If you have a weak stomach, this might be a post to skip.
I get queasy at the sight of blood. My mum dreamed of me becoming a doctor, but I think I've known
for a long time that a career in medicine wasn't for me, unless it was psychiatry or something. When I first saw the poster for this exhibit, I banished the thought from my mind pretty much instantly as something I wasn't interested in. Given the theme of the year, and how I've been trying new things, my instant distaste indicated that this was something I should try. I convinced TH to join me.
The point of the exhibition was to discuss blood, and talk about some of the reactions people tend to have around blood - mostly disgust. It was part art, part science. The first thing you see when you walk in is a metal grate over a container. One of the people running it explained that you smell the container (which has a mix of chemicals meant to simulate the smell of blood), then look up at the screen (it had a Kinect hooked up to it) and it'll register your expression.
The colour that flashes on the screen indicates your reaction. Both TH and I got orange, indicating that we were happy. I did not feel happy at all, it smelled really gross!
Some art showing what I think is period blood?
It made me think of Dexter.
There was a vinyl record made out of pig's blood as well as some plates made from the blood of people with HIV / Hepatitis C. I didn't really want to touch them. There was a video that was playing, featuring a HIV positive person, and someone with Hep C, and they spoke about how being diagnosed changed the way that people see them. There's a register for people with Hep C, and they spoke about how isolating it can be sometimes, once people find out that they're positive.
This was a pretty cool piece of art. The reddish-brown liquid is blood, like our blood, that contains haemoglobin. The blue liquid is blood that contains haemoncyanin, like what crabs have. The clear liquid is synthetic blood, which is ten times more efficient than normal human blood. However, it tends to break down, so for now, it can't be used to replace real blood. Someone raised the question of it being used for enhancing athletes, and the exhibitor responded that it is an issue, and the rules about it are currently unclear.
The real test for me was upstairs.
That is the placenta from a pair of twins.
If that wasn't gross enough, someone decided they were going to harvest the iron from 69 (yes, I'm not just picking that number because lol, 69, that is how many they chose) placentas, and make a compass needle.
(My hand is there to give some perspective of how small it was.)
Why would someone decide to make a compass needle from placenta iron? For the sake of art, probably.
That wasn't the weirdest.
The weirdest was the horse lady. In 2011, bioartist Marion Laval-Jeantet decided to inject herself with horse blood in a piece of performance art called May the Horse Live in Me! She took some blood from a horse, and mixed it with some of her own blood, and over a series of weeks, slowly injected the mixture into her bloodstream to accustomise herself to it. On the day of the performance, she injected herself with about 3ml of horse blood, strapped herself into a pair of stilts with horse hooves at the end, and walked around with the horse.
At the end, they extracted some of her blood and dried it.
She claims she has an affinity for animals, and that injecting herself with horse blood made her feel like there was another presence inside her. I remain dubious.
Unfortunately, we went on the last day of the exhibition (ignore what the poster says, the website says it closed on the 23rd of September), so if you missed it, you'll have to check it out somewhere other than Melbourne. It was an interesting exhibit, but I did feel pretty uncomfortable the entire time we were there.
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