Some Thoughts on Seeing the Polymerized Remains of Human Cadavers
The content is pretty intriguing too. The plastination chap is kind of a scary loon, but he certainly does interesting work (link is not for the squeamish, but that probably goes without saying)...
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3 comments:
Bugger. I typed a rather lengthy comment, and blogger has eaten it.
In summary: I have seen the exhibit of which you speak. It was quite mad. It raises ethical questions, which I cannot be bothered to re-type right now.
I haven't seen the exhibit, but I have to say that I am quite torn about it (no pun intended). The process itself sounds fascinating, useful for pedagogical purposes, on the whole less disagreeable than embalming, and just plain cool. As far as the process itself goes, sign me up!
But I'm with V.--there's something mad about it. For me, I think it lies in the *exhibition* aspect of it--human remains configured and displayed in what appear to be basically museum diorama poses. While I think that I am up for my body being plasticized, I think I will hold out for being very picky about the spirit in which it was used afterwards. Posing my body in "lassoer" position and charging admission would cross a line for me.
One of the things I said earlier that got eaten by blogger was: When you actually see these things, they really do look like plastic. It's easy to disconnect from the reality of it, to convince yourself that you're looking at sculptures or models as opposed to manipulated corpses. It's fascinating, but... where do you draw the line between art and abomination? Between educational and exploitative?
It's been a couple of years since I saw the exhibit, and I STILL don't know how I feel about it.
The biggest problem I had was, these exhibits were coated in a fair amount of dust. People were touching them, and in some cases breaking pieces off (!!). Regardless of whether or not these people agreed to let their bodies be a part of this, I feel that the "curators" (or whatever you call people who run a sideshow of death) have a responsibility to keep these exhibits clean and in good repair. Regardless of the method of preservation and display, they're still human remains and should be treated with a high degree of dignity and respect.
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