The inspiration for Poetics of Life was primarily due to the trauma I had been through with the deaths of two family members and the relationship I began to explore between life and death. To see someone you love when they are alive and then when they are dead, one begins to question the meaning of life. One’s image of a person is based on who they are, as opposed to what they are. However, in death, who they are is lost and what remains is what they are, that being a human body, an empty vessel. After seeing a documentary, Anatomy for Beginners with Professor Günter von Hagens, which explored the anatomy using deceased human bodies which were plastinated to preserve them; I was interested in how he created Performance Art out of such an objective area of study. At his Institute for Plastination in Heidelberg, he displays corpses in positions of activity which are not normally seen and it produces an astonishing effect of breathing life into death. With this loosely in mind, I wanted to depict the anatomy in a different way also, by uniting the psychological with the physiological and creating poetry which is literally born out of life, as opposed to being a response to it.
A close up of the brain, not as clear as the actual pdf is
Taking poetry I created for the brain, heart, lungs, genitals and veins, I sourced an anatomy picture from the internet to use as a template and traced each part with the respective poem. This created an interesting and innovative effect, that I am not aware has been done before. Although the anatomy has been an inspiration to many, from Aristotle to Damien Hurst and beyond, I feel I have created something which could represent anatomical poetry, using structures representative of anatomical parts and language which merges the body and mind.
A close up of the heart and part of the lungs
You can download a pdf file of the poem by clicking here [2.7mb]. It may take a while to download though.
Or you can download it as a Zip File [1.7mb]here... The whole anatomy is made of poetry. If you would be interested in purchasing this as a poster, drop me a line, as I am tring to see if this would be a viable option with enough interest!
2 comments:
Amanda,
This is quite a project. I wish my printer would do it in something more than 33% of the original size (I've been reading the PDF file at 400% size, actually). If I were you, I would try to get Geof Huth, probably the best theorist of visual poetry around, to take a look. He has a blog that is listed on my blogroll.
Tell Robert I just downloaded his book from the Shearsman site yesterday,
Ron
Hi Jean
If you ever get to read this because I don't know how long it has been up, please e-mail me at mandysmith189@tesco.net and I will sort out getting a poster to you.
amanda
Post a Comment