Body Worlds show dedicated to dead bodies having sex

[Brocke]

Very odd stuff. I find it unsettling that it is treated more as "entertainment" and not education.


Body Worlds show dedicated to dead bodies having sex

Reuters
September 14, 2009 08:38am

GERMAN anatomists plan a new show dedicated solely to dead bodies having sex as part of the Body Worlds exhibitions.

Gunther von Hagens and his wife Angelina Whalley show corpses prepared using a technique invented by von Hagens called “plastination”, that removes water from specimens and preserves them with silicon rubber or epoxy resin.

Gallery Bodies: Face to face with dissected bodies

"It's not my intention to show certain sexual poses. My goal is really to show the anatomy and the function," Body Worlds creative director Whalley told Reuters in an interview, adding the sex exhibition may open next year.

Body Worlds exhibitions, visited by 27 million people across the world, have been criticized for presenting entire corpses, stripped of skin to reveal the muscles and organs underneath, in lifelike and often theatrical positions.

Von Hagens has already triggered uproar with a new exhibit which shows just two copulating corpses.

German politicians called the current "Cycle of Life" show charting conception to old age "revolting" and "unacceptable" when it showed in Berlin earlier this year because it included copulating cadavers.

The way a plastinate is exhibited can vary from country to country to reflect local sensibilities. A vote of local employees decided that one of the copulating female cadavers should wear fewer clothes in Zurich than was the case in Berlin.

"Switzerland is the first country that already said from the outset that we could show whatever we wanted," said von Hagens.

"Zurich is ready ... but it's maybe not so easy in every other town," he said. "We have discussed whether it is proper to show homosexuality and in what way. This is a very delicate subject."

Von Hagens and Whalley said they both intended to donate their bodies for plastination, but would not leave instructions about how to display them, dismissing this as vanity.

"I find it a great opportunity to give something to others by donating my body, namely self-awareness," said Whalley.

Von Hagens said he and some other body donors even saw plastination as an alternative to burial or cremation, giving them more certainty about would happen to their bodies after death.

http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,28318,26069426-5014090,00.html

[IridiumKEPfactor]

This guy is a very very sick man.   




His father Gerhard Liebchen  was an SS officer.

I refer to him as the grotesque pale man always wearing a black hat. "Artificial dark halo."

[Brocke]

...His father Gerhard Liebchen  was an SS officer.

This does not surprise me.

[Satyagraha]

Necrophilia on parade. This isn't education; it's sensationalism wrapped up in a cap and gown, and raking in big bucks.

[squarepusher]

This guy is just following in the footsteps of fellow psychopaths Salvador Dali and Damien Hirst.

George Orwell wrote a great essay on Salvador Dali - he was the one who kickstarted necrophilia in art - among other disturbing things:

Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali

http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/dali/english/e_dali

Here is just one quote:

That, perhaps is the essential outline of Dali's history. But why his aberrations should be the particular ones they were, and why it should be so easy to ‘sell’ such horrors as rotting corpses to a sophisticated public — those are questions for the psychologist and the sociological critic. Marxist criticism has a short way with such phenomena as Surrealism. They are ‘bourgeois decadence’ (much play is made with the phrases ‘corpse poisons’ and ‘decaying rentiers class’), and that is that. But though this probably states a fact, it does not establish a connection. One would still like to know why Dali's leaning was towards necrophilia (and not, say, homosexuality), and why the rentiers and the aristocrats would buy his pictures instead of hunting and making love like their grandfathers. Mere moral disapproval does not get one any further. But neither ought one to pretend, in the name of ‘detachment’, that such pictures as ‘Mannequin rotting in a taxicab’ are morally neutral. They are diseased and disgusting, and any investigation ought to start out from that fact.

[deconstructmyhouse]

I think this sh*t is hideous
I caught the show in Portland oregon and felt sick
as a humanist, playwright and teacher, i was totally repulsed
They take the soul out of the human, not to mention the dignity

everyone i was with thought it was awesome and valuable "medically"
that we could "learn" so much
once again, I'm the outcast, the crazy, the negative trouble maker
i said yeah, like what are you going to learn?
like learning the value of an old growth forest from one slice of wood, turned into plastic

this shi* is off the charts ugly

[Satyagraha]

I think this sh*t is hideous
I caught the show in Portland oregon and felt sick
as a humanist, playwright and teacher, i was totally repulsed
They take the soul out of the human, not to mention the dignity

everyone i was with thought it was awesome and valuable "medically"
that we could "learn" so much
once again, I'm the outcast, the crazy, the negative trouble maker
i said yeah, like what are you going to learn?
like learning the value of an old growth forest from one slice of wood, turned into plastic

this shi* is off the charts ugly

That's a masterpiece of dehumanization. It should travel the world but with different exhibit signs; the new signs would point out to people...

THIS IS HOW YOUR MASTERS SEE YOU!.
You are entertainment, you are not human.

[rio]

Dehumanization, but not total dehumanization; they still have their organs at least. Gee, I must be totally desensitized because this stuff has been around and I have to admit I didn't really see much wrong with it. I do think it's pretty disgusting to have these corpses engaging in mock intercourse though.

[Kilika]

Notice how he has the female's shoulder muscles in the back sticking out, which isn't normal, as though she has wings, and her position is with her back to the man and is on top. Symbolism at it's worst.

[Satyagraha]

Interesting point Lefty - hadn't thought about the symbolism in the arrangement of the bodies... just the fact of the bodies had me appalled. It's like a serial killer's gallery of 'trophies'.