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R1: We have a wall at the end of the choir isle when you come into St Paul's. Right now we've put a place for four plasma screens to be side by side in the vertical format. So, they're narrow and long, not wide, and these represent four examples of martyrdom in a certain kind of way.

R2: The whole notion of martyrdom is that you've accepted your fate and that you are sacrificing yourself for some higher good or for some ideal that you have inside. And, we're meeting these four people on these screens at a time when they've already accepted it.

R1: You have John Haigh who is the water person. And, he's left for dead and then he's hoisted up actually. There we go. And he's literally hoisted upside down with his arms out.
Hold that. Hold that.
R1: And it's the position that St Peter was crucified in. It's one of the most painful ways in the Roman Empire to kill someone. And, so, he's upside down, arms out, like a piece of meat hanging down and then slowly, again, he kind of wakes up again, sees where he is and then he gathers that strength again. And, then this water comes down on him, pours on him and buffets him. He's moved around with it and stuff like that and then finally he gets the strength. And, then he breaks through and he ascends.

Start turning off the water little by little.

R1: His whole body actually comes up and goes right up out of frame and then you just see drops after that at the end until little drips happen and then it's gone, he's gone. And that's the first one.The second one is wind, the wind and that's done by Sarah. And, she's battling the wind, that's her protagonist. The wind happens and it gets stronger and stronger and then there's this tussle again and then she breaks through that. She sees where she is, she knows she can do this, she knows that she can continue.
A little bit more, bring it up a little bit more. David, don't let her spin.
R1: And then there's the earth, the earth. The earth is, of course, the earth itself. And, that's an image of a person who's underground, who's got dirt on them and stuff and is trying to find the way out.
Arms down, slowly.
R1: And that dirt, that element is actually going to be run backwards. So, instead of the earth just falling down, falling down, crushing this guy it's a pile of earth and you see a hand and a leg and stuff like that and you realise it's a part of a person. And, then they, sort of, come to the surface.
Heavy sifting begin.
R1: And then out of that can, kind of, come this realisation that you can put all those parts together and then suddenly things can begin rising up and going, in other words, backwards, going to run the whole thing backwards and so the whole thing gets, like, pulled up. The fire work is really intense. We're trying to gather together multiple takes from different angles so that we can bring together multiple things in the same frame.

R2: Looks really, really good and the colours are going to just really bounce off that shirt.

R3: Yeah, because, I know, that's...then I die. I go up in smoke. It's a black thing.

R1: He wakes up and he realises, like, he's in a really bad situation with fire around him ready to burn him alive. And, so then he has to come out of this cocoon and really begin to fight back. So, he gets the strength miraculously to get to that point, he breaks through that and then you begin to see light at the end of the tunnel and things start calming down. And, all of a sudden then he can look upward, outward and feel that he finally broke through. And he's, quote unquote, seen the light. What I learned from this whole experience is the fact that what you're seeing here is not the image of the martyrs as we would see them through a camera. But we're actually now inside the martyrs. So, I think that's a very important distinction; that this is about what the people are going through internally, not externally.

R2: I, kind of, brought in the four elements because those are forces of nature. Death is a force of nature and they, kind of, represent the rage of these forces. The most intense of going through death and transcendence into the light, if you will.

R4: To bring a work of this quality into this great cathedral adds a dimension, I think, to the cathedral but it also adds a dimension to the work. You are immediately reminded of all the great works of art that have dealt with those themes and you think of yourself in the great cathedrals of Europe and it feels entirely natural.

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Bill Viola: Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) | Tate

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R1: We have a wall at the end of the choir isle when you come into St Paul's. Right now we've put a place for four plasma screens to be side by side in the vertical format. So, they're narrow and long, not wide, and these represent four examples of martyrdom in a certain kind of way.

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Chinese Water Method / Ink torture

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Hanne Lippard She Sells Seashells at the Seashore

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Hanne Lippard She Sells Seashells at the Seashore

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Surely. Idea for an installation - simple, mildly effective

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6. April 2022 * Text von Julia Meyer-Brehm

Wie vielschichtig kann ein Zungenbrecher sein? Die Soundinstallation "The Myths and Realities of Achieving Financial Independence" bei CCA Berlin zelebriert eine englische Wortfolge. Hanne Lippard widmet sich auf spielerisch-sezierende Weise der Geschichte einer Meeresmuschelsammlerin.

Hanne Lippard, The Myths and Realities of Achieving Financial Independence, Ausstellungsansicht, 2022. Foto: Diana Pfammatter.

Betritt man die Räumlichkeiten von CCA Berlin, kommt fast ein bisschen Urlaubsstimmung auf: Wie eine kleine Insel breitet sich Hanne Lippards Installation vor einem aus. Kreisförmig ist Sand auf dem Boden verteilt, umgeben von vier Lautsprechern, die das Eiland wie zusammengefaltete Sonnenschirme flankieren. Aus jedem von ihnen tönt die Stimme der Künstlerin: „She sells seashells on the seashore", heißt es da. „The shells she sells are surely sea shells."

Der bekannte englische Zungenbrecher ergießt sich im Kanon in den Raum. Waghalsig stürzt sich Lippard in das Aufsagen der komplizierten Wortfolge, ist aber selbst vor Versprechern nicht gefeit. Es braucht einige Umrundungen der Installation, um auszumachen, aus welchem Lautsprecher es nun säuselt, flüstert oder deutlich spricht. Manchmal verstummen einzelne von ihnen ganz. Vor lauter Meeresmuscheln und Zischlauten kann einem dabei schon ein bisschen schwindelig werden.

Hanne Lippard, The Myths and Realities of Achieving Financial Independence, Ausstellungsansicht, 2022. Foto: Diana Pfammatter.

Wer Lippards Werk kennt, weiß, dass man sich oft einfach nur zurücklehnen und ihrer entspannenden Stimme lauschen möchte. Wäre aber Verschwendung: Denn die Künstlerin spinnt den Zungenbrecher zu einer komplexen Geschichte weiter. Wer ist die Person, die Muscheln am Meeresstrand sammelt - und was treibt sie an? Am Anfang steht die Idee von finanzieller Unabhängigkeit. Doch schnell wird deutlich, dass die Protagonistin von Ungleichbehandlung und finanzieller Not betroffen ist. Ihr Lohn liegt nämlich „weit unter dem Meeresspiegel".

Ursprünglich soll übrigens die Engländerin Mary Anning Inspiration für den britischen Zungenbrecher gewesen sein, der eigentlich ein Lied gewesen ist. Die Fossiliensammlerin gilt als eine der ersten Paläontologinnen und lieferte der Wissenschaft bedeutende Erkenntnisse zu Fisch- und Flugsauriern. Ihren Lebensunterhalt bestritt Anning, genau, durch den Verkauf von Fossilien an der Meeresküste.

Hanne Lippard, The Myths and Realities of Achieving Financial Independence, Ausstellungsansicht, 2022. Foto: Diana Pfammatter.

Lippards Auseinandersetzung mit Sprache ist nicht nur humorvoll, sondern auch kritisch-sezierend: Ihre Geschichte der Meeresmuschelsammlerin endet ausweglos. Sie versteinert und wird selbst zu einem Muschelfundstück, das wiederum irgendwann von einer Meeresmuschelverkäuferin verkauft werden wird. Ein Kreislauf, der wenig Hoffnung auf Veränderung verspricht. Und schon beginnt die Künstlerin erneut: „The shells she sells are surely seashells ..." Es fällt schwer, sich aus dieser loop-artigen Klanglandschaft zu lösen, die einen ein bisschen umarmt und ein wenig einlullt. Schafft man es doch, verlässt man CCA Berlin mit dem Kopf voll Frikativen und einem hoffnungslosen Zungenbrecher-Ohrwurm.

WANN: Die Soundinstallation „The Myths and Realities of Achieving Financial Independence" ist noch bis Samstag, den 16. April, zugänglich.
WO: CCA Berlin - Center for Contemporary Arts, Kurfürstenstraße 145, 10785 Berlin.

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Hanne Lippard: Gemuschelte Nuscheln - gallerytalk.net

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6. April 2022 * Text von Julia Meyer-Brehm Wie vielschichtig kann ein Zungenbrecher sein? Die Soundinstallation "The Myths and Realities of Achieving Financial Independence" bei CCA Berlin zelebriert eine englische Wortfolge. Hanne Lippard widmet sich auf spielerisch-sezierende Weise der Geschichte einer Meeresmuschelsammlerin.

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Pirvi Porkola's Performance Artist's Workbook

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Pirvi Porkola's Performance Artist's Workbook

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With interesting exercises

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Birender Yadav, DONKEY WORKER, 2015, thumbprints of workers on Canson paper, 101,6 × 152,4 cm © Birender Yadav

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Birender Yadav, DONKEY WORKER, 2015, thumbprints of workers on Canson paper, 101,6 × 152,4 cm © Birender Yadav

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hot/cold, restriction, lashing, scratching, pinching - but is this not more about a lack of control over the body as the self? Incontinence. Vomiting.

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We're always hearing that we could be having better sex, a better orgasm, or a better relationship. But how often do we hear the nitty-gritty of how we can actually better understand our deepest desires and most embarrassing questions? Bustle has enlisted Vanessa Marin, a sex therapist, to help us out with the details. No gender, sexual orientation, or question is off limits, and all questions remain anonymous. Now, onto today's topic: How to bring pain and BDSM into sex without actually hurting anyone

(too badly).
Q: I want to experiment with sensation play and pain during sex and BDSM. I'm brand new to this, so I'd like to ease my way into it with easier things like spanking. I think I can only stand a small amount of pain, so I don't want to do anything too crazy! How can I get started?

A: Thanks for the question! Pain - or even the threat of pain - can release a rush of endorphins into our bodies. Endorphins are also responsible for the sensation of pleasure in the body. So it makes a lot of sense that many people like a little side of pain with their pleasure!

An important safety note first, though: don't ever experiment with pain, sensation play, or BDSM without talking to your partner first. Make sure you understand each other's boundaries (more on that in this article on how to dominate someone). Experiment with the level of pain that you can each tolerate before jumping into the deep end of the pool. And always, always, always agree on a safeword beforehand. It's extremely dangerous to participate in pain play without one. As soon as that safeword gets uttered, everything needs to come to a screeching halt. With these guidelines in play, you'll be much more likely to have a great time!

OK, now we can get down to it. You can incorporate pain into your sex life in a ton of different ways, but it's best to start by dipping your toes in the kiddie pool. Here are eight ways for newbies to play.

Spanking

You already mentioned that you were into spanking, so let's start here! Spanking is usually done on the butt cheeks. This is a perfect area since it's nice and fleshy, and there's no risk of accidentally smacking a bone or joint. Plus, getting a good spank on the ass (especially when you're having sex Doggystyle) can be ridiculously sexy!

The first thing you'll want to do is get a sense of how much of a spank you can take. Get on your hands and knees and have your partner start tapping right in the middle of one butt cheek. Have them keep their fingers together, with their palm slightly cupped. Start off with a very light touch. Tell your partner "harder," and work you way up the intensity scale very slowly until you find the level of pain that feels best for you. After particularly forceful smacks, have your partner rub the area with their hand. This will help the stinging sensation go away.

There are also plenty of toys you can use to up your spanking game. This LELO suede whip is amazing because you can tickle your partner with the soft suede strands, or whip it for a solid smack. This paddle has a soft fuzzy side that will create fairly gentle spanks, and a leather side that will create a more intense sensation. If you want even more, a riding crop will give you a localized stinging sensation. With all toys, use them on your arms or thighs first to get a sense of how much force you can safely use.

Hair Pulling

If you've ever had someone run their hands through your hair, you know just how sensitive the scalp can be! You can ask your partner to give your hair a good tug in the middle of sex. This also works well in Doggystyle. Your partner should take your entire ponytail into their hand and give a firm pull. Pulling all of your hair at the same time will ensure that none of our hair actually gets pulled out. Again, make sure to communicate with your partner about how much force you can stand.

Choking

Choking tends to more about dominance and power than it is about pain, but it's still a crowd favorite. When choking someone, you have to be extremely careful not to use much force. The person being choked is going to feel vulnerable right away, so there's no need to get too intense with this one. It's also vitally important to squeeze the sides of the throat instead of the front of the throat. The sides are much more pliable, whereas the front is more likely to lead to actual choking or even injury. Test it out on your own neck before doing it to a partner. If you're afraid of getting hurt, have your partner wrap their hand around your neck gently, without exerting any force. It will be just as sexy!

Body Clamps

If you're interested in exploring hyper-localized pinching sensations, you may want to check out body clamps. The most commonly-found ones are nipple clamps, which can be used on both men and women. These types of toys are clamped onto the skin, left for a short period of time, then removed. The pinching itself can cause a little (or a lot) of pain, and the removal of the clamp can bring a rush of sensation to the area.

I highly recommend starting with professionally-made clamps (don't go digging around for some old=school clothespins!), and only using the clamps for a few seconds at a time. You can gradually work your tolerance up, but it's important to take it easy at first. In general, it's best not to leave clamps on for more than 10 minutes.

Cut Off Your Sight

Sensation play is all about trying to heighten your sensations, typically by cutting off your contact to other sensations. One of the easiest senses to play around with is sight. Have your partner blindfold you, or you can try having sex in pitch black darkness. You won't be able to see what they're about to do next, and the anticipation will drive you wild!

Get Restrained

You can have your partner restrain your arms and legs. You won't be able to move, and you'll be at their mercy. I recommend using soft restraints so you don't injure your wrists or ankles. A scarf or tie will do in a pinch, or you can invest in this amazing restraint system that goes under your mattress.

Try Different Kinds Of Touch

You can also have your partner use different objects to stimulate the surface of your skin. Feathers or a silk scarf can be nice (albeit a bit ticklish at times!). If you have a paddleboard hairbrush, the bristles can feel great against your skin. Have your partner alternate between gentler and rougher types of stimulation.

Get Hot And Cold

Finally, you can try experimenting with heat and cold. This massage candle burns at a lower temperature than regular candles, meaning it's safe to drip the wax directly onto your skin. Or have your partner try having a few sips of hot tea, then kissing you with their warm mouth. After that, your partner can put a few ice cubes in their mouth, to contrast the warm kisses with some cold ones. You can also try purchasing glass or stainless steel sex toys, both of which can be safely heated up in warm water or cooled down in an ice bath.

Have fun, and remember to keep communicating!

Want more of Bustle's Sex and Relationships coverage? Check out our new podcast,I Want It That Way, which delves into the difficult and downright dirty parts of a relationship, and find more on our Soundcloud page.

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Pain During Sex & BDSM Can Be A Lot Of Fun - So Here Are 8 Sensation Play Ideas To Get You Started

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We're always hearing that we could be having better sex, a better orgasm, or a better relationship. But how often do we hear the nitty-gritty of how we can actually better understand our deepest desires and most embarrassing questions? Bustle has...

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Get out of my mind/get out of this room Nauman

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Get out of my mind/get out of this room Nauman

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Bruce Nauman - Get Out of my Mind, Get Out of This Room

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ASMR - brain to body - tingly ASMR about torture?

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ASMR - brain to body - tingly ASMR about torture?

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Could be used in reverse? Alternating? Or is this a cheap trick? P.S.: ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response

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En revanche, elle cultive un gout particulier pour les petits plaisirs

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En revanche, elle cultive un gout particulier pour les petits plaisirs

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On the other side is the man with bones as brittle as chrystal.

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Seemingly harmless, stain free - Chinese Water Torture

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Seemingly harmless, stain free - Chinese Water Torture

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It's been done: "In 2012, Australian artist, Lottie Consalvo,[7] performed the Chinese Water Torture for an art project, Steer a Steady Ship,[8] to represent her emotions after her sister's passing. Whilst lying under the drips of water, she felt the presence of her deceased sister lying beside her. In the article, Australian Artist Recreates Chinese Water Torture, that explains Consalvo's experience during the performance, the author states, ‘She came to the idea of Chinese water torture, which can cause psychosis, through its association with the head, which for her represents the physicality of the mind - something she believes is "more physical than anything in life.” [9]"

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Chinese water torture or a "dripping machine" is a mentally painful process in which cold water is slowly dripped onto the scalp, forehead or face for a prolonged period of time. The process causes fear and mental deterioration in the subject. The pattern of the drops is often irregular, and the cold sensation jarring, which causes anxiety as a person tries to anticipate the next drip. This form of torture was first described by Hippolytus De Marsiliis in Italy in the 15th or 16th century.

The term "Chinese water torture" may have arisen from the predicament escape Chinese Water Torture Cell (a feat of escapology introduced in Berlin at Circus Busch on September 13, 1910). The escape entailed Harry Houdini being bound and suspended upside-down in a locked glass and steel cabinet full to overflowing with water, from which he escaped, together with the Fu Manchu stories of Sax Rohmer that were popular in the 1930s (in which Fu Manchu subjected his victims to various ingenious tortures, such as the wired jacket).

Hippolytus de Marsiliis is credited with the invention of a form of water torture. Having observed how drops of water falling one by one on a stone gradually created a hollow, he applied the method to the human body. Other suggestions say that the term "Chinese water torture" was invented merely to grant the method a sense of ominous mystery. The victim would be stripped of their clothes, shown to the public, then tortured. They would be driven insane while bystanders watched, mocked, and laughed at them.

The term "Spanish water torture" is also used in Europe, although this term often refers to a type of torture used during the Spanish Inquisition. Victims would be strapped down so that they could not move, and cold or warm water would then be dripped slowly onto a small area of their body-usually the forehead. The forehead was found to be the most suitable point for this form of torture because of its sensitivity, and because of its ominous proximity to the brain and facial features.

The victims could see each drop coming and, after a long duration of time, were gradually driven frantic to the point of insanity, usually because they were led to believe that a hollow or severe ulcer would develop there, or as a (sometimes combined) result of prolonged restraint under irritating conditions, isolation, or the humiliation of being tortured publicly.[citation needed ]

There is very little evidence pertaining to the effectiveness of Torture for interrogation purposes. The method itself causes lasting mental damage in victims proportional to the intensity of exposure. The television series MythBusters investigated the effectiveness of Chinese water torture, and while it was found quite effective, they noted that the restraining equipment was providing most of the effect by itself, and when testing the dripping water alone on a relaxed, unrestrained subject, it was found almost negligible. Nevertheless, in the Episode 3, Season 2 of the web television series the MythBusters host Adam Savage said the following: "The creepiest thing that happened after we did this episode was that I got an email from someone from a throw away account. He said, 'We found that randomizing when the drops occurred was incredibly effective. That anything that happens on a regular periodicity can become a type of meditation, and you can then tune it out. If you couldn't predict it, he-said, 'We found, we were able to induce a psychotic break within 20 hours.'"

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Chinese water torture or a "dripping machine" is a mentally painful process in which cold water is slowly dripped onto the scalp, forehead or face for a prolonged period of time. The process causes fear and mental deterioration in the subject.

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"One of the things that's unsettling about listening to music on the sound track that doesn't seem appropriate is that it blows the audience's boundaries away. You just don't know where or how far it will go. It heightens and twists the scene, making it funny or exciting -- or both -- when it really shouldn't be. So you should feel uncomfortable about it -- in a unique sort of way."

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"One of the things that's unsettling about listening to music on the sound track that doesn't seem appropriate is that it blows the audience's boundaries away. You just don't know where or how far it will go. It heightens and twists the scene, making it funny or exciting -- or both -- when it really shouldn't be. So you should feel uncomfortable about it -- in a unique sort of way."

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It's Got a Nice Beat, You Can Torture to It

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Credit... The New York Times Archives

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times's print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

THIRTY-FOUR YEARS ago, in "Psycho," Alfred Hitchcock jolted audiences by killing off his leading lady in the shower. Bernard Herrmann's rhythmic, piercing, high-pitched soundtrack -- EEEE-EEEE-EEEE-EEEE -- contributed to the scene's shock value. But if Hitchcock were alive and working on a similar scene today, he might opt instead for Handel's "Water Music" or possibly a tune by the Mothers of Invention.

Faced with the task of differentiating their scenes of brutality and mayhem from all the other scenes of brutality and mayhem, film makers are using music to distance the viewer from violence -- or to comment ironically on it. As the images get more explicit, the accompanying tunes seem to be getting more frothy.

Everything from Bach to hook-laden pop-rock songs provides background for images of fist fights, shootings, stabbings and torture. Here are some examples of how the music insulates the audience from what it is seeing.

* In "Sugar Hill," the Wesley Snipes gangster drama opening Friday, two young drug dealers enthusiastically sing Teddy Pendergrass's sentimental "Love T.K.O." as they take turns pumping bullets into a rival gang member lying helpless at their feet. The film's director, Leon Ichaso, says the music is intended to provide comic relief from what he considers a psychologically disturbing moment in the film.

* In Robert De Niro's "A Bronx Tale," which came out last year, Mafia wiseguys get into a protracted brawl with some bikers in a bar. The Moonglows' "10 Commandments of Love" is on the jukebox, adding irony to the scene. When a group of Italian kids pummels a young black man who rides a bike into their neighborhood, we hear the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin," a dirge-like love ballad that undercuts the potential for a mindless visceral thrill.

* Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas" may have influenced Mr. De Niro. In the Scorsese film, operatic arias float through bloody yet nostalgic scenes. When the Joe Pesci character and Mr. De Niro wind up killing another wiseguy in a bar because of an earlier insult, Donovan's sugary pop song "Atlantis" (lyrics: "way down below the ocean") is on the jukebox.

* In "The Silence of the Lambs," Anthony Hopkins's character prepares to murder two police guards in a brightly lit cage while listening to Bach's sedate "Goldberg Variations." Although the director, Jonathan Demme, overlays more traditional soundtrack music during the actual killings, once the deed is done the bloody but composed Hannibal returns to his Bach reverie. (A killer who can lose himself in the music does look more sociopathic onscreen.)

* The granddaddy of all examples is Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange," in which Malcolm McDowell sings an a cappella version of "Singin' in the Rain" while brutally beating a man and preparing to rape a woman.

* Two years ago, in "Reservoir Dogs," a criminal tortured a police officer to the strains of the Stealers Wheel 1973 pop hit "Stuck in the Middle With You," played on a portable radio. Lawrence Bender, producer of "Reservoir Dogs," says that "A Clockwork Orange" came up when he talked with the film's writer and director, Quentin Tarantino.

Says Mr. Bender, "One of the things that's unsettling about listening to music on the sound track that doesn't seem appropriate is that it blows the audience's boundaries away. You just don't know where or how far it will go. It heightens and twists the scene, making it funny or exciting -- or both -- when it really shouldn't be. So you should feel uncomfortable about it -- in a unique sort of way."

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FILM; It's Got a Nice Beat, You Can Torture to It (Published 1994)

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This is a digitized version of an article from The Times's print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

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FOOD AND IMAGINATION "It’s all you need. Two of the most basic things connect magically and because everybody understands food and imagination we can all relate to it."

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FOOD AND IMAGINATION "It’s all you need. Two of the most basic things connect magically and because everybody understands food and imagination we can all relate to it."

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It's been done. Next step?

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Les sculptures éphémères et absurdes d’Erwin Würm | Tracks ARTE

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Understanding Bodies, Pain and Torture in Renaissance Art

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Understanding Bodies, Pain and Torture in Renaissance Art

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Helena Guzik

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led by Qasim Alsabti

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Jubilation over last year's collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq has dissipated, replaced by an unprecedented rise in violent crime, inadequate public services and a foreign occupation force that many Iraqis consider heavy-handed and scornful of Iraqi traditions.

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Torture in Art according to a Anna Danielson

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Torture in Art according to a Anna Danielson

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This difference between the bodies of the innocent, repentant, and guilty can be clearly seen in Lucas Cranach’s woodcut, The Crucifixion (Please refer to Figure 2, p. 203). The middle figure, J esus Christ, is in a serene position and seems to be unaffected by the pain he should be enduring. Jesus’ lack of emotion can be r elated back to his decision to use his suffering as a tool to create salvation and redemption for the children of God. The two thieves that flank Jesus’ sides on the other hand show varying amounts of distress and agony. While both of t he thieves display the pain they are feeling in their faces and bodies, the one on Jesus’s right hand side is depicted in a more tranquil form because, according to Luke 23:39-43, one of the thieves repented for his sins while the other simply hurled insults at Jesus. Many early depictions of Jesus’ crucifixion draw attention to the positive message of resurrection instead of the physical realities of execution but in recent artistic portrayals, such as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, they focus more on Jesus being human and capable of suffering. This allows people to relate better to the sacrifice he endured for them. SB: this focus on suffering stems from the middle ages.

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Jean-Jacques Lebel's AbuGhraib maze at Berlin Biennale

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Jean-Jacques Lebel's AbuGhraib maze at Berlin Biennale

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Victims not asked for permission

Rijin Sahakian, who had loaned out one of the works showcased at the exhibition, is a signatory to the open letter that criticizes the Biennale's exhibition of the work for using "photographs of unlawfully imprisoned and brutally treated Iraqi bodies" under US occupation. They were used, the letter argues, for commercial purposes without the consent of the victims and without the feedback of the Iraqi artists participating in the art show, whose works were installed next to the controversial work without their knowledge.

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In an open letter, 16 signatories have criticized an artwork by French artist Jean-Jacques Lebel that is currently on display at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin as part of the international Berlin Biennale art show.

Visitors enter a room arranged as a maze of horror in the museum's Rieckhallen section where Lebel has hung huge photographs of tortured and humiliated Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison - pictures that were taken by the US soldiers who had tortured them.

Victims not asked for permission

Rijin Sahakian, who had loaned out one of the works showcased at the exhibition, is a signatory to the open letter that criticizes the Biennale's exhibition of the work for using "photographs of unlawfully imprisoned and brutally treated Iraqi bodies" under US occupation. They were used, the letter argues, for commercial purposes without the consent of the victims and without the feedback of the Iraqi artists participating in the art show, whose works were installed next to the controversial work without their knowledge.

The then US President George W. Bush declared war on Iraq in 2003, which ended in 2011

At the time of publication, the curatorial team of the Berlin Biennale had not yet publicly commented on the allegations, but announced it will release a statement soon.

However Ihsan Jezany, a German-Iraqi photographer, cannot understand the criticism. "The artist wanted to remind us of what happened in Abu Ghraib, and that's a good thing," he told DW. "I believe such images should be shown, and if we hide them, we are only helping the perpetrators, not the victims." More so since the images have already been used by many artists and media around the world, Jezany pointed out.

Only way to stop abuse is to 'get rid of war'

The horrific images from Abu Ghraib used by Jean-Jacques Lebel at the Berlin Biennale are deeply anchored in collective memory. First published in 2004, they show, for instance, a man being tortured with electric shocks to his penis, and another forced to crawl naked on a dog leash. Abu Ghraib was a prison in Iraq where, under US occupation of the country, American guards cruelly humiliated prisoners and recorded their pleasure in doing so on videos and photos on their mobile phones.

Even 10 years after the first images were published, Seymour Hersh, the US investigative journalist who brought the incidents to light, said that what happened at Abu Ghraib could happen again at any time, even in the US military. "The only way...to get rid of these kinds of abuses is to get rid of war - and that doesn't look like it's happening," he told DW in 2014.
This article was originally written in German.

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Controversy over Abu Ghraib torture photos at Berlin Biennale | DW | 05.08.2022

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In an open letter, 16 signatories have criticized an artwork by French artist Jean-Jacques Lebel that is currently on display at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin as part of the international Berlin Biennale art show.

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The comparison of Landy’s creations to medieval relics and reliquaries could be pursued in other directions. Is there a parallel, for example, between contact with a saint that makes an object a relic, and Landy’s transformation of junk into art? (..) But the comparison bears most pressingly upon the tension in Landy’s work between presence embodied in material things and renunciation or loss. The medieval cult of relics and the use of reliquaries developed in large part as an answer to worshippers’ yearnings for close contact with the sacred and divine. Even as these relics and reliquaries established the presence of a holy person, however, they confronted viewers with absence. Medieval saints were embodied primarily as fragments: relics themselves were almost always bits of matter, and many reliquaries took the form of a body part, usually a head or arm. Encountering St. Yrieix’s gleaming face makes him present, but also makes us aware that the rest of his body is not here, just as his shining angelic visage reminds us that he now resides in heaven, not on earth. Landy’s saints, too, are fragmented material presences. Powerfully manifest through their scale and animation, they are also patently absent in their incomplete, mechanical nature.

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Michael Landy: Saints Alive showcases drawings, an interactive torture device, and six over-life-size mechanical saints-at once comical, austere, violent, pathetic, intimidating-created by the British artist Michael Landy during his recently completed tenure as artist-in-residence at the National Gallery in London. This was a surprising partnership: on the one hand, an institution that enshrines the canon of Western painting from the Renaissance to the dawn of modernism; on the other, a conceptual artist who crashed the international art scene in 1988 as a member of the Young British Artists and who possesses no training or experience with painting. Underpinning these immediately apparent differences, however, is a more foundational challenge that fundamentally shapes the exhibition. Landy's charge as artist-in-residence was to create works that responded to the museum collection, a task that presumes and affirms the status of the museum's holdings as cultural treasures. Landy's artistic practices, by contrast, have been deeply anti-materialistic, as exemplified by his best-known work, his 2001 performance Break Down, staged over two weeks in an empty London store, in which he and a team of assistants systematically catalogued and destroyed all of his possessions save the clothes he was wearing. In other work, he directs attention to objects rejected, overlooked, or forgotten: weeds ( Nourishment, 2002), people and their dreams ( Scrapheap Services, 1995-96), his own cancerous testicle ( Radical Orchidectomy for a Solid Mass in the Upper Pole of the Left Testis, 2005), for example. Due to their treasured status, the paintings in the National Gallery inherently resist Landy's customary artistic strategies that criticize contemporary materialism through the destruction and disposal of things. Landy, to sketch roughly the root problem he faced, could not simply incinerate a Cézanne.

The sculpture of St. Apollonia, a pale-faced virgin martyr who looms over the entrance to the exhibition, provides the arresting introduction to Landy's solution: he transformed paintings of Christian saints into animated sculptures that perform the spectacle of their self-destruction. He lifted Apollonia from a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder, where she appears with a demure melancholy. Here she becomes powerful and otherworldly: both physically elevated above us to roughly ten feet in height by her towering red dress and psychologically detached with downcast eyes and a severe expression. Her shoulders and upper chest have been sliced away, and in their place erupts a welter of gears and shafts. Her hands are clasped reverently before her, not to pray, but to grasp a long pair of pliers in which she holds a tooth. She cuts an austere, intimidating figure. The strong impulse is to leave her undisturbed and to walk respectfully around her. But the narrow space at the entrance of the gallery forces us uncomfortably near. If we venture closer, to where we fall under her indifferent gaze, we can activate her by stepping on a pedal. Then the jagged gears turn loudly. With a gruesome mechanical deliberateness she raises the pliers and then, with a sudden motion that makes her whole form shudder, violently drives the pliers against her mouth and yanks downward as if extracting a tooth. Her arms crank back, waiting to perform her torture for the next spectator.

The five other mechanical saints in the gallery beyond Apollonia elicit the same complexity of response from viewers, and possess a similar presence and imaginative scope. There is Jerome, whose torso seems to have rocketed upward from the platform of his lower body upon a column of wheels, gears and pulleys. He has neither head nor left arm, but with his right he hammers savagely on his bared chest with a stone when activated. St. Thomas doubtfully probing Christ's side is rendered as a disembodied hand on a mechanical arm that practically punches a torso set on a large rusty spring. Like a sacred punching bag, Christ's body swings crazily when struck. St. Francis appears twice: as an animated donation box for visitors to drop coins into and, conversely, as a receptacle from which visitors can win a T-shirt by operating a mechanical claw. The archangel Michael, St. Lucy, Peter the Martyr, and St. Lawrence are combined into a single twirling, glowing, zapping, tilting, bashing contraption entitled Multi-Saint. St. Catherine, finally, is represented through a large wooden wheel studded with brutal teeth. Originally meant to shred the saint's flesh, the Catherine wheel has been adapted by Landy as a wheel of saintly misfortune for visitors to turn. As a spectacle, the whole array is shocking but it does prompt reflection on the medieval distinction between the liberal and the mechanical arts; between "fine art" and craft, or engineering.

None of these works are inspired by the museum's acknowledged masterpieces. Landy did borrow from lesser-known paintings by a few better-known artists who make it into survey texts-Cranach, Botticelli, and Hans Memling-but none possesses the recognition among the general public enjoyed by artists such as Caravaggio or Monet. The other paintings that Landy references were produced by figures known primarily to scholars: Sasetta, Ercole de'Roberti, Cosimo Tura, Cima da Conegliano, Carlo Crivelli, Pinturicchio. In selecting the paintings from which he draws inspiration, Landy thus pursues his fascination with things overlooked, and at the same time succeeds in opening visitors' eyes to paintings they would otherwise almost certainly pass over.

Landy's sculptures also riotously trample taboos of comportment in traditional art museums. We can see-but never touch-the paintings at the National Gallery. Yet we are invited to touch Landy's works to activate and thereby complete them. They then turn, shudder, and bang away at themselves with a noisy abandon that travesties the reverential hush observed in the museum's other galleries. The mechanical Dadaist contraptions of Jean Tinguely (1925-91) inspired Landy to animate his saints. Saint Jerome, for instance, is a close relative of Tinguely's famed Homage to New York, which was designed to self-destruct while performing a set of disconnected and useless tasks when exhibited in the garden of MoMA in 1960. In the staid setting of the National Gallery, which celebrates tradition rather than the avant-garde, Landy's work appears far more transgressive. Experiencing his sculptures can be bewildering and disconcerting, but also interjects elements of playfulness and fun often lacking in the pious contemplation of masterpieces of art history. The works in Saints Alive seem cheeky as a result, mocking habits of respectable art-viewing while also serving as kooky send-ups of Old Master paintings and even the religious figures they portray.

At the same time Landy's creations are deeply serious. While the immediate impact of the exhibition mixes large doses of the surprising, bizarre, and comical, pausing to reflect upon what the objects represent and what they do pulls in a more sobering direction, toward considerations of destruction and worldly renunciation. Of all the possible subjects pictured in the National Gallery, the exclusive focus upon representations of Christian saints signals the sympathy between these holy figures and Landy's artistic practices, if not Landy himself. His drawings and collages for the project, displayed on the walls of the entrance gallery around St. Apollonia, manifest clearly this connection. In Saint Catherine Wheel Dump, notably, Landy created a collage of the thirty-three Catherine wheels he had found in the museum's paintings. He cut the wheels from large color reproductions and assembled them into a pile of the smashed torture devices. Mutilating reproductions to produce the collage allowed Landy to enact symbolically the destruction performed in actuality in works such as Break Down. The process also expressed, perhaps, his antagonism to the weight of art history. The finished collage, moreover, envisions a fantasy dump site for broken paintings, which conceptually resembles Landy's Art Bin, a huge container installed in 2010 in a South London gallery in which any artist, famed or amateur, is invited to dispose of failed work.

Preservation, however, is inextricably twined about the visions of destruction in Saints Alive. When Landy discovered two more paintings with Catherine wheels he created a revised drawing of the dump that included all thirty-five wheels. Recording every smashed wheel with thorough diligence potentially forces viewers of the drawings to acknowledge every example that could be overlooked or abandoned. This exposes a defining tension in Landy's work especially critical to this exhibition: by centering his practice on things forgotten or destroyed he preserves them in art and memory. Even in the nihilistic Break Down Landy carefully catalogued and weighed all 7,227 items that were destroyed. There is no absolute annihilation in his work: no destruction without forgetting. Still, he simultaneously insists unflinchingly upon the transience of objects and the memories or presences invested in them: no permanence can be preserved in material things. All of the saints in the exhibition are snared in this tension. Landy has brought these saints-and the paintings they appear in-back to life and memory by embodying them as mechanical figures. Yet they are renunciatory saints, ardently desiring to escape the temptations of the world, and so Landy has created them performing their own self-destruction. The humor and absurdity of the figures as a result gives way to pathos and tragedy.

The two sculptures of St. Francis enact most effectively the irresolvable conflict between the urges to search for permanence in things and to escape from the world of materiality. The works possess this distinct edge because they engage most directly with our consumer culture, and they are for Landy almost autobiographical. In an interview from the exhibition catalogue, Landy mentions his awareness of the parallel between the destruction of his possessions in Break Down and Francis's renunciation of his large inheritance (41). Reflecting perhaps on the irony that Break Down became a phenomenal success in the art world, Landy in Saints Alive uses St. Francis to express the futility of such feats of abnegation. For one sculpture, the most understated in the show, Landy takes a figure of St. Francis staring fixedly at a crucifix held in his hands and replaces his lower body with a plexiglass donation box. Inserting a coin causes Francis to whack himself hard in the forehead with the cross. In the other piece, Francis appears headless as a kneeling figure ecstatically receiving the stigmata. Pressing a pedal causes a mechanical claw to slide along a small beam and drop into a gaping hole where his head should be. With luck the claw will pull a Landy-designed T-shirt from the saint's body cavity and drop it on the floor for the visitor to take home. The shirt features the knotted cord worn around the waist by Franciscans but tied instead around the neck of the shirt as if it were a noose. Trailing down the front are the three knots of the cord labeled with the virtues they symbolize: poverty, chastity, and obedience.

Francis yearned for poverty, but here he collects money as a donation box for the National Gallery. Through self-punishment he seems to express regret, or perhaps it is we, the visitors dropping in our money, who cause him harm. Francis gave away his clothes and possessions, and the other sculpture perpetuates this act of charity. But his body has also become a prize bin with T-shirts on which the Franciscan virtues are written like a designer's motto-the designer in this case being the famous artist named Michael Landy. The works thus capture St. Francis's inability to escape the world of things, which shades into Landy's inability to escape from the ineluctable force of the art market and creeping commodification. Francis, for his part, falls to his knees not in awe before God as he receives the stigmata, but in submission to a grasping, acquisitive claw that seeks a memento-and a possibly valuable art object-for the visitor who pushed the pedal.

The animated saints clearly wrestle with the obsessive accumulation of possessions characteristic of contemporary society, but Landy's works also potentially transcend our historical moment, as demonstrated by their strikingly medieval qualities. The resemblance extends beyond any shared Christian subject matter to include the functions of a privileged class of medieval objects: relics and their containers, known as reliquaries. Relics, like the recycled wheels and gears of Landy's saints, were mostly bits of trash: shards of bone, a shriveled finger, scraps of filthy cloth, strands of hair, or a splinter of wood were typical. Their value pointedly resided not in their material, but in their origins as parts either of a saint's body or of objects the saint had come in contact with. Because of these origins, medieval relics possessed the capacity to make long-departed saints present and accessible, so that they could hear and respond to the prayers and needs of devotees. The spiritual value of a relic was often communicated by the worldly value of the reliquary that held it: skillfully worked forms and precious materials such as gold, gems, ancient cameos, and brilliant enamels displayed the sacred power and heavenly character of the physical detritus within. If we compare Landy's sculptures to the thirteenth-century reliquary bust of St. Yrieix, for instance, we can see a similar cumulative aesthetic and density of attentiveness in the piling up of forms, shapes, and objects. Although Landy eschews preciousness, his mechanical animation of the saints strongly echoes the dynamic capacities of medieval reliquaries. The reliquary of Yrieix, a venerated sixth-century figure from the region around Limoges in central France, does not literally move. But the reliquary viscerally reaches out toward those before it with its wide, staring eyes. Medieval arm-shaped reliquaries, another popular form, engage viewers with gestures of speech or blessing. These forceful ocular and manual gestures would be further animated in processions and rituals during which the reliquaries would be physically moved. Landy's saints similarly focus on heads and hands as vehicles for animated expression, and the pressing of pedals to activate the figures is a participatory analogue to medieval practices of moving reliquaries.

The comparison of Landy's creations to medieval relics and reliquaries could be pursued in other directions. Is there a parallel, for example, between contact with a saint that makes an object a relic, and Landy's transformation of junk into art? Landy briefly mentions reliquaries in the aforementioned interview, but did these kinds of medieval objects play a formative role in shaping his work (52)? But the comparison bears most pressingly upon the tension in Landy's work between presence embodied in material things and renunciation or loss. The medieval cult of relics and the use of reliquaries developed in large part as an answer to worshippers' yearnings for close contact with the sacred and divine. Even as these relics and reliquaries established the presence of a holy person, however, they confronted viewers with absence. Medieval saints were embodied primarily as fragments: relics themselves were almost always bits of matter, and many reliquaries took the form of a body part, usually a head or arm. Encountering St. Yrieix's gleaming face makes him present, but also makes us aware that the rest of his body is not here, just as his shining angelic visage reminds us that he now resides in heaven, not on earth. Landy's saints, too, are fragmented material presences. Powerfully manifest through their scale and animation, they are also patently absent in their incomplete, mechanical nature.

The comparison of medieval and modern embodiments of saints hints at a long history of deeply conflicted impulses in how people have related to material objects. Much of Landy's work has scrutinized how contemporary society encourages us to form our identity around our possessions, and how this conversely leads to people being treated like disposable objects-a modern fate that is as harsh as any martyrdom. In Saints Alive he balances these concerns with their diametric opposite: the impossibility of fully escaping the world of things. Like St. Francis collecting coins and distributing T-shirts today or the bones and resplendent reliquary that kept Yrieix anchored to earth in the Middle Ages, objects come back to haunt those who would reject them. The conflicting impulses are tragic not merely through their coexistence, but also because each is in itself unattainable. In the end, these failures of purpose are what make Landy's works most successful. The sculptures fail literally in that they often cease working during the course of the day (so visit in the morning if you wish to see them all operational). The failures certainly frustrate some visitors, but the failures also make Landy's creations more human. Is the absurdity of a machine made to destroy itself a metaphor for the human condition? Instead of the modern mechanical virtues of elegant simplicity and efficiency, the saints bristle with old wheels and gears that seem far more than necessary. As saints, Landy's absurd machines become poignantly human: like us they are inefficient, flawed, and break down.

Kerry Boeye, a medievalist, is assistant professor of art history at Loyola University of Maryland.

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Michael Landy: Saints Alive showcases drawings, an interactive torture device, and six over-life-size mechanical saints-at once comical, austere, violent, pathetic, intimidating-created by the British artist Michael Landy during his recently completed tenure as artist-in-residence at the National Gallery in London.

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Skin, physical entry points, damaging the body for pleasure/pretty