• Art for Arts sake

    From Brian G@21:1/5 to All on Sat Nov 23 08:38:21 2019
    I was listening to a podcast from BBC the other day, about art stimulating people to ask questions of themselves.
    It reminded me of a picture I had seen many many years ago on one of those dodgy binary groups.
    It consisted of four pictures in a sequence
    The set up was:
    A very attractive naked lady was spread-eagled strapped down on a
    conveyor belt. Further along the belt were four posts, two on each side, and
    at the top of these runners was a heavy looking plate with downward facing sharp spikes on it. This was suspended by a rope which had been set alight.
    The first three pictures showed the woman staring up and moving along until
    by the third one she was almost directly under the spiked plate, at which point of course, she could no longer see the burning rope and had her eyes closed. However we could see the shredded and charred rope still burning and apparently only hanging by a thread.
    The final picture was just a white rectangle.

    The obvious posed question was, what happened.

    Of course there is no answer, the piece was there to at once pose the
    question and arouse the viewer and let them ask themselves about why they
    were aroused by what could be a barbaric death or maiming or nothing at all.


    It raises unanswered questions of consent and risk taking behaviour. I doubt for a second whether what we saw was what it looked like, ie there were probably stops in place to not let the actual event occur, but you kind of wonder if she knew that or what.
    I do miss not being able to see pictures and vision in general as the
    language of images is a very powerful one.
    Just feeling in a kind of self examinatory mood. Not thought of that series
    of pictures for many many years.
    I guess others may know of it or indeed say its well known, but initially,
    I was quite shocked at my contradictory response to it.
    Brian

    --

    -----
    Mildew_spores@blueyonder.co.uk is the alter ego of
    Brian G.
    Anything goes here.
    Ambiguous statement intended.

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