Friday 7 October 2011

Morbid curiosity and The Internet

Morbid Curiosity-
Things you can't stop yourself from watching, but you'll really really wish you hadn't

at one end of the spectrum: Two girls One cup (extreme disgust)
at the other: Three men One hammer (extreme violence) ... I gave myself symptoms of post traumatic stress stupidly watching this- I wouldn't recommend it tomy worst enemy

People have even been making videos purely dedicated to the reaction of the audience watching the original video... voyeurism? The Internet has introduced a whole new way of communicating.

Thursday 6 October 2011

Our Morbid Curiosity

“There are certain moments in life when one experiences space and time to an excruciating degree. There are seconds -- fleeting, momentous seconds -- when the world seems relentlessly clear, and the very nature of existence graspable. When the moment passes, you think to yourself, "My God, I just saw it. It. The truth. What was it?" Although you are unable to define, the sensation of knowing stays with you. Most likely, the Real cannot be set in words, it is beyond words. Human tragedy is almost always accompanied by that glimpse of the Real.”
  
Ashley Hope (an artist who paints from crime scene photographs)


I've been thinking about why people are so curious about morbid things. A large proportion of the most popular books at the moment are about child abuse and trauma- why are people so drawn to such dark subjects? Many artists use violence in their work... is there a particular reason for this? Have thought about war photography in art before but want to explore more how artists have used violence/death/the more gruesome/sinister in their work and the different ways there are to explore this subject... what is the main message within these works? Perhaps they communicate a very different message- but just explore this using the same themes?

Have been looking at mug shots- there is something enticing about the suggested narrative going on in some of them...find the drug users mug shots particularly mezmerising as they show the progression of the criminals drug use on their physical and mental health- powerful.

"Graphic designer Mark Michaelson has spent a decade collecting old mug shots from the 1870's to 1970's. His collection consists of tens of thousands of small-time criminals, who he has dubbed the ‘Least Wanted.’ Although Michaelson knows little to nothing about the photos’ subjects, their expressions prompt our imaginations to dream up scenarios that might have gotten them into such circumstances. Currently, Mark’s exhibit ‘A Century of American Mug Shots’ can be seen at The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago, which runs through April 12, 2008. His accompanying book, ‘Least Wanted: A century of American Mugshots’, is available through Amazon. Images property of Mark Michaelson."

http://www.curbly.com/users/diy-maven/posts/3472-mug-shot-art  



http://www.flawlesshustle.com/art/australian-mug-shots/

The crime scene as art- meth labs
http://thefauxistinternational.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/temporal-slip-in-crystal-architectures-meth-museums-meth-labs-in-space-the-meth-architecture-organism/

Laura- Meth PSA
"This is a smart meth PSA. For once. Much more sophisticated than the usual fare of lost innocence/violent teenager imagery.The Fauxists have long evinced a fascination with drugs and architectural spacetime, and in Laura’s museum, We’ve picked up on some particularly potent motifs of meth-time.

Laura’s Museum

In what is obviously the blank bright cavernous interior of a contemporay art space- rather than the dark stuffiness of a traditional museum?- split-channel videos and wallpapered paintings blatantly quoting Takashi Murakami mimic the art-viewing experience, of experience scoured & framed by the white cube-void.
We are led into an exhibition that could well be entitled “Laura: The Mourning of Straight Time”. Laura wanders spaces of temporal slip, arrayed with visions and objects of her/a lost adolescence and childhood. Indeed, at centre, the contrasting of meth-time, meth-desire with straight time is the central tenet to most of the PSA’s of this ilk. The notion of ‘straight time’, as deployed by Halberstam, and developed by Jose Esteban Munoz, describes the ‘autonaturalizing temporality’ that is produced by the structures of heteronormativity (broadly), and its proprietary deployment of work, recreation, family, the body etc. Straight time promises that there is no future for non-normative individuals/groups, as the only futurity promised is that of reproductive majoritarian heterosexuality, the family, and the spectacle of the state refurbishing its ranks through covert & subsidized acts of reproduction. It is impoverished and toxic for ‘others’ who do not feel the privilege of majoritatian belonging, normative tastes, and ‘rational’ expectations.
In the forced re-imposition of straight time, Laura is ‘offered’ a hypertextual multiverse of access to her potential paths and parallel lives framed totally as loss (“A museum of what she lost to meth”). In a screaming re-accession/dismissal of her childhood(s),  Laura bodily skirts a claustrophobic installation of cards, only to thrash against/through the birthday/card field-archive (reminiscent of the ‘house of cards’ or dominoes, and bringing to mind Derrida’s ‘Archive trauma’) that someone has arranged so perfectly, through the accumulated weight of sticky intentions and ties, forming a path."

Are crime scene photos art?

http://www.hipstercrite.com/2012/01/11/the-photography-of-weegee-are-crime-scene-photos-art/