The Web coined a new vocabulary, gave birth to its own expressive instances, even elaborated an unprecedented kind of humor. With regard to “the weird“, internet users had an exceptional training ground: the now-defunct Vine platform. Here videos had to be 6-second-long, so an original and very complex aesthetic began to take form. In order to make their videos incisive, users had to come up with unsettling narrative tricks: an intelligent use of off-screen space, cross references, brilliantly interrupted climax, shock and surprise.
This was the perfect environment for New York musician and digital artist Brian Tessler, and his accomplice Jon Baken, to create their original and hugely successful project Cool 3D World.
Cool 3D World videos present the viewer with alienating situations, in which monstrous beings perform esoteric and incomprehensible actions. Through the paroxysmal distortion of their characters’ facial features (stretched or compressed to the limit of modeling possibilities, with effects that would normally be considered errors in classical 3D animation) and the build-up of illogical situations, Tessler & Baken plunge us into a sick world where anything can happen. In this universe, any unpleasant detail can hide mystical and psychedelic abysses. This is a hallucinated, exhilarating, disturbing reality yet sometimes its madness gives way to some unexpectedly poetic touches.
What sets apart the Cool 3D World duo from other artists coming from the “weird side” of the internet is their care for the visual aspect, which is always deliberately poised between the professional and the amateur, and for the alwyas great sound department curated by Tessler.
The result is some kind of animated couterpart to Bizarro Fiction; every new release raises the bar of the previous one and — despite the obvious attempt to package the perfect viral product — Cool 3D World never falls back on a repetitive narrative.
Today, Cool 3D World has a YouTube channel, an Instagram account and a Facebook page. Recently Tessler & Baken started a partnership with Adult Swim, and began experimenting with longer formats.
Here is a selection of some of their best works,.
To boost-start this new trip around the sun, I’d like to reveal the secret project I have been absorbed in for the last few months… the Bizzarro Bazar Web Series!
Produced in collaboration with Theatrum Mundi (Luca Cableri’s wunderkammer in Arezzo) and Onda Videoproduzioni, and directed by Francesco Erba, the series will take you on a journey through strange scientific experiments, eccentric characters, stories on the edge of impossible, human marvels — in short, everything what you might expect from Bizzarro Bazar.
Working on this project has been a new experience for me, certainly exciting and — I won’t deny it — rather demanding. But it seems to me that the finished product is quite good, and I am very curious to know your reactions, and to see what effect it will have on an audience that is less accustomed to strange topics than the readers of this blog.
In case you’re wandering: all episodes will be captioned in English. I’ll post them on here too, but if you want to make sure you don’t miss an episode you can follow my Facebook page and especially subscribe to my YouTube channel, which would make me really happy (numbers count).
And above all, if you happen to like the videos, please consider sharing them and spreading the word!
So, along with my best wishes for the new year, here’s a sneak peak of the opening credits for the weirdest web series of 2019 — coming soon, very soon.
The wonderful photo above shows a group of Irish artists from the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin, including Margaret Clarke and Estella Solomons (via BiblioCuriosa). And let’s start with the usual firing of links and oddities!
We complain so much about fake news, but as soon as the press was invented, it was already being used for questionable reasons. For example, fomenting the collective psychosis about witches, and the consequent persecutions.
This is the oldest diving suit in the world.It is on exhibit in the Raahe museum in Finland, and dates back to the eighteenth century.It was used for short walks under water, to repair the keels of ships.Now, instead, “it dives into your nightmares” (as Stefano Castelli put it).
Rediscovered masterpieces: the Christian comic books of the seventies in which sinners are redeemed by the evangelizing heroes.“The Cross is mightier than the switchblade!”(Thanks, Gigio!)
On the facade of the Cologne Town Hall there is a statue of Bishop Konrad von Hochstaden.The severity of his ecclesiastical figure is barely surprising;it’s what’s under the pedestal that leaves you stunned.
The figure engaged in an obscene autofellatio is to be reconnected to the classic medieval marginalia, which often included grotesque and bizarre situations placed “in the margin” of the main work — which could be a book, a fresco, a painting or, as in this case, a sculptural complex.
Given that such figures appear on a good number of churches, mainly in France, Spain and Germany, there has been much speculation as to what their purpose and meaning might have been: these were not just echoes of pagan fertility symbols, but complex allegories of salvation, as this book explains (and if you read French, there’s another good one exclusively dedicated to Brittany). Beyond all conjectures, it is clear that the distinction between the sacred and the profane in the Middle Ages was not as clear and unambiguous as we would be led to believe.
Let’s remain in the Middle Ages. When in 1004 the niece of the Byzantine emperor dared to use a fork for the first time at table, she caused a ruckus and the act was condemned by the clergy as blasphemous.(No doubt the noblewoman had offended the Almighty, since He later made her die of plague.)
Also dead, for 3230 years, but with all the necessary papers: here is the Egyptian passport issued in 1974 for the mummy of Ramesses II, so that he could fly to Paris without a hitch at the check-in. [EDIT: this is actually an amusing fake, as Gabriel pointed out in the comments]
Alex Eckman-Lawn adds disturbing and concrete “layers” to the human face. (Thanks, Anastasia!)
Another artist, Arngrímur Sigurðsson, illustrated several traditional figures of Icelandic folklore in a book called Duldýrasafnið, which translated means more or less “The Museum of Hidden Beings”.The volume is practically unobtainable online, but you can see many evocative paintings on the official website and especially in this great article.(Thanks, Luca!)
Forget Formula One! Here’s the ultimate racing competition!
A new study of the University of Naples on Herculaneum shows the victims died worse than we thought.Or better, depending on your point of view.Blood instantly evaporating and heads exploding — it’s hard to think of a quicker way to go.
Marco Meucci (here’s his Facebook page) deals with reprints of ancient books and artistic ligatures.He also creates miniature ossuaries and crypts, complete with tiny mummies.Look at this creation of his (which takes inspiration from both the Catacombs of Palermo and the Crypt of Via Veneto) and tell me if it isn’t adorable.
Several distinguished professors of philosophy, jurisprudence, ethics and informatics answer the question about the future that, let’s face it, is tormenting all of us: would a kinky robot, specifically designed to handcuff us to the bed and whip our butts, violate Asimov’s first law?(via Ayzad)
And finally, let’s dive into the weird side of porn for some videos of beautiful girls stuck in super glue — well, ok, they pretend to be.You can find dozens of them, and for a good reason: this is a peculiar immobilization fetishism (as this short article perfectly summarizes) combining classic female foot worship, the lusciousness of glue (huh?), and a little sadistic excitement in seeing the victim’s useless attempts to free herself.The big plus is it doesn’t violate YouTube adult content guidelines.
Paracelsus‘ homunculus, the result of complicated alchemic recipes, is an allegorical figure that fascinated the collective uncoscious for centuries. Its fortune soon surpassed the field of alchemy, and the homunculus was borrowed by literature (Goethe, to quote but one example), psychology (Jung wrote about it), cinema (take the wonderful, ironic Pretorius scene from TheBride of Frankenstein, 1935), and the world of illustration (I’m thinking in particular of Stefano Bessoni). Even today the homunculus hasn’t lost its appeal: the mysterious videosposted by a Russian youtuber, purportedly showing some strange creatures developed through unlikely procedures, scored tens of millions of views.
Yet I will not focus here on the classic, more or less metaphorical homunculus, but rather on the way the word is used in pathology.
Yes beacuse, unbeknownst to you, a rough human figure could be hiding inside your own body.
Welcome to a territory where the grotesque bursts into anatomy.
Let’s take a step back to how life starts.
In the beginning, the fertilized cell (zygote) is but one cell; it immediately starts dividing, generating new cells, which in turn proliferate, transform, migrate. After roughly two weeks, the different cellular populations organize into three main areas (germ layers), each one with its given purpose — every layer is in charge of the formation of a specific kind of structure. These three specialized layers gradually create the various anatomical shapes, building the skin, nerves, bones, organs, apparatuses, and so on. This metamorphosis, this progressive “surfacing” of order ends when the fetus is completely developed.
Sometimes it might happen that this very process, for some reason, gets activated again in adulthood.
It is as if some cells, falling for an unfathomable hallucination, believed they still are at an embryonic stage: therefore they begin weaving new structures, abnormal growths called teratomas, which closely resemble the outcome of the first germ differentiations.
These mad cells start producing hair, bones, teeth, nails, sometimes cerebral or tyroid matter, even whole eyes. Hystologically these tumors, benign in most cases, can appear solid, wrapped inside cystes, or both.
In very rare cases, a teratoma can be so highly differentiated as to take on an antropomorphic shape, albeit rudimentary. These are the so-called fetiform teratomas (homunculus).
Clinical reports of this anomaly really have an uncanny, David Cronenberg quality: one homunculus found in 2003 inside an ovarian teratoma in a 25-year-old virginal woman, showed the presence of brain, spinal chord, ears, teeth, tyroid gland, bone, intestines, trachea, phallic tissue and one eye in the middle of the forehead.
In 2005 another fetiform mass had hairs and arm buds, with fingers and nails. In 2006 a reported homunculus displayed one upper limb and two lower limbs complete with feet and toes. In 2010 another mass presented a foot with fused toes, hair, bones and marrow. In 2015 a 13-year-old patient was found to carry a fetiform teratoma exhibiting hair, vestigial limbs, a rudimentary digestive tube and a cranial formation containing meninxes and neural tissue.
What causes these cells to try and create a new, impossible life? And are we sure that the minuscule, incomplete fetus wasn’t really there from the beginning?
Among the many proposed hypothesis, in fact, there is also the idea that homunculi (difficult to study because of their scarcity in scientific literature) may not be actual tumors, but actually the remnants of a parasitic twin, incapsulated within his sibling’s body during the embryonic phase. If this was the case, they would not qualify as teratomas, falling into the fetus in fetu category.
But the two phenomenons are mainly regarded as separate.
To distinguish one from the other, pathologists rely on the existence of a spinal column (which is present in the fetus in fetu but not in teratomas), on their localization (teratomas are chiefly found near the reproductive area, the fetus in fetu within the retroperitoneal space) and on zygosity (teratomas are often differentiated from the surrounding tissues, as if they were “fraternal twins” in regard to their host, while the fetus in fetu is homozygote).
The study of these anomalous formations might provide valuable information for the understanding of human development and parthenogenesis (essential for the research on stem cells).
But the intriguing aspect is exactly their problematic nature. As I said, each time doctors encounter a homunculus, the issue is always how to categorize it: is it a teratoma or a parasitic twin? A structure that “emerged” later, or a shape which was there from the start?
It is interesting to note that this very uncertainty also has existed in regard to normal embryos for the over 23 centuries. The debate focused on a similar question: do fetuses arise from scratch, or are they preexistent?
This is the ancient dispute between the supporters of epigenesis and preformationism, between those who claimed that embryonic structures formed out of indistinct matter, and those who thought that they were already included in the egg.
Aristotle, while studying chicken embryos, had already speculated that the unborn child’s physical structures acquire solidity little by little, guided by the soul; in the XVIII Century this theory was disputed by preformationism. According to the enthusiasts of this hypothesis (endorsed by high-profile scholars such as Leibniz, Spallanzani and Diderot), the embryo was already perfectly formed inside the egg, ab ovo, only too small to be visible to the naked eye; during development, it would just have to grow in size, as a baby does after birth.
Where did this idea come from? An important part was surely played by a well-known etching by Nicolaas Hartsoeker, who was among the first scientists to observe seminal fluid under the microscope, as well as being a staunch supporter of the existence of minuscule, completely formed fetuses hiding inside the heads of sperm cells.
And Hartsoeker, in turn, had taken inspiration precisely from the famous alchemical depictions of the homunculus.
In a sense, the homunculus appearing in an ancient alchemist’s vial and the ones studied by pathologists nowadays are not that different. They can both be seen as symbols of the enigma of development, of the fundamental mystery surrounding birth and life. Miniature images of the ontological dilemma which has been forever puzzling humanity: do we appear from indistinct chaos, or did our heart and soul exist somewhere, somehow, before we were born?
Little addendum of anatomical pathology (and a bit of genetics)
by Claudia Manini, MD
Teratomas are germ cell tumors composed of an array of tissues derived from two or three embryonic layers (ectoderm, mesoderm, endoderm) in any combination.
The great majority of teratomas are benign cystic tumors mainly located in ovary, containing mature (adult-type) tissues; rarely they contains embryonal tissues (“immature teratomas”) and, if so, they have a higher malignant potential.
The origin of teratomas has been a matter of interest, speculation, and dispute for centuries because of their exotic composition.
The partenogenic theory, which suggests an origin from the primordial germ cell, is now the most widely accepted. The other two theories, one suggesting an origin from blastomeres segregated at an early stage of embryonic development and the second suggesting an origin from embryonal rests have few adherents currently. Support for the germ cell theory has come from anatomic distribution of the tumors, which occurs along the body midline of migration of the primordial germ cell, from the fact that the tumors occur most commonly during the reproductive age (epidemiologic-observational but also experimental data) and from cytogenetic analysis which has demonstrated genotypic differences between omozygous teratomatous tissue and heterozygous host tissue.
The primordial germ cells are the common origins of gametes (spermatozoa and oocyte, that are mature germ cells) which contain a single set of 23 chromosomas (haploid cells). During fertilization two gametes fuse together and originate a new cell which have a dyploid and heterozygous genetic pool (a double set of 23 chromosomas from two different organism).
On the other hand, the cells composing a teratoma show an identical genetic pool between the two sets of chromosomes.
Thus teratomas, even when they unexpectedly give rise to fetiform structures, are a different phenomenon from the fetus in fetu, and they fall within the scope of tumoral and not-malformative pathology.
All this does not lessen the impact of the observation, and a certain awe in considering the differentiation potential of one single germ cell.
References
Kurman JR et al., Blaustein’s pathology of the female genital tract, Springer 2011
Prat J., Pathology of the ovary, Saunders 2004
Here’s a gift pack of strange food for the mind and weird stuff that should keep you busy until Christmas.
You surely remember Caitlin Doughty, founder of the Order of the Good Death as well as author of best-seller Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. In the past I interviewd her, I wrote a piece for the Order, and I even flew to Philadelphia to meet her for a three-day conference.
Caitlin is also famous for her ironic videos on the culture of death. The latest episode is dedicated to a story that will surely sound familiar, if you follow this blog: the story of the ‘Punsihed Suicide’ of Padua, which was published for the first time in my book His Anatomical Majesty.
With her trademark humor, Caitlin succeeds in asking what in my view is the fundamental question: is it worth judging a similar episode by our contemporary ethical standards, or is it better to focus on what this tale can tell us about our history and about the evolution of sensibility towards death?
In 1966 a mysterious box washed up on a British shore: it contained swords, chandeliers, red capes, and a whole array of arcane symbols related to occultism. What was the function of these objects, and why were they left to the waves?
The hard life of a translator: an article on the complexity of rendering into English Marquis de Sade’s profanity.
While we’re at it, here is an autopsy photograph from the 1920s, probably taken in Belgium. Was pipe smoking a way of warding off the bad smell?
(Seen here, thanks again Claudia!)
A new photographic book on evolution is coming out, and it looks sumptuous. Robert Clark’s wonderful pictures carry a disquieting message: “Some scientists who study evolution in real time believe we may be in the midst of the world’s sixth mass extinction, a slow-motion funnel of death that will leave the planet with a small fraction of its current biodiversity. One reason that no one can forecast how it will end—and who will be left standing—is that, in many ways, our understanding of evolution itself continues to evolve“.
But don’t get too alarmed: our world might eventually be just an illusion. Sure, this concept is far from new: all the great spiritual, mythological or artistic messages have basically been repeating us for millennia that we should not trust our senses, suggesting ther is more to this reality than meets the eye. Yet, up until now, no one had ever tried to prove this mathematically. Until now.
A cognitive science professor at the University of California elaborated an intriguing model that is causing a bit of a fuss: his hypothesis is that our perception has really nothing to do with the world out there, as it is; our sensory filter might not have evolved to give us a realistic image of things, but rather a convenient one. Here is an article on the Atlantic, and here is a podcast in which our dear professor quietly tears down everything we think we know about the world.
Nonsense, you say? What if I told you that highly evolved aliens could already be among us — without the need for a croncrete body, but in the form of laws of physics?
Other brilliant ideas: Goodyear in 1961 developed these illuminated tires.
I don’t know how I managed to live so far without this Twitter account, a bot which elaborates every two hours a combinatory gem of magic realism.
Mariano Tomatis’ Blog of Wonders is actually Bizzarro Bazar’s less morbid, but more magical twin. You could spend days sifting through the archives, and always come up with some pearl you missed the first time: for example this post on the hidden ‘racism’ of those who believe Maya people came from outer space (Italian only).
In Medieval manuscripts we often find some exceedingly unlucky figures, which had the function of illustrating all possible injuries. Here is an article on the history and evolution of the strange and slightly comic Wound Man.
Looking at colored paint spilled on milk? Not really a mesmerizing thought, until you take four minutes off and let yourself be hypnotized by Memories of Painting, by Thomas Blanchard.
Let’s go back to the fallacy of our senses, ith these images of the Aspidochelone (also called Zaratan), one of the fantastical beasts I adored as a child. The idea of a sea monster so huge that it could be mistaken for an island, and on whose back even vegetation can grow, had great fortune from Pliny to modern literature:
But the real surprise is to find that the Zaratan actually exists, albeit in miniature:
Saddam Hussein, shortly after his sixtieth birthday, had 27 liters of his own blood taken just to write a 600-page calligraphied version of the Quran.
An uncomfortable manuscript, so much so that authorities don’t really know what to do with it.
Time for a couple of Christmas tips, in case you want to make your decorations slightly menacing: 1) a set of ornaments featuring the faces of infamous serial killers, namely Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein and H. H. Holmes; 2) a murderous Santa Claus. Make your guests understand festivities stress you out, and that might trigger some uncontrolled impulse. If you wish to buy these refined, tasteful little objects, just click on pictures to go to the corresponding Etsy store. You’re welcome.
Finally, if you run out of gift ideas for Christmas and you find yourself falling back on the usual book, at least make sure it’s not the usual book. Here are four random, purely coincidental examples…
Happy holidays!
Regarding the Western taboo about death, much has been written on how its “social removal” happened approximately in conjunction with WWI and the institution of great modern hospitals; still it would be more correct to talk about a removal and medicalization of the corpse. The subject of death, in fact, has been widely addressed throughout the Twentieth Century: a century which was heavily imbued with funereal meditations, on the account of its history of unprecedented violence. What has vanished from our daily lives is rather the presence of the dead bodies and, most of all, putrefaction.
Up until the end of Nineteenth Century, the relationship with human remains was inevitable and accepted as a natural part of existence, not just in respect to the preparation of a body at home, but also in the actual experience of so-called unnatural deaths.
One of the most striking examples of this familiarity with decomposition is the infamous Morgue in Paris.
Established in 1804, to replace the depository for dead bodies which during the previous centuries was found in the prison of Grand Châtelet, the Morgue stood in the heart of the capital, on the île de la Cité. In 1864 it was moved to a larger building on the point of the island, right behind Notre Dame. The word had been used since the Fifteenth Century to designate the cell where criminals were identified; in jails, prisoners were put “at the morgue” to be recognized. Since the Sixteenth Century, the word began to refer exclusively to the place where identification of corpses was carried out.
Due to the vast number of violent deaths and of bodies pulled out of the Seine, this mortuary was constantly filled with new “guests”, and soon transcended its original function. The majority of visitors, in fact, had no missing relatives to recognize.
The first ones to have different reasons to come and observe the bodies, which were laid out on a dozen black marble tables behind a glass window, were of course medical students and anatomists.
This receptacle for the unknown dead found in Paris and the faubourgs of the city, contributes not a little to the forwarding of the medical sciences, by the vast number of bodies it furnishes, which, on an average, amount to about two hundred annually. The process of decomposition in the human body may be seen at La Morgue, throughout every stage to solution, by those whose taste, or pursuit of science, leads them to that melancholy exhibition. Medical men frequently visit the place, not out of mere curiosity, but for the purpose of medical observation, for wounds, fracturs, and injuries of every description occasionally present themselves, as the effect of accident or murder. Scarcely a day passes without the arrival of fresh bodies, chiefly found in the Seine, and very probably murdered, by being flung either out of the windows which overhang the Seine river, or off the bridges, or out of the wine and wood-barges, by which the men who sell the cargoes generally return with money in their pockets […]. The clothes of the dead bodies brought into this establishment are hung up, and the corpse is exposed in a public room for inspection of those who visit the place for the purpose of searching for a lost friend or relative. Should it not be recognised in four days, it is publicly dissected, and then buried.
For most of the XIX Century, and even from an earlier time, the smell of cadavers was part of the routine in the Morgue. Because of its purpose and mode of operation, the Morgue was the privileged place for cadaveric stench in Paris […]. In fact, the bodies that had stayed in the water constituted the ordinary reality at the Morgue. Their putrefaction was especially spectacular.
(B. Bertherat, Le miasme sans la jonquille, l’odeur du cadavre à la Morgue de Paris au XIXe siècle,
in Imaginaire et sensibilités au XIXe siècle, Créaphis, 2005)
What is curious (and quite incomprehensible) for us today is how the Morgue could soon become one of the trendiest Parisian attractions.
A true theatre of death, a public exhibition of horror, each day it was visited by dozens of people of all backgrounds, as it certainly offered the thrill of a unique sight. It was a must for tourists visiting the capital, as proven by the diaries of the time:
We left the Louvre and went to the Morgue where three dead bodies lay waiting identification. They were a horrible sight. In a glass case one child that had been murdered, its face pounded fearfully.
The most enlightening description comes from the wonderful and terrible pages devoted to the mortuary by Émile Zola. His words evoke a perfect image of the Morgue experience in XIX Century:
In the meantime Laurent imposed on himself the task of passing each morning by the Morgue, on the way to his office. […]When he entered the place an unsavoury odour, an odour of freshly washed flesh, disgusted him and a chill ran over his skin: the dampness of thewalls seemed to add weight to his clothing, which hung more heavily on his shoulders. He went straight to the glass separating the spectators from the corpses, and with his pale face against it, looked. Facing himappeared rows of grey slabs, and upon them, here and there, the naked bodies formed green and yellow, white and red patches. While someretained their natural condition in the rigidity of death, others seemedlike lumps of bleeding and decaying meat. At the back, against the wall, hung some lamentable rags, petticoats and trousers, puckered against thebare plaster. […] Frequently, the flesh on the faces had gone away by strips, the bones had burst through the mellowskins, the visages were like lumps of boned, boiled beef. […] One morning, he was seized with real terror. For some moments, he had been looking at a corpse, taken from the water, that was small in build and atrociously disfigured. The flesh of this drowned person was so soft and broken-up that the running water washing it, carried it away bit by bit. The jet falling on the face, bored a hole to the left of the nose. And, abruptly, the nose became flat, the lips were detached, showing the white teeth. The head of the drowned man burst out laughing.
Zola further explores the ill-conealed erotic tension such a show could provoke in visitors, both men and women. A liminal zone — the boundaries between Eros and Thanatos — which for our modern sensibility is even more “dangerous”.
This sight amused him, particularly when there were women there displaying their bare bosoms. These nudities, brutally exposed, bloodstained, and inplaces bored with holes, attracted and detained him. Once he saw a young woman of twenty there, a child of the people, broadand strong, who seemed asleep on the stone. Her fresh, plump, white formdisplayed the most delicate softness of tint. She was half smiling, with her head slightly inclined on one side. Around her neck she had a blackband, which gave her a sort of necklet of shadow. She was a girl who had hanged herself in a fit of love madness. […] On a certain occasion Laurent noticed one of the [well-dressed ladies] standing at afew paces from the glass, and pressing her cambric handkerchief to her nostrils. She wore a delicious grey silk skirt with a large black lacemantle; her face was covered by a veil, and her gloved hands seemed quite small and delicate. Around her hung a gentle perfume of violet. She stood scrutinising a corpse. On a slab a few paces away, was stretched the body of a great, big fellow, a mason who had recently killed himself on the spot by falling from a scaffolding. He had a broadchest, large short muscles, and a white, well-nourished body; death had made a marble statue of him. The lady examined him, turned him round and weighed him, so to say, with her eyes. For a time, she seemed quite absorbed in the contemplation of this man. She raised a corner of her veil for one last look. Then she withdrew.
Finally, the Morgue was also an ironically democratic attraction, just like death itself:
The morgue is a sight within reach of everybody, and one to which passers-by, rich and poor alike, treat themselves. The door stands open,and all are free to enter. There are admirers of the scene who go out of their way so as not to miss one of these performances of death. If the slabs have nothing on them, visitors leave the building disappointed, feeling as if they had been cheated, and murmuring between their teeth; but when they are fairly well occupied, people crowd in front of themand treat themselves to cheap emotions; they express horror, they joke, they applaud or whistle, as at the theatre, and withdraw satisfied,declaring the Morgue a success on that particular day. Laurent soon got to know the public frequenting the place, that mixedand dissimilar public who pity and sneer in common. Workmen looked inon their way to their work, with a loaf of bread and tools under their arms. They considered death droll. Among them were comical companionsof the workshops who elicited a smile from the onlookers by making wittyremarks about the faces of each corpse. They styled those who had beenburnt to death, coalmen; the hanged, the murdered, the drowned, thebodies that had been stabbed or crushed, excited their jeering vivacity,and their voices, which slightly trembled, stammered out comical sentences amid the shuddering silence of the hall.
In the course of its activity, the Morgue was only sporadically criticized, and only for its position, deemed too central. The curiosity in seeing the bodies was evidently not perceived as morbid, or at least it was not considered particularly improper: articles on the famous mortuary and its dead residents made regular appearance on newspapers, which gladly devoted some space to the most mysterious cases.
On March 15, 1907 the Morgue was definitively closed to the public, for reasons of “moral hygiene”. Times were already changing: in just a few years Europe was bound to know such a saturation of dead bodies that they could no longer be seen as an entertainment.
And yet, the desire and impulse to observe the signs of death on the human body never really disappeared. Today they survive in the virtual morgues of internet websites offering pictures and videos of accidents and violence. Distanced by a computer screen, rather than the ancient glass wall, contemporary visitors wander through these hyperrealistic mortuaries where bodily frailness is articulated in all its possible variations, witnesses to death’s boundless imagination.
The most striking thing, when surfing these bulletin boards where the obscene is displayed as in a shop window, is seeing how users react. In this extreme underground scene (which would make an interesting object for a study in social psychology) a wide array of people can be found, from the more or less casual visitor in search of a thrill, up to the expert “gorehounds”, who seem to collect these images like trading cards and who, with every new posted video, act smart and discuss its technical and aesthetic quality.
Perhaps in an attempt to exorcise the disgust, another constant is the recourse to an unpleasant and out-of-place humor; and it is impossible to read these jokes, which might appear indecent and disrespectful, without thinking of those “comical companions” described by Zola, who jested before the horror.
Aggregators of brutal images might entail a discussion on freedom of information, on the ethics and licitness of exhibiting human remains, and we could ask ourselves if they really serve an “educational” purpose or should be rather viewed as morbid, abnormal, pathological deviations.
Yet such fascinations are all but unheard of: it seems to me that this kind of curiosity is, in a way, intrinsic to the human species, as I have argued in the past.
On closer inspection, this is the same autoptic instinct, the same will to “see with one’s own eyes” that not so long ago (in our great-great-grandfathers’ time) turned the Paris Morgue into a sortie en vogue, a popular and trendy excursion.
The new virtual morgues constitute a niche and, when compared to the crowds lining up to see the swollen bodies of drowning victims, our attitude is certainly more complex. As we’ve said in the beginning, there is an element of taboo which was much less present at the time.
To our eyes the corpse still remains an uneasy, scandalous reality, sometimes even too painful to acknowledge. And yet, consciously or not, we keep going back to fixing our eyes on it, as if it held a mysterious secret.
I have a horror of victories.
(André Pieyre de Mandiargues)
Museums are places of enchantment and inspiration (starting from their name, referring to the Muses). If they largely celebrate progress and the homo sapiens‘ highest achievements, it would be important to recognize that enchantment and inspiration may also arise from contemplating broken dreams, misadventures, accidents that happen along the way.
It is an old utopian project of mine, with which I’ve been flirting for quite a long time: to launch a museum entirely dedicated to human failure.
Lacking the means to open a real museum, I will have to settle for a virtual tour.
Here is the map of my imaginary museum.
As you can see, the tour goes through six rooms.
The first one is entitled Forgotten ingenuity, and here are presented the lives of those inventors, artists or charlatans whose passage on this Earth seems to have been overlooked by official History. Yet among the protagonists of this first room are men who knew immense fame in their lifetime, only to fall from hero to zero.
As a result of an hypertrophic ego, or financial recklessness, or a series of unfortunate events, these characters came just one step away from victory, or even apparently conquered it. Martin F. Tupper was the highest grossing anglo-saxon XIX Century poet, and John Banvard was for a long time the most celebrated and successful painter of his era. But today, who remembers their names?
This introduction to failure is a sort of sic transit, and pushes the visitor to ask himself some essential questions on the ephemeral nature of success, and on historical memory’s inconsistency.
John Banvard (1815-1891)
The second room is entirely dedicated to odd sciences and wrong theories.
Here is a selection of the weirdest pseudoscientific ideas, abandoned or marginalized disciplines, complex systems of thought now completely useless.
Particular attention is given to early medical doctrines, from Galen‘s pneuma to Henry Cotton‘s crazy surgical therapies, up to Voronoff‘s experiments. But here are also presented completely irrational theories (like those who maintain the Earth is hollow or flat), along other ones which were at one point influential, but now have an exclusively historical value, useful perhaps to understand a certain historical period (for instance, the physiognomy loved by Cesare Lombroso, or Athanasius Kircher‘s musurgy).
This room is meant to remind the visitor that progress and scientific method are never linear, but rather they develop and grow at the cost of failed attempts, dead-end streets, wrong turns. And in no other field as in knowledge, is error as fundamental as success.
The third room is devoted to Lost challenges. Here are celebrated all those individuals who tried, and failed.
The materials in this section prove that defeat can be both sad and grotesque: through multimedia recreations and educational boards the visitors can learn (just to quote a few examples) about William McGonagall, the world’s worst poet, who persisted in composing poems although his literary abilities were disatrous to say the least; about the clumsy and horrendously spectacular attempt to blow up a whale in Florence, Oregon, or to free a million and a half helium balloons in the middle of a city; and of course about the “flying tailor“, a classic case of extreme faith in one’s own talent.
Next, we enter the space dedicated to Unexpected accidents, often tragic-comic and lethal.
A first category of failures are those made popular by the well-known Darwin Awards, symbolically bestowed upon those individuals who manage to kill themselves in very silly ways. These stories warn us about overlooked details, moments of lessened clarity of mind, inability to take variables into account.
But that is not all. The concept behind the second section of the room is that, no matter how hard we try and plan our future in every smallest detail, reality often bursts in, scrambling all our projects. Therefore here are the really unexpected events, the hostile fate, all those catastrophes and fiascos that are impossible to shun.
This double presentation shows how human miscalculation on one hand, and the element of surprise “kindly” provided by the world on the other, make failure an inevitable reality. How can it be overcome?
The last two rooms try to offer a solution.
If failure cannot be avoided, and sooner or later happens to us all, then maybe the best strategy is to accept it, freeing it from its attached stygma.
One method to exorcise shame is to share it, as suggested by the penultimate room. Monitors screen the images of the so-called fail videos, compilations of homemade footage showing common people who, being unlucky or inept, star in embarassing catastrophes. The fact these videos have a huge success on the internet confirms the idea that not taking ourselves too seriously, and being brave enough to openly share our humiliation, is a liberating and therapeutic act.
On the last wall, the public is invited to hang on a board their own most scorching failure, written down on a piece of paper.
The final room represents the right to fail, the joy of failing and the pride of failure.
Here, on a big bare wall, failure and fortune are represented as yin and yang, each containing the other’s seed, illusory opposites concealing only one reality – the neverending transformation, which knows no human category such as success or failure, indifferent, its vortex endlessly spinning.
To take failure back means to sabotage its paralyzing power, and to learn once again how to move and follow the rythm.
Above the exit door, an ironic quote by Kurt Vonnegut reminds the visitor: “We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different“.
Nel 2001, i due registi tedeschi Stefan Prehn e Jörg Wagner firmano il cortometraggio Staplerfahrer Klaus.
Si tratta di una gustosissima e scorretta parodia dei video per la prevenzione degli incidenti sul lavoro, quelli per intenderci che dovrebbero ammonire gli operai dei rischi che corrono quando non rispettano le norme di sicurezza. Ovviamente quello che comincia come un classico filmato aziendale si trasforma ben presto in una sarabanda splatter, scatenata e cartoonesca.
Le disavventure di Klaus sul suo muletto sono divertenti, non c’è dubbio. Eppure se pensate che il corto sia un po’ troppo sopra le righe, aspettate di vedere i prossimi due video: perché qui l’effetto è pressoché simile, ma l’umorismo totalmente involontario.
Entra in scena la ERI Safety Videos, una società di produzione video che ha sede a Lexington, in South Carolina. Specializzata da 25 anni negli spot sulla sicurezza, all’epoca di internet è diventata a suo modo famosa per la qualità grandguignolesca e trash dei suoi filmati: una sequela di incidenti mortali, mutilazioni e catastrofi. Se Prehn e Wagner nel loro corto giocavano sull’idea di mostrare in dettaglio le conseguenze raccapriccianti degli incidenti (cosa che normalmente i safety video suggeriscono soltanto), i video della ERI fanno un passo oltre. Sembrano già, cioè, delle parodie: vorrebbero spaventare e scioccare lo spettatore, ma il massacro è talmente insistito e compiaciuto che l’unica reazione naturale è la risata.
Attenzione, perché le cose peggiorano ulteriormente in quest’ultimo filmato, sempre ad opera di ERI Safety Videos. Qui la consueta carneficina è sottolineata da una canzone, Think About This, appositamente composta e arrangiata per l’occasione. Dire che il brano in questione aggiunge un ulteriore livello di orrore è un eufemismo. E, meraviglia delle meraviglie, potete canticchiarla anche voi in stile karaoke, grazie al testo in sovrimpressione. Si sfiora il capolavoro.
Dopo aver visto questi video, emerge luminosa una sacrosanta morale: non bisogna mai, MAI andare a lavorare, gente.
Avrete forse sentito dire che un nuovo genere di pornografia ha recentemente fatto la sua comparsa su internet: il film porno realizzato con i droni.
Da un paio di mesi, infatti, è diventato virale il breve video intitolato Drone Boning, che ha fatto discutere i media americani di questioni legate alla privacy, ma anche dell’annoso problema dello svecchiamento del porno (in altre parole, “e poi cos’altro si inventeranno ancora?”).
Il concept di Drone Boning è molto semplice: le immagini di incantevoli paesaggi riprese dagli APR (aeromobili a pilotaggio remoto) disvelano di tanto in tanto delle coppie intente in congiungimenti sessuali en plein air. Ripresi da altezze vertiginose, fino a risultare minuscole figurine perse all’interno della natura, questi corpi possono davvero eccitare lo spettatore? Bisogna aspettarsi un nuovo feticismo? Avrà mercato questo nuovo sottogenere? A quando una nuova categoria di YouPorn dedicata ai droni?
Peccato che, com’è intuibile, Drone Boning non sia affatto un porno, ma un video musicale del duo Taggart and Rosewood, realizzato dalla società di video pubblicitari Ghost+Cow Films. L’idea di farlo passare per un autentico filmato erotico è chiaramente una trovata di marketing per amplificarne la risonanza.
La voglia di scherzare e divertirsi è evidente sin dal titolo (che si potrebbe tradurre “Trombate col drone”), e viene ribadita nelle scanzonate interviste rilasciate dai due registi in seguito al polverone, in cui dichiarano candidamente che l’idea di base era soltanto filmare dei “semplici, bei paesaggi, con dentro persone che scopano“. Come ha sottolineato il comico Stephen Colbert, “be’, questo era il progetto originale di Dio per la Terra“.
Eppure, al di là dello spirito goliardico dei realizzatori, il video è tecnicamente ineccepibile e possiede perfino una sua peculiare poesia: grazie a una splendida fotografia e alla straniante e ipnotica colonna sonora, Drone Boning ci interroga ancora una volta, beffardamente, sui confini fra arte e pornografia.
Le bolle di sapone sono, a nostro modesto parere, fra i simboli più potenti della meraviglia che si nasconde nelle piccole cose. Incantevoli, perfette, e tanto effimere che è sufficiente un alito di vento perché si dissolvano senza lasciare traccia. Non a caso in ambito artistico divennero un simbolo dell’impermanenza umana, nella peculiare declinazione della vanitas che conosciamo sotto il nome di homo bulla: l’uomo si crede invincibile, bellissimo e splendido, ma le sue certezze sono come una bolla soffiata da un bambino incosciente, pronta a scoppiare da un momento all’altro.
Così, per accompagnarci in questo nuovo inverno, ecco due video che ci mostrano un’altra caratteristica, forse meno conosciuta, delle bolle di sapone; vederle congelare in tempo reale, decorandosi di mille arabeschi cristallizzati che si disegnano d’un tratto sulla loro superficie, è uno spettacolo colmo di poesia e stupore.