http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/bodies.html

I am definitely going to go check this exhibit out. One wouldnt normally think something like this could be tastefully done, but after watching the vids on the site, I am quite intrigued.

I dont think I will get into the philosophy of doing all of this to real dead people. As far as I know they've all donated their bodies...and to me, this is way cooler than being a grad school dissection project!

The guy who created the method to conserve bodies like this is amazing. He looks like a german villain straight out of a James Bond move, but he seems to have an admirable passion for the human body. He has actually seperated the whole nervesystem of one man! Its amazing to see it! Many installations he have can be a little disturbing, like looking through the stomach of a pregnant woman, but at the same time its extremely fascinating. He also has a man holding up his own skin!

When I studied medicine we went to see organs and stuff concerved on formaline. It was really difficult the first hours, but after a while we got used to is and then it was just really really fascinating.

The human body is truly amazing!

I went to see this exhibition and it was stunning and very memorable and wonderful, and very strange too.

yes and even has the name to match Gunther von Hagens

I would love to actually see an exhibit, I only have his DVD's. (Was also on SBS TV here this year)

If you are at all interested in anatomy check him out, it’s cool to see what bodies actually look like outside of a text book.

I saw one of his exhibits in Toronto over a year ago. I would recommend seeing it.

It was quite an experience; I went between being in awe one moment and a little disturbed the next. It is bizarre when you are so close, taking it all in then it hits you... these were real people or animals.

thank you joeblast. this was really inspiring.

You're very welcome! I'm glad the exhibit will be in NYC until June, that definitely gives me time to get over there and see it. I showed the site/vids to my son last night and he was definitely intrigued and wanted to go see it as well. I showed it to my mom as well and she was like...'well...yeah, but...those arent real people...are they???' Yes, ma. Real cadavers. *disturbed look* *pause* 'Well...I think you can count me out on this one!'
To me, that's a lot of what makes it as intriguing as it is. It would still be cool if it werent, but making it real puts an extra bit of awe into it.

I'd encourage yall to watch the vids - some of the most amazing parts are of the circulatory system - its breathtaking seeing just the circulatory system suspended there without the rest of the body. You can still see the shape of the body through the blood vessels.

The 'how' was pretty interesting too...they used acetone to completely dehydrate the parts and then some sort of...polymer? was used to evaporate the acetone and occupy the volume and seal it all up.

Okay girls and guys. As always there are two sides to a coin. I on purpose DID NOT visit the SHOW. I won't give you my impression about the guy himself but what really sucked is that he did not freely share the method with anatomical institutes for training but utilized his copyright to make BIG money. Sure. This info could be false as every second-hand info can be false... but it is what clearly sticked to my mind as he first came up as object of discussion during my medical training.



Harry

sssoooo....he came up with a new method of preservation and profited from his intellectual property? what's wrong with that? its not like its a method you can use for dissection or anything like that...

Here's a minority view. I don't like the whole idea of gawking at dead bodies.

The show came to Chicago a while ago. A close friend liked it, recommended it, even took his kids to see it. But it sits wrong with me. I didn't go. It feels wrong to be entertained looking at cadavers who've had there skins artistically removed.

One mans opinion.

Michael

He actually had a public dissection a while ago for journalists. He did it just like the old masters did, like Leonardo DaVinci and those guys. It was quite a stirr in the media for a little while. If I remember it correctly I think he said it was art. He is definetely truly in deep love with human anatomy.

That was part of my concern - but after watching the movies on it, it is all very tastefully done - a work of art that is vastly educational. That seems to me to lift it well above any sort of mere gawking at a dead body

Nothing wrong or right. He originally was an antomy prof... so while his love for dead bodies might be present the love for medical students seems to be long lost...

and indeed. It is art and aesthetically done... but death has nothing to do with it...



Harry

..............

My feeling is similar to Michael's. And I'm not so sure how educational it really is - it can teach in the same dogmatic way that material science teaches, but that's not true education. It teaches about the outer appearances of things, not the fundamental life energy that animates us.

And that's what material medicine is based on - ignoring the dynamic, living functions that make us human - which are nowhere in the material body at all, and nowhere to be found in a cadaver - and reducing us to a bundle of parts.

Death isn't separate from life at all, and I don't think we learn about it in special exhibits . I think we learn about it within life.

-Karen

..................

Hi rain,

Maybe my post needs some clarification. There is certainly beauty and art in everything, and nothing that exists is "un-spiritual." But there is a certain life energy that is missing in a cadaver, which is what animates us. Medical people try to ponder the cadaver to find out how our bodies work, and they can never find this aspect of life in the lifeless body. There are important differences, just like there are important differences between night and day, for practical purposes - we don't judge that one is better than the other. Just that there are differences.

Yin is not yang, in other words, and that is a real polarity that we don't just dismiss and say that everything is uniform. Differences are what create the pulsations of life that allow us to experience everything.

-Karen

still not getting how that was really dissing med students, bro...other than making them wait for the technology? but of course, I am mostly uninformed on the subject

Karen, I appreciate your take on that...but the wires need to be in place before the energy flows! While western science doesnt understand much at all about the energy body, there is still plenty to learn from seeing the inner workings of the physical. You get to see and study in ways you simply cant with a living being.

One other interesting facet is that any diseases these cadavers had while alive are mostly highlighted in some fashion to give some perspective on what said disease does to the body. I think that some people leaving the place having a better understanding of their bodies and actually wanting to take care of themselves more is a huge benefit of this exhibition

I really dont think is a neccesary polarity to set up. Who knows where and when each individual can learn about death, or life, or anything, given half a chance.

There's room under the sun.

Why does people like to mix things up? This exhitibion isn't about educating you about your soul, your spirit, or whatever. It isn't about educating at all, not even human body or anatomy. It's art, and art has absolutely no limits and in most cases not even purpose. It's an amazing consciousness expander, creation at its finest.

The only limit in my opinion could be if something is wrong in the creation process. For example : killing or torture a living being for the sake of art. Even on that case, art is not to blame, but the wrong action of killing itself.

the mundane and the sacred

See. The method itself is brilliant and keeping it away as a true learning tool, is, well... I have done "dissections" and it would be "nice" to have access to methods that really do help facilitate the learning process...

Regarding the other discussion. Yes. It is art and one can and should question if one should make art out of cadavers... to me it is indeed on the SAME level as that artist who had a kind of terrarium, put in mices, hamsters and other living beings, I think he called it: "shock of the creatures" or something else and suddenly pressed the body during an "exhibition" and they fell into a mixer below and and and... this is all I want to say about the quality of art...

Death is happening in a context and by "beautifying" it, I feel, one is beraped of its sense and quality.

But all this is just opinions. I voiced mine because I do not see the beauty in all of that as others do.



Harry

but sunshine
You are in the context. you are
the context.

That's clearly wrong. The creature suffered and died for no purpose (in fact, there shouldn't be any purpose at all for killing or torture anything if that decision depends on a human being)

But a cadaver is a waste, will rot and come back to earth, it's not alive, and it's not suffering, so i don't see anything wrong about that. Maybe you are gross out or think about it as something sacred. Most catholics and christians for example have a deep respect for cadavers. They should not go and see this exhibition then, because it will upset them. That doesn't make it wrong though.

Right! It's never necessary to "set up" polarities, because the true ones are what we observe in nature, and anything else is just intellectual abstraction.

And I agree, we can get true education everywhere and anywhere, when we engage with that dynamic power within us that just loves learning and can connect with something real in every experience.

But that doesn't mean that every situation promotes that. For example, the situation of kids forced to sit at desks in school with regimented programs. It's more "instruction" (putting information in) than "education" (bringing understanding out).

Then look at how kids when allowed to roam the library and wander around outside, will learn all sorts of valuable things, and evolve their own education, just because we all inherently love learning when there's nothing blocking that. Some circumstances promote that more than others.

-Karen

....................

Well. There are two things that come to mind:
1st I tend to "judge" based on intent... I personally feel that guys "intent" to be wrong!

2nd there are others who are much more qualified to talk about it, but: the separation of the souls of the body in Taoist context seem not to happen in an instant (although I have heard different teachers say different things about it)... NOW: if we take that into account and knew about the time between death and dissection for art we could talk about the question of "sacredness" in a different way taken out of mere religious context, if one is willing to believe in "souls of the body"...



Harry

That's fighting fire with fire. I'm not an atheist, i'm a deep believer in life after death, and therefore some sort of soul, but i can't prove that, and i don't know anybody that can, so we have to move with what we do know and can prove empirically. That's common sense and logic, and we'll loose ground otherwise. A cadaver is dead and it's not coming back to life in the physical world, unless you believe in zombies (which are awesome of course).

What shall I say. This is a forum about Taost philosophy, arts & magic & & &

there are people here who believe in superpowers and immortality

we want to argue about common sense & logic?



Harry

Don't get me wrong, i consider myself a Buddhist/Taoist in terms of philosophy at least, i do a lot of meditation, energy work & qi gong, i'm a firm believer in some sort of after life and many other things like karma, but we should remain grounded because is really easy to get carried away while discussing important topics. We can't fool ourselves. At the end, we really don't know for sure. That's why i can't stand religion overall, they are all owners of the truth, but no one can actually prove what they preach. And that's not common sense, and certainly not logical. It's actually quite the opposite, delusional.

So... would you like your mother, father, child to be exhibited like that? Would you like to be an exhibit of this kind yourself once you die?

Very educational indeed. The public is being trained in becoming very acceptive of the wonderful, beautiful dehumanization. Playful corpses on display -- how very cute! Corpses are cute after all, now that we're educated well enough to finally notice! Not like all those countless generations of our uneducated, silly ancestors who thought one's dead body was one's private property. We now know that one's dead body is really a product for public consumption that should be making money for some other body, some owner or other... just like the live body was. Why take exception with the dead body? OK, lampshades made out of human skin (another technologically superior German invention) and soap rendered from human fat went out of style circa 1945, so it's time to find new, improved uses for the dead human body if we want to make it into a product for public consumption... something tasteful... well, if we say it's "educational," the public will have no objections -- anything educational is tasteful by default, right?..

Besides, someone who has visited such an exhibition will have an overall better tolerance of dead human bodies here and there -- a useful trait to cultivate in the population just in case some kind of extermination might become necessary again --
-- so better have people properly prepared, properly desensitized to dehumanization well in advance. Cultivate the taste for the decay till it becomes second nature to smile instead of throwing up. What government wouldn't want its constituents to smile happily no matter what they're looking at?.. Most useful educational tool ever.

I think taomeow ask the most pertinent question.What if it was someone whom you loved being displayed?

if you could look at it the way i would there would be a strong sacred experience.

From dust to dust.

You can burn us, dig us down, throw us to the wind, exhibit. Yes I think it is fine. God the allmighty can create us infinitely from nothing if he she then so wishes. From stardust. It is just feeble man who strives to get his claws on eternal life.

Of course. If a relative or friend of mine had made that decision and donated his body for that particular cause, i will completely respect its wish. The only minor problem would be seeing them exposed, almost in a naked/nudity sort of way, but that after all, is some sort of attachment and cultural heritage.

If i can't overcome that or if i really don't want to look at my mother's sexual organs, then i would just simply not attend the exhibition. But that clearly doesn't make the whole thing wrong per se.