acquisition, art and biomed, conservation, displays/exhibits, recent biomed
Objects of decay
Susanne’s recent comment to Søren’s post on the collection of MRI scanners a few weeks ago raises an important question about the ‘aesthetics of decay’. I.e., how do we handle incomplete, pillaged, delapidated etc. machines and machine parts, or as Susanne puts it: ’ruins’? There is a lot of discussion about ’the aesthetics of decay’ and a lot of photo material to illustrate it, e.g. this image that I found on Google Pictures, titled ‘rusted ambition’
— taken from this webpage: http://photos.revjim.net/decay/dsc_1036_r).
The ‘aesthetics of decay’ is not limited to machines. When Ion, Sniff and I were visiting the Tornblad Institute in Lund a couple of months ago to evaluate the scientific and cultural historical value of their embryo collection, we were utterly fascinated by a shelf filled with broken jars and glasses with embryos in different stages of decay (drying-out) etc., and we immediately thought of collecting, preserving (how do you preserve something that is a state of decay — do you stop the decay process, or do you let it continue?), and displaying it.
So I think such ‘medical ruins’ are potentially very fascinating objects. Should we reconsider the pillaged MRI scanner we were offered? And in case, how far should we go in collecting such decaying machines and bodies?
The discussion of decaying museum objects feeds into the topic of ‘biotrash’ and ‘bio garbage’ that Julie Kent, Naomi Pfeffer and Sarah Hodges are organising a meeting about in Warwick in two weeks from now, see program here.
22 Feb 2007 Thomas
I think it is something about time and the life cycle of objects that I find fascinating. I see the aesthetics of decay – of a “natural” decay of artefacts – as one aspect. Then there is the aspect of time and history materialized, i.e. the traces of time in this specific object or, as Søren puts it in his earlier comment, the aspect that “decay occurred with no specific end-point in sight, and that the scanner ended up looking like it did through the intervention of scores of factors over an extended period of time in a changing environment”. In a way, decomposed objects combine aesthetic fascination and unique traces of their trajectory over time – and, in being ruins and sometimes bulky and difficult to recognise, they can as well arise curiosity. Perhaps we could understand museums not only as places to conserve the past, but also as spaces where decay processes can be contemplated.
Browsing around I found this comment on the American ‘destruction artist’ Gordon Matta-Clark’s view on building decay:
(quoted by James Stanfield from Mary Jane Jacob, Gordon Matta-Clark: A Retrospective. Chicago : Museum of Contemporary Art, 1985; ”Windows Blow-Out, 1976″ is taken from Stanfield’s blog, too).
Ambitious ‘objects of decay’-freaks may perhaps get something out of Pamela M. Lee, Object to Be Destroyed: The Work of Gordon Matta-Clark, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999; reviewed here.
I, but nobody else in the Museum, have been in favor of taking damaged or duplicate artifacts to use as spare parts, much like an airplane museum will cannibalize two planes to make one working one. This view has never gained any traction, but I still think it makes sense.
Mike
speaking for himself