Registered: Jan 2002
Location: UK
Posts: 13002

BBC News

An exhibition of real human corpses and body parts has opened in London and has already created controversy. Ian Youngs went to find out if it is making anatomy accessible or just appealing to the macabre. The bodies on display look like badly-constructed models. But as you look closer, there are unmistakable signs that they are - or were - real human beings. The fingernails, the teeth, the eyelashes and the hair are all undoubtedly authentic.

Although the bodies have been stripped of their skin, and so a good part of their humanity, it is never far from the back of the mind that these are real corpses and were once a lot more active than they appear in this east London gallery.

There are 26 complete corpses and another 180 body parts on show at the Body Worlds exhibition, which has already been seen by eight million people around the world. Its creator wants it to be educational, to let people see for themselves how their body works. It certainly does that - but one of the reasons it has been so popular is that it also feeds a morbid fascination that most of us have lurking inside us. Some of the exhibits could not be more educational - like the blackened lungs that are a much more effective caution to smokers than any public health warning.

They carry the added force of being real, that they once belonged to someone who may have died because of them - with the message to the viewer that you could die too. But others are at best questionable and at worst distasteful.

There is the rider on a rearing horse, who is skinned along with his mount and holding his brain in the palm of an outstretched hand. There is a woman posed to look like she is swimming in mid-air - except she has been sliced in half and still has a full head of hair. And the most controversial exhibit is a woman who is eight months pregnant, put in a position with one hand behind her head that makes her look like she is posing for Playboy. But her chest is slit down the middle, and you see the curled-up foetus in her womb.

The corpses have been arranged in these positions to show the full workings of the human body - how the bones fit together when somebody is on a horse or what the muscles look like when they have their arms stretched. But it still feels like there is something strange about dead people being displayed in a way that looks so unnatural - unnatural for dead people, at least.

There are a number of other foetuses - and they are a perfect example of where the line between educational exhibit and freak show gets extremely blurred. We may learn what an unborn child with hydrocephalus looks like - it looks like a child with an extremely big head - but do we really need to look at this being who never had a chance to live?

Similarly, there is a fascinating sequence of foetuses aged between four and eight weeks old. At four weeks, the description tells us that it already has a heart, eyes and four "buds", which will turn into arms and legs - but to the untrained eye, it just looks like an unidentifiable speck about 5mm wide.

By eight weeks, however, it begins to look like a real human for the first time. This exhibition is likely to make visitors look at a lot of things differently - from abortion to smoking and drinking. The hope among the organisers - and those who donated their bodies in the knowledge that they would be pored over by thousands of people - is that visitors will leave with more knowledge of their flesh and bones.

But something about it still leaves a sour taste in the mouth.






Professor Gunther von Hagens created the exhibition

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Pretty twisted huh? Being about to marry a Fine Artist I know that my other half will want to go to this exhibition because of all that stuff about 'form and anatomy'.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: seattle-ish
Posts: 11266

That's just fucking creepy.
I dont know if I could stomach going to that exhibit.
I have a feeling Id go anyway, though.
Interesting, but creepy.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Playa d'en London
Posts: 9788

"shameless Victorian freak show" ~ i like

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Oakland-ish
Posts: 6032

someone beat you to it...

http://www.asylumnation.com/asylum/...=k%F6rperwelten

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 15123

I really want to see this exhibit some time. I hear, however, that there is opposition to its coming to the US.

Maybe I misheard, though.

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Registered: Mar 2002
Location: Hell.
Posts: 683

This guy takes real pride in his work too. I saw something on tv when this exhibit first came out and he works pretty hard to remove parts of the skin and leave bones and muscle tissue intact. Nothing like working with the dead.

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Registered: Nov 2001
Location: on the move
Posts: 1266

now I'm not one who's real big on museams, exhibitions, or the like. all that artsy stuff just generally makes me feel stuffy and bored.

this however is just to awsome for plain words to describe.

you can shove your picasso right up your ass .. I'm going to look at the dead pregnant chick.

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Bloodninja: Rhinoceruses don't play games. They fucking charge your ass.

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Registered: Not Yet
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Did anyone else notice that Professor Gunther von Hagens looks like the evil guy from Indiana Jone: Raiders of the Lost Ark?

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Posts: 10178

the question is, where does he get his bodies?

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: NH
Posts: 6081

quote:

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Originally posted by Dingle
the question is, where does he get his bodies?

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