, skulls, gaffs… and beyond. (Note: Wet specimens must remain in their jars.)

Entrants: Please contact secretscienceclub@gmail.com to pre-register, and arrive at 7 pm on the night of the contest to log in your beast or specimen. Share your taxidermy (and its tale) with the world!

Spectators are invited to cheer their favorite specimens.

Where: The Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues), Gowanus, Brooklyn. p: 718.643.6510 Subway: F to 4th Ave; R to 9th St; F or G to Smith/9th

When: Sunday 11/15/09. Doors and pre-show at 7:30 pm. Taxidermy talk at 8 pm. Contest at 8:30 pm!

Cover: $4 (waived for entrants)

Contest Background: The Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest is hosted by the Secret Science Club, an organization dedicated to exploring scientific discoveries and potent potables. The contest was started in 2005 by Secret Science Club co-curators Margaret Mittelbach and Michael Crewdson to shamelessly promote their taxidermy-inspired book Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger. The event has since taken on a life of its own, with first-year winners Andrew Templar and Jim Carden—co-owners of the Bell House—now providing a permanent home for this beastly annual smack-down.

To learn more, visit the Secret Science Club at http://secretscienceclub.blogspot.com

More info by clicking here.

Hope you can make it!

More on Observatory here; directions to Observatory can be found by clicking here. More on The Secret Science club here. You can find out more about Obscura Antiques and Oddities by clicking here.

Box factory photo (which houses Observatory and the Morbid Anatomy Library) found here; Squirrel Photo: Taken by and shown in a slideshow presentation by Brian Wiprud, the author who wrote Stuffed, Pipsqueak, and Tailed, books about adventure.

Morbid Anatomy Presents at Observatory: "The Culture of Curiosity" with Obscura's Evan Michelson, Friday November 13th, 8:00 PM

2009-11-10T09:17:00.001-05:00

This Friday the 13th, Evan Michelson--co-owner of Obscura Antiques and Oddities, my favorite store in the entire world and closest thing that I know of to a Morbid Anatomy Giftshop--will be delivering a presentation at Observatory, Brooklyn, entitled "The Culture of Curiosity." This illustrated lecture will explore the contemporary popularity of Cabinets of Curiosity from her unique perspective as one of New York's foremost purveyors and collectors of medical, natural, and industrial curiosities. She will also be bringing artifacts from her personal and professional collection for your perusal and enjoyment. Evan is an excellent speaker, and I can't wait to see her official take on this ever-so-relevant topic. Hope to see you there!

Full details:

Morbid Anatomy Presents at Observatory
"The Culture of Curiosity"
Illustrated Lecture by Evan Michelson, Obscura Antiques and Oddities
Friday, November 13th
8:00 (doors at 7)
$5 Admission

The Culture of Curiosity is everywhere these days. Wunderkammer appear in popular art, cutting-edge fashion, film, books and museum exhibitions. This aesthetic has proved surprisingly durable and popular for over 600 years. From temple to home to museum, the Culture of Curiosity continues to exert an irresistible pull on our collective psyches, and it shows no signs of falling from favor any time soon.

Where did it come from? What is it’s continuing appeal? Why is it resurgent at this moment in time?

Let’s see if we can find out.

Evan Michelson is co-owner of Obscura Antiques and Oddities {obscuraantiques.com}, and has been buying, selling and collecting rare, beautiful and uncanny objects for many years. The shop opened in the East Village in 1991, and was a pioneer in the latest renaissance of the Wunderkammer aesthetic. She currently lives in Victorian splendor in Plainfield, NJ, in a cabinet of her very own.

Directions
543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215 (View Map)

Enter Observatory via Proteus Gowanus Gallery

R or M train to Union Street in Brooklyn: Walk two long blocks on Union (towards the Gowanus Canal) to Nevins Street. 543 Union Street is the large red brick building on right. Go right on Nevins and left down alley through large black gates. Gallery is the second door on the left.
F or G train to Carroll Street: Walk one block to Union. Turn right, walk two long blocks on Union towards the Gowanus Canal, cross the bridge, take left on Nevins, go down the alley to the second door on the left.

For more information about the event, click here. For more information about Observatory, click here. To join the Observatory mailing list, click here. You can join the Observatory Facebook Group by clicking here. For more on the fabulous Obscura Antiques and Oddities, click here; to visit their still nascent website, click here.

Image: Early 20th Century, life-sized wax mannequin residing in Michelson's home collection. Photos of this mannequin--as well as many other amazing objects from Evan's collection--can be found in my photographic exhibition "Private Cabinets;" You can view the entire series by clicking here.

Zoe Beloff in London

2009-11-09T13:21:00.000-05:00

Zoe Beloff--personal friend, friend of Morbid Anatomy and Observatory, and one of my favorite contemporary artists--has a few wonderful sounding art-pieces showing in London over the next few months. If you are based in or near London, I highly recommend you take this opportunity to check out her work in person; Her work is lovely, multi-layered, fascinating, and seriously not to be missed.

Here is a bit about her work, from her artist's statement:

Zoe Beloff is an artist who is particularly fascinated by attempts to graphically manifest the unconscious processes of the mind. She is particularly adept at dreaming her way into the past. Zoe’s work has been exhibited internationally. Venues include: The Whitney Museum, MoMA, The Freud Dream Museum (St Petersburg), Pacific Film Archives and the Pompidou Center.

And here are the full details of her upcoming London events:

The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and their Circle 1926-1972
An illustrated lecture and screening by Zoe Beloff
November 18th, 2009 - 7pm - 8:30
The Freud Museum 20 Maresfield Gardens London NW3 5SX
Freud Museum: http://www.freud.org.uk
More here.

To celebrate the centennial of Freud’s visit to the great amusement parks of Coney Island, prior to his visit to Clark University in 1909, artist Zoe Beloff resurrected the forgotten world of the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society, along with the visionary ideas of its founder Albert Grass, for an exhibition at the Coney Island Museum in New York.

Here she will present an overview of the work of the Society, which might best be described as an urban legend. The members, working people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds, were filled with the desire to participate in one of the great intellectual movements of the 20th century. Beloff will discuss the Sunday lectures, plans to rebuild the “Dreamland Amusement Park” according to Freud’s ideas of dream formation, the controversy over the lost "Sigmund Freud" figure at the World in Wax Musée and will screen a number of the “Dream Films” in which members of the society recreated their dreams on film in an unapologetic and playful exploration of their inner lives.

The Magic Show
28th through 31 January
Opening 27 January 7pm to 9pm
The Quad
http://www.derbyquad.co.uk/
Market Place,Cathedral Quarter
DerbyDE1 3AS

Premiere of new Hayward Touring exhibition curated by Jonathan Allen and Sally O’Reilly, organised in collaboration with QUAD, Derby. Magic, like art, thrives in the gaps between truth, half truths and lies. ‘Magic Show’ considers how contemporary artists adopt the perception-shifting ploys of theatrical magic, to summon wonderment while also exploring questions of creative agency and the power of suggestion.

Magic Show artists: Jonathan Allen, Archive (Anne Walsh & Chris Kubick), Zoe Beloff, Ansuman Biswas & Jem Finer, Joan Brossa, Rick Buckley, Brian Catling, Center for Tactical Magic, Jackie & Denise Chapwoman, Tom Friedman, Brian Griffiths, Colin Guillemet, João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva, Susan Hiller, Alexandra Hopf, Janice Kerbel, Christian Jankowski, Annika Lundgren, Juan Muñoz, Bruce Nauman, Ian Saville, Ariel Schlesinger, Suzanne Treister and Sinta Werner.

You can find out more about these upcoming events, and about Zoe's work in general, by clicking here.

Zoe Leonard on the Uncanny Allure of Wax Anatomical Models

2009-11-09T11:37:00.003-05:00

“I first saw a picture of the anatomical wax model of a woman with pearls in a guidebook on Vienna. She struck a chord in me. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She seemed to contain all I wanted to say at that moment, about feeling gutted, displayed. Caught as an object of desire and horror at the same time. She also seemed relevant to me in terms of medical history, a gaping example of sexism in medicine. The perversity of those pearls, that long blond hair. I went on with this work even though it is gory and depressing because the images seem to reveal so much.”--Zoe Leonard, Journal of Contemporary Art

You can read the whole article--which investigates the use and meaning of wax anatomical models in the work of contemporary artist Zoe Leonard--by clicking here.

Images from original post; Top: "Anatomical Model of a Woman’s Head Crying", 1993 , © Zoe Leonard; Bottom: "Wax Anatomical Model (Shot Crooked from Above)", 1990, © Zoe Leonard

Calling all Collectors and Taxidermists! The 4th-annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest--Sunday, November 15, 2009! Brooklyn, New York!

2009-11-03T00:50:00.000-05:00

I just received a call for entries for the upcoming 4th-annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest, hosted by the Secret Science Club. This year's contest will take place at Brooklyn's Bell House at 7:30 PM on Sunday, November 15. Entries can take the form of, in the words of the call-f0r-entries, "taxidermy (homemade, purchased, found), preserved and jarred specimens, skeletons, skulls, gaffs… and beyond." But--they are quick to note--"Wet specimens must remain in their jars."

To give you a sense of what you're in store for should you choose to attend (or, better yet, enter!), above you will find some photos from the 2007 installment of the contest, featuring Mike Zohn--co-proprietor of Morbid Anatomy's favorite store, Obscura Antiques and Oddities--and his grand prize winning piece, a Victorian "Polar Bear" Shadowbox (top 2 images).

Following are the full details for the contest. I will absolutely be in attendance, and plan to cover the event for the Morbid Anatomy. Hope very much to see you there, as competitors or in the audience!

The 4th-annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest!!
Hosted by the Secret Science Club @ the Bell House
Sunday, November 15, 2009, 7:30 pm, $4

• Calling all science geeks, nature freaks, and other rogue geniuses! Enter your taxidermy to win!

• Show off your beloved moose head, stuffed albino squirrel, sinuous snake skeletons, jarred sea slugs, and other specimens. Compete for prizes and glory!

• The contest will be judged by our panel of savage taxidermy enthusiasts, including Robert Marbury, co-founder of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists, and Dorian Devins, WFMU DJ and Secret Science Club co-curator

• Prizes for best stuffed creature, most interesting biological oddity, and more!

• Don’t miss the feral taxidermy talk by beast mistress Melissa Milgrom, author of the forthcoming book, Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy

• Plus:

◦ Groove to taxidermy-inspired tunes and video

◦ Imbibe ferocious specialty drinks!

Contest Rules
The contest is open to taxidermy (homemade, purchased, found), preserved and jarred specimens, skeletons, skulls, gaffs… and beyond. (Note: Wet specimens must remain in their jars.)

Entrants: Please contact secretscienceclub@gmail.com to pre-register, and arrive at 7 pm on the night of the contest to log in your beast or specimen. Share your taxidermy (and its tale) with the world!

Spectators are invited to cheer their favorite specimens.

Where: The Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues), Gowanus, Brooklyn. p: 718.643.6510 Subway: F to 4th Ave; R to 9th St; F or G to Smith/9th

When: Sunday 11/15/09. Doors and pre-show at 7:30 pm. Taxidermy talk at 8 pm. Contest at 8:30 pm!

Cover: $4 (waived for entrants)

Contest Background: The Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest is hosted by the Secret Science Club, an organization dedicated to exploring scientific discoveries and potent potables. The contest was started in 2005 by Secret Science Club co-curators Margaret Mittelbach and Michael Crewdson to shamelessly promote their taxidermy-inspired book Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger. The event has since taken on a life of its own, with first-year winners Andrew Templar and Jim Carden—co-owners of the Bell House—now providing a permanent home for this beastly annual smack-down.

To learn more, visit the Secret Science Club at http://secretscienceclub.blogspot.com

You can find out more about the contest by clicking here. Information about the Bell House can be found here. All of the above photos were taken by Eric Harvey Brown (Flickr handle "Dogseat;" click here to see his Flickr photostream) who also, coincidentally, took the fantastic photos for the Time Out New York piece on the Morbid Anatomy Library (click here.) For more about the 2007 taxidermy contest, you can visit the original Morbid Anatomy post by clicking here.

Wes Anderson & Noah Baumbach at the New York Public Library, Next Monday, November 9th!

2009-11-02T16:27:00.000-05:00

I know its rather twee of me, but I am a huge fan of Wes Anderson's work--well, to be specific, I am a huge fan of all of Wes Anderson's work except for his more recent live action film, The Darjeeling Limited, which I rather hated. But my hatred for that film has not in any way diminished my enthusiasm for the the rest of Anderson's œuvre.

On that note: I was quite excited to find out that the New York Public Library's fantastic "NYPL Live" series will be hosting a Wes Anderson event next Monday, November 9th, at 7:00 PM, which will feature Anderson in conversation with Noah Baumbach, co-author of the screenplay for Anderson's new production The Fantastic Mr. Fox and writer/director of the memorable film The Squid and the Whale. I just bought my tickets, $25 ticket price and Darjeeling Limited be damned! Hope to see you there.

Full info, including ticket purchasing information, can be found by clicking here.

Pictured above: Wes Anderson at Paris' inestimable Deyrolle Taxidermy and Naturalia shop, from the This Recording website.

¡Feliz Día de los Muertos!

2009-11-02T11:53:00.002-05:00

¡Feliz Día de los Muertos! Images and sentiment via Ephemera Assemblyman; click here to see the original post and its many wonderful additional images.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank all of those who made their way out for the Morbid Anatomy/Observatory Dia De Muertos party last night. It was a truly great party, and would not have been without all of you! Thanks so much for coming by, for the participation, the costumes (!!!), and the altar treasures you left behind. And special thanks to Salvador Olguín and Cristin Cash--the co-hosts--and to Rebeca Olguín for the death piñata, the champurrado, the party invitation, and the sugar skulls. Thanks also to our lovely volunteers Nicole, Megan, and Ann. Here's hoping we do it again!

And Feliz Día de los Muertos to all of you!

Opening for Directorship, Glasgow Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery

2009-11-02T11:24:00.002-05:00

The amazing Glasgow Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery is seeking a new director! Full info can be found here, via Biomedicine on Display.

Shown above is a photo from the Glasgow Hunterian; caption information reads: Anatomical preparation from the Glasgow Hunterian Museum, acquired or prepared by William Hunter (1718-1783). You can see more images from this and 10 other amazing medical museums by visiting the Anatomical Theatre on-line exhibition, which can be found by clicking here.

Happy Halloween From Morbid Anatomy!

2009-10-31T11:29:00.001-04:00

Image: Vintage Halloween postcard, found on the Quest Magazine website.

Halloween Wonder Cabinet at The New York Institute for the Humanities, Curated by Lawrence Weschler, Free!

2009-10-30T11:27:00.005-04:00

I just recieved an email from the associate director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU asking if I would post information about their upcoming Halloween Wonder Cabinet event, curated by Lawrence Weschler. I do so with great pleasure, having already had plans to attend this wonderful (and free!) conference that will run from 11AM-9PM tomorrow (Halloween).

Lawrence Weschler, the curator of this day-long collection of illustrated talks, screenings, and multimedia presentations, is best known (at least to me!) as the author of the deeply influential Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder, which recounts the mysterious and fascinating story of the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, and which went on to inspire countless numbers of pilgrims (myself included) to make the trek to experience the fabled museum in person. To my great excitement, I see that the "Mr. Wilson" behind the Museum of Jurassic Technology, David Wilson, will be featured in this lineup, where, the invitation tells us, he will evoke "the Russian mystical origins of the Soviet space program, subject of a trilogy of heartrendingly lovely short films." Having never heard the man speak before is reason enough for me to attend this event, but Weschler has provided plenty of other compelling reasons to spend your Halloween indoors, as you can see in the full line-up you will find below.

This looks to be a stellar event. Hope to see you there!

The New York Institute for the Humanities
& the Humanities Initiative at NYU
present an all-day

HALLOWEEN WONDER CABINET
curated by Lawrence Weschler

A day of illustrated talks, screenings, and multimedia presentations with Laurie Anderson, Michael Benson, Chandler Burr, Walter Murch, David Wilson and many others

Saturday October 31
11 am till 9:30 pm

NYU's Cantor Film Center
36 East 8th Street, NYC

Free and Open to the Public
{on a first-come, first-in basis}

Every once in a while, Lawrence Weschler, the director of the New York Institute for the Humanities, and author, among others, of the Pulitzer-nominated Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (a work of “magic-realist nonfiction” arising out of an investigation of the premodern roots of the postmodern Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles), gets it into his head to contrive a day of sublimely odd, wonderflecked and just plain cool presentations, braided one after the next in a thematic order intermittently evident to himself, if no one else. This year, he proposes to do so on Saturday October 31, which is to say Halloween.

As you will see from the program below, the first half of the day will focus generally on the stellar, the planetary, the cosmological and the astronomic. Later in the day, presentations will begin to morph into a consideration of the experience itself of drop-jawed amazement. Toward the end of the procession, attention will turn to things somewhat more infinitesimal: the molecular basis of smell, insect camouflage, and (to round out the day, Halloween after all) the downright hallucinogenic.

SESSION I

11:00 am
A celebratory fanfare by avant garde, downtown (and well nigh breathless) saxophone player COLIN STETSON

11:10 am
LAURIE ANDERSON, the celebrated performance artist and hipster sage, who will dilate on her days, a few seasons back, as visiting artist-in-residence with the good folks at NASA. (Note: She will be replacing the previously announced bead-artist Liza Lou in this slot.)

11:45 am
Filmmaker and photographic archivist MICHAEL BENSON will be evoking the entire universe as seen from the point of view of the Hubble and other deep space observatories, subject of his latest book, Far Out, which in turn follows on from his last, the critically celebrated, Beyond, which took the same sort of survey of the photographic legacy of interplanetary space probes.

SESSION II

1:45 pm
The eminent film and sound editor WALTER MURCH (Apocalypse Now, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The English Patient, The Conversation, etc.) will reveal a whole other side of his famously overbrimming curiosity, which is to say his excavation and systematic rehabilitation of a long discredited theory as to the placement of planets and moons in relation to the bodies around which they orbit, a formula which turns out to accurately predict 85% of such orbits, and which, when properly rejiggered, turns out to coincide with the formula for the Pythagorean octave (talk about the music of the spheres!).

3:00 pm
DAVID WILSON, the MacArthur winning Jurassic Technologist himself, will evoke the Russian mystical origins of the Soviet space program, subject of a trilogy of heartrendingly lovely short films, a full decade in the making, currently coming to closure at the fourteen-seat Borzoi Theater atop his LA museum.

4:00 pm
A rarely screened short, filmed during the last months of the Khrushchevite Thaw, in which the Soviet master PAVEL KOGAN trains a hidden camera on a succession of common Russians at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, as they gaze, positively awestruck, at Leonardo’s rendition of a Virgin and Child. That film will in turn be coupled with an uncanny set of recent shorts in which JOSH MELNICK trains a highspeed high-definition excruciatingly slow-motion digital camera upon wayfarers on the New York city subway, staring, positively dumbstruck, at nothing in particular.

5:00 pm
A similar pairing, as in the above, this time two vantages of life on earth; the first in which the renowned avant garde filmmaker PETER HUTTON, of Bard College, trains his attention on the play of light dappling an Icelandic fjord; and the second in which MATT COOLIDGE, of LA’s Center for Land Use Interpretation (sister institution to David Wilson’s Museum of Jurassic Technology) trains his camera out the side of a helicopter for a jaw-dropping twenty-minute single-take survey of Houston’s petrochemical channel, arguably the most ecstatically industrialized swath of real estate in the world.

SESSION III

6:30 pm
New York Times scent critic CHANDLER BURR (The Emperor of Scent and The Perfect Scent: A Year inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York), singing the Nose Fantastic, which is to say plumbing the still mind-boggling mysteries involved in how it is that we smell anything at all (complete with blotter-swatch demonstrations).

7:30 pm
Entomologist Extraordinaire MAY BERENBAUM of the University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana (Ninety Nine Gnats, Nits and Nibblers; Bugs in the System; and The Earwig’s Tale: A Modern Bestiary of Multi-Legged Legends), who in honor of the evening’s festivities will consider Insects that Ape Shit (which is to say exceptionally novel, if creepy, insect disguises).

8:30 pm
HAMILTON MORRIS, the disconcertingly enterprising young pharmacopia correspondent of Vice Magazine, will round out the evening by reporting on all manner of oddities (penis mushrooms, Amazonian frog sweat, etc.) that he has ingested and that you might want to avoid.

Times above are approximate at best.

* SPECIAL NOTE *
{We hope as many of you as possible will be able to spend the day with us, feasting on the Wonder Cabinet in its entirety. However, should you be unable to stay for the whole program, we strongly recommend that you come for each session in full—you’ll understand why when you do.}

Nearest Subway Lines to Cantor Film Center,
located at 36 East 8th Street (btw University Pl. & Greene St.),
(with caveat to check MTA's weekend service advisories prior to heading over!)
A, C, E, B, D, F, V to West 4th Street (6th Ave.)
R, W to 8th St.--NYU (Broadway)
6 to Astor Place

For further information, visit www.nyih.as.nyu.edu or contact the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU at nyih.info@nyu.edu

You can find out more about the event by clicking here. You can find out more about Weschler's inestimable Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder by clicking here. To find out more about the Museum of Jurassic Technology, click here.

Image: A micromosaic by Henry Dalton shown at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, found here.

Morbid Anatomy Presents at Observatory: Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) Party, Sunday November 1

2009-10-27T21:14:00.001-04:00

Free this Sunday, November 1st? Looking for a way to nurse your Halloween hangover and ease back into the sad, post-halloween world? Well then! Why not join us for our first ever Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) Party at Observatory, where you will find for your delectation--among other things!--pan de muerto, champurrado, sugar skulls, music, Negra Modelo, traditional foods and crafts, an altar for communal contribution (see below), a Red Hook vendors taco truck supplying delicious and authentic foodstuffs (!!!), and much more. If you feel inclined to dress as a calavera–see bottom image, by José Posada–well then, all the better!

Co-hosted by myself, former Observatory lecturer and Morbid Anatomy guest-poster Salvador Olguin and professor Cristin Cash, its' sure to be a good time. You might even learn something! Full invitation follows:

Morbid Anatomy Presents at Observatory: Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) Party
Sunday, November 1st
Observatory, 543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215
4:00 PM–?
$5

Morbid Anatomy and Observatory formally request the pleasure of your company for our Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) party this Sunday (November 1).

Dia de Muertos is an annual festival celebrated in Mexico that seeks to ceremonially reunite the living with the dead. Traditional Day of the Dead ceremonies involve the preparation of an elaborate altar replete with flowers, candles and food that honor the dead to entice their return to the realm of the living. Mementos, relics and/or images of the dead are significant elements of altar decoration that both personalize and animate the altar as a site of memory and interaction.

For our Dia de Muertos party, we invite guests to bring an object or artifact that reminds you of a beloved thing no longer present to be placed on our community altar. The artifact can relate to a person, pet, idea, or anything lost that you would like to lure back to the land of the living, if just for one night.

This party was curated with the inestimable assistance and guidance of co-hosts Salvador Olguin and Cristin Cash.

Salvador Olguin’s work has been published in magazines both in Mexico and in the US. He is the author of Seven days, an interdisciplinary theatrical piece that celebrates the convergence of traditions and hybridism that characterizes Mexico’s fascination with mortality. He has worked extensively with Mexican cultural artifacts related with death, and he is currently performing research on the metaphoric uses of prostheses in literature and the visual arts, at New York University. He was born in Monterrey, Mexico and currently resides in Brooklyn.

Cristin Cash is Assistant Professor of Latin American Art History at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Her research focuses on art and politics in ancient Maya architecture and representations of the urban landscape in contemporary photography from Mexico and Cuba. At St. Mary’s College, she teaches courses in the Art and Architecture of the Americas from ancient times to the present, World Architecture and Museum Studies.

You can find directions by clicking here. Please RSVP to morbidanatomy@gmail.com, just so we know how much stuff to prepare. Hope to see you there!

Tonight at Observatory: "Humans Riding on the Backs of Dinosaurs: A Walk Through the Creation Museum..." Monday October 26th, 7:30 PM

2009-10-26T10:06:00.000-04:00

Just a wee reminder: Tonight, October 26th at 7:30 PM, former Observatory speaker and Death Reference Desk blogger John Troyer will be taking us on a virtual tour of the incredible Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, which I previously described in this recent MA post. There will also be artifacts from the museum available for your perusal. Hope to see you there!

Humans riding on the backs of Dinosaurs: A walk through the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky USA.
by John Erik Troyer, Ph.D., Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath
Date: Monday October 26th
Time: 7:30 PM (doors at 7:00 PM)
Admission: $5.00

In May 2007, the twenty-seven million dollar Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. The museum is dedicated to representing a “young earth,” Christian explanation of the planet, which makes the known universe roughly 6-10,000 years old. Within the museum, visitors can view a large-scale Garden of Eden diorama, a fully loaded planetarium, and animatronic dinosaurs. Since opening, well over 835,000 people have visited the museum. The Creation Museum is a key player in what Troyer calls the American Science War and is part of an ongoing battle between advocates of Evolutionary Biology, Intelligent Design, and Creationism.

This presentation closely (and humorously) examines the relationships between Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution in America by giving a pictorial tour of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. There will also be artifacts from the museum for your perusal.

Biography: Dr. John Troyer is the Death and Dying Practices Associate and RCUK Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. He received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. Within the field of Death Studies, he analyzes the global history of science and technology and its effects on the dead body. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website and his first book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will appear in late 2010.

Click here for directions to the event. Click here here to find out more about Troyer's former Observatory lecture, "'Bodies Embalmed by Us NEVER TURN BLACK!' A Brief History of the Hyperstimulated Human Corpse." You can find out more about the Centre for Death and Dying at the University of Bath--with which Troyer is affiliated--by clicking here. Click here to visit his blog, "Death Reference Desk", and here to find out more about the Creation Museum.

Morbid Anatomy Library Open Hours, This Saturday, October 24th, 1-6

2009-10-22T23:06:00.000-04:00

The Morbid Anatomy Library will be holding open hours this Saturday, October 24th, from 1-6 PM. Feel free to come by and peruse the stacks, open some drawers, or have a chat. The library is located at 543 Union Street at Nevins, Buzzer 1E, in the Gowanus district of Brooklyn, New York; Click here to view map. You can also enter via the Proteus Gowanus Gallery; directions for that route can be found here.

More about the library, including more photos, can be found here.

Hope to see you there!

"Dissecting Anatomy" Call for Papers

2009-10-22T08:31:00.000-04:00

I just came across this call for papers on the Medical Humanities blog that I thought might be of interest to some Morbid Anatomy Readers, especially as it seeks work from "a variety of disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspectives." The deadline for submissions is January 10th. I have posted it here in its entirety:

Dissecting anatomy – historical, cultural and ethical perspectives on teaching and research [deadline: 10 January 2010]. Themed issue of Medicine Studies.
International Journal for the History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine & Allied Sciences, 2.1 (2010)

"A necessary inhumanity” is what Edinburgh anatomist William Hunter expected students to gain from the dissection course they went through as a “rite of passage” at the beginning of their university careers. Learning human bodily structure by performing hands-on dissections in the anatomical theatre has become a fundamental element of modern medical education, almost everywhere on the globe. Only recently, concerns have been raised over the pedagogical adequacy of using cadavers in first-year training. “Living and Virtual Anatomy” has been proposed as one possible alternative approach to students’ first encounter with the human body.

Historically, opportunities for “doing” anatomy were restricted by various and varying prohibitions and taboos. Apart from brief episodes in Antiquity, the interior of human bodies was not available for examination by physicians nor for the instruction of their pupils. When public dissections were first permitted, professors had prosectors demonstrate the accuracy of authoritative texts, long before empirically-based criticism of received opinions was encouraged. Ethical debates about the status of the dead human body have changed over time, between cries of desecration and calls for democratic knowledge, with different connotations in different cultures. This themed issue encourages papers dealing with questions such as the following:

How is the ontological status of the dead person affected by various forms of preservation and preparation, dissection and display?

What epistemological changes between “knowing” and “doing” anatomy are effected by different methods of teaching?

Is there a specific impact of different cultural environments on the generation, development, and reproduction of anatomical practices, and to what extent are these processes gendered?

Papers from a variety of disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspectives are invited.

For details of aims and scopes and formal aspects, including style sheet, etc., please consult the journal’s website Manuscripts need to be submitted online by 10 January 2010 at . Please, follow instructions provided on the site. For any preliminary inquiries, contact one of the issue editors:
Samantha Regan de Bere (s.regandebere@plymouth.ac.uk);
Alan Petersen (alan.petersen@arts.monash.edu.au);
Rainer Brömer (rainer.broemer@gmx.de).

You can visit the original post by clicking here.

Illustration: John Bell (1763-1820) [anatomist; artist], Engravings of the bones, muscles, and joints, illustrating the first volume of the Anatomy of the Human Body. 2d ed.; London, 1804. Etching. National Library of Medicine. From the incomparable Dream Anatomy website and book.

Fritz Kahn "Der Mensch als Industriepalast" (Man as Industrial Palace) Animation and Installation

2009-10-22T07:55:00.002-04:00

I just received an email from Henning Lederer--an animator and digital artist--in which he detailed an art installation he recently produced based on Fritz Kahn's "Der Mensch als Industriepalast" (Man as Industrial Palace) poster of 1927. Above is a clip of one of the animations he created for the installation, as well as view of the installation. Here is what Lederer had to say about the project:

The intertwining of science, culture, art and technology
From the moment on that I got to know Kahn’s poster “Man as Industrial Palace” in 2006, I had the idea to animate this complex and strange way of explaining the functions of a body. I wanted to continue Fritz Kahn’s act of replacing a biological with a technological structure by transferring this depiction with the help of motion graphics and animation. In addition to the moving images, as a framework, I had the idea to create a cabinet for this work including a mixture of old and new technology. This new version of the “Industrial Palace“ is an interactive installation for the audience to interact with - and by this to explore the different cycles of this human machinery.

This project was produced within the MA Digital Arts Course at the Norwich University College of Arts. It took me about 6 months to complete all the different parts including the interaction and interactive device, the spatial solution, research and theory, and of course the animation.

Right now, I am back in Germany. On the one hand, I am trying to publish the two main MA projects and make people aware of them, on the other hand, I will continue working as a freelancer starting in Germany but with the main aim to give it a try in London.

Thanks, Henning, for sending this along!

You can find out more about Henning's project by clicking here. You can see more of his work by clicking here. Click here to see the wonderful poster that inspired it all.

Upcoming Observatory Lecture: "Humans Riding on the Backs of Dinosaurs: A Walk Through the Creation Museum..." Monday October 26th, 7:30 PM

2009-10-20T08:24:00.003-04:00

Next Monday, October 26th at 7:30 PM, former Observatory speaker and Death Reference Desk blogger John Troyer will be taking us on a virtual tour of the incredible Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, which I previously described in this recent MA post. There will also be artifacts from the museum available for your perusal. Hope to see you there!

Humans riding on the backs of Dinosaurs: A walk through the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky USA.
by John Erik Troyer, Ph.D., Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath
Date: Monday October 26th
Time: 7:30 PM (doors at 7:00 PM)
Admission: $5.00

In May 2007, the twenty-seven million dollar Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. The museum is dedicated to representing a “young earth,” Christian explanation of the planet, which makes the known universe roughly 6-10,000 years old. Within the museum, visitors can view a large-scale Garden of Eden diorama, a fully loaded planetarium, and animatronic dinosaurs. Since opening, well over 835,000 people have visited the museum. The Creation Museum is a key player in what Troyer calls the American Science War and is part of an ongoing battle between advocates of Evolutionary Biology, Intelligent Design, and Creationism.

This presentation closely (and humorously) examines the relationships between Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution in America by giving a pictorial tour of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. There will also be artifacts from the museum for your perusal.

Biography: Dr. John Troyer is the Death and Dying Practices Associate and RCUK Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. He received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. Within the field of Death Studies, he analyzes the global history of science and technology and its effects on the dead body. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website and his first book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will appear in late 2010.