on Gunther von Hagens and plastination : controversies

Firstly the scenography carried out by Prof von Hagens until now was merely criticized. It is clear, though, it raises many remarks and objections, to reveal all the demagogy, the cynicism, the profiteering, and the intellectual ruin, which characterizes what some people already describe as a macabre fair.

Indeed, Herr von Hagens stands as the zealot of an anatomy science accessible to everyone, and he insists extremely on his will to "democratize" anatomy ; to these arguments, we can answer: "In what way should anatomy "elevate" the mind of many people ? Up to what point should its "exhibition", scenographied, marketed, advertised and so soliciting, help with that ?"

The corpses of Herr von Hagens are exposed "in situation", swimming crawl, playing chess, etc, or even better, open belly, in the case of an eight month pregnant dead woman, or an écorché, proudly waving his skin at arm's length, or an other man with all his muscles wide flayed and fan-shaped...
Let us not forget that these are human beings, recently dead, who, as a matter of fact, had given their body to the Institute lead by Herr von Hagens, but then ?... (this has nothing in common with the mummy of Ramsès II, whose descendants are no longer living, undoubtedly, and had different reasons for mummyfying him, their goal was not to create a paying, public and gaudy attraction, just for people to get an eyeful...)

It even appears that the exhibition, in each country where it takes place, provokes many, very sudden vocations of body donors... (Thus, during Brussels'exhibition, "four thousand of them already signed up a document which authorizes von Hagens to plastinate their skin", according to "Le Monde"). Some hope this way "to escape" death, disappearing.
But does the inhumanism (we understand by this the opposite of humanism, in a strict sense) of a grandiloquent exhibition fit as a valid burial? Does such liberally guaranteed anonymity, under cover of respect, allow mourning, remembrance, memory, all concepts that every scientists, paleontologists, ethnologists, emphasize like constitutive of humanity, and incidentally, constitutive of science ?
The "ridicule" kills at this point, and for good, eternally (the process employed allows a conservation estimated at several thousands of years)...

The corpses are moreover, as works of art, sold (starting from £15000)... The price of death? And whom benefits death ?
Anonymated, these sculptures, (er.. sorry : these bodies : i.e. these ex-individuals, not to be forgotten), what then are they bound to and what tradition are they part of ? They nourish Prof von Hagens (who would have earned €75 millions since the beginning of his anatomistico-artistic show) and finance his Institute of Heidelberg : because plastinating is expensive... It is true that this allows von Hagens, as he says, "to trace a new way, (...) to forge a new culture (...) (to create) a new discipline" : does it indeed belong to science still, or some "Hagens-messianism" ?
Moreover, Herr von Hagens, who develops his activities in China and Kirghizistan in particular, dares to imply that his work could be militant, have a political sense, and, who knows, could support the liberal democracy which he is a "brought back product", whereever he goes (and he goes everywhere): "born and having lived in East Germany, I understand the thought of people who live, or lived, under the Marxism. And I know how to, if necessary, to change their opinions" (source) : do you hear this, oh fierce successor of the Great Helmsman ?

In what the inert body of a human being, or animal, can constitute in itself (and not its representation) as a work of art ? The answer of Mr. von Hagens consists of a meticulous quartering that ends up in a particularly grotesque (according to our point of view, and you may quite well share it...) and obscene (in proper words : "openly wounding decency", Littré) sculpture.
As carved corpse isn't an aesthetic purpose in itself, at least for Gunther von Hagens, who claims working as an anatomist (as a scientist, then), a sensationally articulated setting becomes essential: and there is the "artist" side of the Master: it's all the same much more funny (and entertaining) to present the late Mr So-n'-So keeping on riding his bicycle or playing basket-ball..
And that's where it all becomes so glamourous : many stars, like Tina Turner or Dustin Hoffman (by the way, will they choose plastination too, or will they prefer the Madame Tussaud's Museum ?), jump at any chance of being pictured in the Master's company : what a great publicity !

More than 7 million people of all ages have already visited this "exhibition" (some of them, besides, do not even know that these are real corpses: the commentary form available on the Bodyworlds website expressly asks the question). What does attract so many people ? The taste of science, of anatomy ? The desire to progress towards a thorough knowledge of the mysteries of the human body, this marvellous machine? Intellectual, philosophical, or even simply aesthetic concerns? Or doesn't the awaited scary sensation easily exceed the sensation merely brought by any movie, contemporary art exphibition, or sciences handbook ?
It undoubtedly exceeds it : one doesn't have every day the opportunity to see true corpses in our societies, that evacuate death (not its representation, which overflows any "true" cathode ray tube); death has left us long time ago...
Hey, why not bring your children to Bodyworlds ? More instructive than Disneyland, more distracting than the "Futuroscope", and above all, you've never seen it before ! : death, corpses, as if you were there! Look inside ! You can touch! Shake hands with the chess player! Comment on the cirrhosis status of the sick liver! But it's cultural, scientific, democratic : you don't mock, you don't laugh at death, you learn, and inform yourself !

So what is our indignation about ?

Most certainly not in a "moral" judgment of the titanic task of Prof von Hagens (one needs more than 1500 hours to plastinate a body: it's long, and it's hard!), we've read Beyond Good and Evil as well, and it wasn't without pleasure, we've listened to the Sex Pistols as well, and were delighted ; certainly not either in an obsurantist refusal of the anatomy and his utility for science in general ; even less in an elitism aiming at excluding the majority from knowledge.
It's the artist von Hagens, the scenographer von Hagens, the "hawker" von Hagens who is most annoying to us : von Hagens when he drapes himself in dignity of an anatomist and courage of an enlightened man facing taboos, as soon as you question him on the accuracy of his claims ; thus does he appear most of the time : playing the comedy of a positivist and high-tech Indiana Jones, the artist of a new culture...
But there is neither art, nor culture : what he gives to see, the scene he creates and the ideological advertisement he makes around it, belong more to the fairground, to masses manipulation than to science (against his pretentions) ; it may undoubtedly have been possible to present this work in a more didactical way, more seriously than this "fun" and "fashion" trick, if it was really dealing with science : this article would never have been written...
You don't shock us at all, Mr. von Hagens, what shocks us is that you are not a so-called artist, and we will say it to you each time we consider it necessary!

Since 1996, Prof G. von Hagens, well-known anatomist, graduate of the University of Heidelberg, travels the world to propose its creations to a large public : "plastinated" human bodies and corpses. The last exhibition takes place currently in London, Atlantis Gallery, extended again to february 9th, 2003 and causes many controversies. Justified ones ?
Firstly the scenography carried out by Prof von Hagens until now was merely criticized. It is clear, though, it raises many remarks and objections, to reveal all the demagogy, the cynicism, the profiteering, and the intellectual ruin, which characterizes what some people already describe as a macabre fair. Indeed, Herr von Hagens stands as the zealot of an anatomy science accessible to everyone, and he insists extremely on his will to "democratize" anatomy ; to these arguments, we can answer: "In what way should anatomy "elevate" the mind of many people ? Up to what point should its "exhibition", scenographied, marketed, advertised and so soliciting, help with that ?" The corpses of Herr von Hagens are exposed "in situation", swimming crawl, playing chess, etc, or even better, open belly, in the case of an eight month pregnant dead woman, or an écorché, proudly waving his skin at arm's length, or an other man with all his muscles wide flayed and fan-shaped... Let us not forget that these are human beings, recently dead, who, as a matter of fact, had given their body to the Institute lead by Herr von Hagens, but then ?... (this has nothing in common with the mummy of Ramsès II, whose descendants are no longer living, undoubtedly, and had different reasons for mummyfying him, their goal was not to create a paying, public and gaudy attraction, just for people to get an eyeful...) It even appears that the exhibition, in each country where it takes place, provokes many, very sudden vocations of body donors... (Thus, during Brussels'exhibition, "four thousand of them already signed up a document which authorizes von Hagens to plastinate their skin", according to "Le Monde"). Some hope this way "to escape" death, disappearing. But does the inhumanism (we understand by this the opposite of humanism, in a strict sense) of a grandiloquent exhibition fit as a valid burial? Does such liberally guaranteed anonymity, under cover of respect, allow mourning, remembrance, memory, all concepts that every scientists, paleontologists, ethnologists, emphasize like constitutive of humanity, and incidentally, constitutive of science ? The "ridicule" kills at this point, and for good, eternally (the process employed allows a conservation estimated at several thousands of years)... The corpses are moreover, as works of art, sold (starting from £15000)... The price of death? And whom benefits death ? Anonymated, these sculptures, (er.. sorry : these bodies : i.e. these ex-individuals, not to be forgotten), what then are they bound to and what tradition are they part of ? They nourish Prof von Hagens (who would have earned €75 millions since the beginning of his anatomistico-artistic show) and finance his Institute of Heidelberg : because plastinating is expensive... It is true that this allows von Hagens, as he says, "to trace a new way, (...) to forge a new culture (...) (to create) a new discipline" : does it indeed belong to science still, or some "Hagens-messianism" ? Moreover, Herr von Hagens, who develops his activities in China and Kirghizistan in particular, dares to imply that his work could be militant, have a political sense, and, who knows, could support the liberal democracy which he is a "brought back product", whereever he goes (and he goes everywhere): "born and having lived in East Germany, I understand the thought of people who live, or lived, under the Marxism. And I know how to, if necessary, to change their opinions" (source) : do you hear this, oh fierce successor of the Great Helmsman ? In what the inert body of a human being, or animal, can constitute in itself (and not its representation) as a work of art ? The answer of Mr. von Hagens consists of a meticulous quartering that ends up in a particularly grotesque (according to our point of view, and you may quite well share it...) and obscene (in proper words : "openly wounding decency", Littré) sculpture. As carved corpse isn't an aesthetic purpose in itself, at least for Gunther von Hagens, who claims working as an anatomist (as a scientist, then), a sensationally articulated setting becomes essential: and there is the "artist" side of the Master: it's all the same much more funny (and entertaining) to present the late Mr So-n'-So keeping on riding his bicycle or playing basket-ball.. And that's where it all becomes so glamourous : many stars, like Tina Turner or Dustin Hoffman (by the way, will they choose plastination too, or will they prefer the Madame Tussaud's Museum ?), jump at any chance of being pictured in the Master's company : what a great publicity ! More than 7 million people of all ages have already visited this "exhibition" (some of them, besides, do not even know that these are real corpses: the commentary form available on the Bodyworlds website expressly asks the question). What does attract so many people ? The taste of science, of anatomy ? The desire to progress towards a thorough knowledge of the mysteries of the human body, this marvellous machine? Intellectual, philosophical, or even simply aesthetic concerns? Or doesn't the awaited scary sensation easily exceed the sensation merely brought by any movie, contemporary art exphibition, or sciences handbook ? It undoubtedly exceeds it : one doesn't have every day the opportunity to see true corpses in our societies, that evacuate death (not its representation, which overflows any "true" cathode ray tube); death has left us long time ago... Hey, why not bring your children to Bodyworlds ? More instructive than Disneyland, more distracting than the "Futuroscope", and above all, you've never seen it before ! : death, corpses, as if you were there! Look inside ! You can touch! Shake hands with the chess player! Comment on the cirrhosis status of the sick liver! But it's cultural, scientific, democratic : you don't mock, you don't laugh at death, you learn, and inform yourself ! So what is our indignation about ? Most certainly not in a "moral" judgment of the titanic task of Prof von Hagens (one needs more than 1500 hours to plastinate a body: it's long, and it's hard!), we've read Beyond Good and Evil as well, and it wasn't without pleasure, we've listened to the Sex Pistols as well, and were delighted ; certainly not either in an obsurantist refusal of the anatomy and his utility for science in general ; even less in an elitism aiming at excluding the majority from knowledge. It's the artist von Hagens, the scenographer von Hagens, the "hawker" von Hagens who is most annoying to us : von Hagens when he drapes himself in dignity of an anatomist and courage of an enlightened man facing taboos, as soon as you question him on the accuracy of his claims ; thus does he appear most of the time : playing the comedy of a positivist and high-tech Indiana Jones, the artist of a new culture... But there is neither art, nor culture : what he gives to see, the scene he creates and the ideological advertisement he makes around it, belong more to the fairground, to masses manipulation than to science (against his pretentions) ; it may undoubtedly have been possible to present this work in a more didactical way, more seriously than this "fun" and "fashion" trick, if it was really dealing with science : this article would never have been written... You don't shock us at all, Mr. von Hagens, what shocks us is that you are not a so-called artist, and we will say it to you each time we consider it necessary! for vnatrc.net, Rico da Halvarez & Ether-Michel Pillequant
Look further into the question : Prof von Hagens' website : http://www.koerperwelten.de/ other links on the matter (articles, videos, reactions, etc...) : http://www.lemonde.fr/imprimer_article_ref/0,9750,3246--243408,00.html http://arteziadossiers.free.fr/vonhagens/vonhagens1.htm http://carcasse.com/revista/body/worlds.htm http://freerepublic.com/forum/a3aa64e584563.htm http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/progs/02/forum/talking_point/bodyworlds26mar.ram http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/forum/1888662.stm http://alias2000.ch/archives/15_01_00/hagens.html http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4189090,00.html http://www1.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3246--243409-,00.html http://www.chilton.com/paq/archive/PAQ-01-318.html http://www.b-rail.be/internat/F/spotlight/korperwelten.html http://www.webdo.ch/illustre/1999/36/cadavres_36.html
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