AUTOPSIES RESEARCH GROUP

  • Home
  • Events
  • Autopsies Blog
  • OBITUARIES
  • Projects
  • BIBLIOGRAPHY
  • CONFERENCE CALLS
  • Links
  • People
  • Contact
  • Site map

Archive of a human being

14/3/2012

0 Comments

 
Picture

On a recent trip to the Wellcome Collection I took the opportunity to visit the excellent permanent collections which comprise exhibitions and artwork themed around modern medicine, as well as the literal cabinet of curiosity that is Henry Wellcome’s personal collection of artefacts and medicinal aperatus.  

I was fascinated by an installation on the discovery of DNA, and particularly the way in which the genetic code was recorded, as the collection houses a paper copy of the complete DNA code for one person.  High shelves hold almost 100 large binders, each filled with double-sided paper, and every sheet is completely filled with the strings of letters that make up the genetic code.  This exhibit is called ‘Library of the Genome’ and contains 3 billion characters which would take around 56 years to recite aloud.  

I was struck by the complexity of the DNA code and was amazed that such a huge amount of it corresponded to just one person.  But the most interesting aspect of the exhibit for me was the possibility that a human being could be archived like any other artefact in the Wellcome Collection.  Can a person be recorded and stored through their genetic code?  There is certainly something evocative about seeing DNA written down on paper, and rather than being reductive, I found the exhibit profound and elegiac.


Stephanie Fuller
0 Comments

Haunting the Chapel: Photography and Dissolution

10/10/2011

0 Comments

 
Picture
The Bridge Over the Moat, Anonymous, 1896, silver gelatin print with original graphite retouching


EXHIBITION REVIEW

Haunting the Chapel: Photography and Dissolution
Daniel Blau Gallery, London
1 September - 6 October 2011


At its invention, photography was considered otherworldly: the stuff of ghosts. The spirit photographs of the late nineteenth century exemplified this impression of the ethereal, as haunting figures were made to appear within portraits after the discovery in the 1860s of the effects of double exposure by William Mumler. ‘Haunting the Chapel: Photography and Dissolution’ exposes these spirits of photography through a cross-century selection of altered, or altering, images. Besides original examples of spirit photography - including one of Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote a pamphlet defending the veracity of the medium - the exhibition features x-ray images, photograms, silver prints and cyanotypes, documenting as much the dissolution involved in photography’s very processes as the disintegrating nature of its subjects. 

The skeleton of a building on the ‘Rue du Bac’ sits between decay and demolition. Nadar’s ‘Foyer of the Paris Opera after Burning in 1884’ is deserted and still; elsewhere an anonymous building is licked with flames. There are Gothic cathedral exteriors and ornate, but empty interiors. A dilapidated stairwell from 1870 disorients like Escher, with unperceivable depths. The intricacies of a ‘Mandalay Palace’ (c. 1890) are eaten away by black patterns. Ancient gardens tangled with plants and palms appear in the travel photography of Emile Gsell (1838 - 1879), the first to represent on film the temples of Vietnam and Cambodia. Architectural juxtaposition occurs between a silver print of New York’s 1920s skyline and black and white vernacular images of rural farms, or the bunker-like dwellings of volcanic ‘Stromboli’. U.S. Army aerial shots show the gridded city lights of 'Toyama, Honshu’, or the spiralling smoke of an Oil Refinery that has just exploded. These last images are haunting for their purpose in recording, their documentation of destruction, which appears, from a distance, abstracted. 

Such pieces of early photography sit alongside more recent works - a freckled portrait of Berenice Abbott by Walker Evans, or a Chris Marker still in which the side of a man’s face on roadside concrete is cut diagonally by a falling jet of water. But it is the early specimens, often anonymous, that are mysteriously compelling--discovered, you imagine, upon abandoned desks. The exhibition represents that which is about to be lost, or those who already have been, teetering on the point of disappearance, knocking at the door of the atrocious or the alienated, holding the hand of the fragile. The curators have chosen to frame the exhibition a quote from Borges's ‘The Immortal’: ‘They are moving because of their phantom condition; every act they execute may be their last; there is not a face that is not on the verge of dissolving like a face in a dream’. With the long exposure times of photography’s early technologies, bodies in Italian piazzas or French town squares have become almost-extinguished silhouettes. Kinetic blur jolts the just-frozen moment, and the fall of the shutter fails to quite capture the movement of figures in time.

Hannah Gregory

0 Comments

Summer events in London

11/8/2011

0 Comments

 
Amid this season of festivals, here are two events that have caught our attention.
Picture
EXHIBITION: 15 August - 4 September 2011
Tristan Bates Theatre, 1A Tower St, London WC2H 9NP

The Museum of Broken Relationships is an award winning exhibition of seemingly ordinary yet incredibly poignant objects. Donated by individuals from all over the world, each object tells the story of a past relationship.

More information from Tristan Bates Theatre.
Picture
FILM SCREENING: 22 August 2011
Opera Holland Park, London

A Summer Celebration of Iranian Film will include cultural exhibitions and an outdoor screening of The Song Of Sparrows (dir. Majid Majidi).

For more more information and details of the forthcoming 2nd London Iranian Film Festival see the UKIFF website.


0 Comments

Objects under surveillance

6/1/2011

0 Comments

 
Picture
Click here for information about our first event of 2011.
0 Comments

Architecture and Comics

20/10/2010

6 Comments

 
Picture
If you are in Paris, head to the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine at the Palais de Chaillot (métro Trocadéro) to see this exhibition. 'Archi & BD, la ville dessinée' examines the fascinating relationships between architecture and comic strips from the beginning of the twentieth century to today.

The exhibition runs until 28 November 2010.

For more information, see the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine website (in English) and the exhibition blog (in French).

While we're on the topic of drawing the city, have a look at the blog of Autopsies group member Hannah Gregory, which features a recent entry on Books and Buildings.


Jacob Paskins


6 Comments

    autopsies blog

    This is where we share what we’ve seen, heard, experienced
    or thought about dead objects
     for everyone to comment on.

    Tweets by @autopsiesgroup

    Archives

    September 2012
    June 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    October 2011
    August 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009

    Categories

    All
    Architecture
    Archives
    Asbestos
    Benjamin
    Bill Brown
    Books
    Car
    Cinema
    Collection
    Comics
    Computers
    Conferences
    Dickens
    Drawings
    Exhibition
    Film
    Film Noir
    Found Footage
    Godard
    Hair Dryer
    Internet
    Jazz
    Kitsch
    Landlords
    Launderette
    Lead Paint
    Lead Poisoning
    Library
    Longplayer Project
    Lost Film
    Maps
    Medicine
    Memex
    Metro
    Motel
    Museums
    Music
    New Orleans
    Nostalgia
    Object Retrieval
    Object Retrieval Project
    Objects
    Obsolescence
    Patina
    Photography
    Photomaton
    Pica
    Radio
    Routemaster Bus
    Streetcar
    Surveillance
    Theatre
    Things
    Thing Theory
    Toys
    Transport
    Ucl
    Website

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.