How and why have artists used preservation techniques or worked with the idea of preservation in their work? When there is something that is so beautiful and wonderful that we love dearly, or it appeals to the naked eye, we tend to take a photograph of it to remember it for as long as possible. Photographs are usually stored on our technological devices until we choose to access them, so that we can look back on the moments we have experienced and enjoyed. I would like to know more about whether or not the stilled screenshot enhances the experience that has already happened or if it destroys or weakens our original reaction to the masterpiece we see. Objects can also be preserved in other ways in an attempt to keep everything ‘frozen’ in time. Preservation is the process of keeping something the way it is, and not letting it get destroyed in any way. There are various different ways of preserving things, such as; photographs, plants, fruits and even animals. In this essay I intend to develop an extended understanding of preservation in art. I am going to discover how artists have gone about preserving something and also why they have done it in a particular way. Each paragraph will show a summary of an artist’s work, a process of preservation or an idea that influences our own version of preservation which is very unique and also useful in my research. Damien Hirst is an artist who preserves animals in glass boxes that are filled with formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is a naturally occurring organic compound with the formula CH2O. It is a colourless, strong-smelling gas. Exposure to formaldehyde could cause adverse health effects. It is created by oxidizing methanol. The idea of placing the dead animals in formaldehyde is quite controversial as it could come across as an insensitive and cruel thing to do to the body of a dead being. This is a type of preservation where the idea and process are both negative. After the cow has died there is no point in keeping the body safe as it is still useless because the animal is dead. If at one point in the future people could be frozen or preserved for the future, it could be positive with actual reasoning behind it. If a human is kept for future events in, for example, 200 years, there could be a way of safely keeping the person preserved for as long as possible until the day comes to let them out and wake them up.
After looking into the work of Damien Hirst, I remembered a big issue within the media, and the international news which included a story of a young girl who was terminally ill. This interesting topic I have come across involves a process called “Cryonics”. Cryonics is a procedure of preserving bodies in very cold temperatures. This is in the hope that it will be possible to bring people back to life in the future. To undergo this treatment, the person must first be officially pronounced legally dead, this means having no heart-beat but they still have some brain function. Theoretically, this means that they could be brought back to life. The procedure first sees the body’s blood replaced with a cryoprotectant, which protects the body’s tissue from damage. Otherwise the water in the cells will cause them to burst during freezing. The body is frozen to temperatures below -130 degrees Celsius, using nitrogen gas. Back in October of 2016, a 14-year-old girl, who died of cancer, was cryogenically frozen in the hope that she can be “woken up” and cured in the future. This was allowed due to her
winning the court case in her final days alive. After JS died in a London hospital on October 17th, her body was frozen and then taken to a storage facility in the United States. She is one of only 10 British people that have ever been frozen, and the only British child. Russia and America are the only two places where the process of cryogenics can take place, and where the bodies are able to be stored. This is an example of a drastic measure someone has taken to successfully preserve a human life. Gunther von Hagens was born on 10 January 1945. He s a German anatomist who invented and developed the technique for preserving biological tissue specimens called ‘plastination’. This was in 1977. In this process, the water and fat are replaced by certain plastics, yielding specimens that can be touched, do not smell or decay, and even hold most properties of the original sample. The process of this type of human preservation is extremely advanced and also a disturbing way to show the evolution of the human species. Every part that is put through the ‘plastination’ process is kept exactly how it originally was, with no change of deterioration. Rachel Whiteread is a British artist who has won many awards for sculpture work and also a lot of her other artwork. Whiteread completed a sculpture project called ‘House’ on 25 October 1993. It was a temporary public sculpture which was demolished eleven weeks later on 11th January 1994. It was created in East London, and was hailed ‘one of the greatest public sculptures by an English artist in the twentieth Century’. The use of preservation with Rachel Whiteread’s sculpture work helps to keep buildings and landmarks as safe as possible for many years to come. Rachel Whiteread’s project, ‘House’, attracted tens of thousands of visitors and generated impassioned debate, in the local streets, the national press and in the House of Commons. When reading about her culpture being demolished, I thought about how we try to preserve various objects and memories with technology. The process of taking photographs in a form of preservation, but we may actually be destroying those memories by trying to keep them safe. The memory may be different to how we should, or usually would remember it. For the last 150 year, photography has been one of many way to preserve a memory within an image that can be looked at multiple times, shared and viewed by others and also kept forever, or until the image is lost or deleted. Modern technology has led photography not just to be in the form of instant photographs on paper, from Polaroid cameras, or print outs, but also digitally stored often online. The main positive of being able to share photographs online is that they stay there until they are taken down by the owner. But once they are on social media, that site owns the photographs. Even though you took them and they are of your own memories, these social media sites are allowed to share them or use them whenever they like as well. This is why, when signing up to get an account on any site, we should always try to read the small print. We take photographs of people and with people, the ones we care about or of someone who we subconsciously believe is worth the space on our phones or SD cards. When we go to delete photographs, it is usually because there are already photographs of this thing or of that person already. It could also be that we want to make space for more, new and up to date photographs.
An American writer and filmmaker called Susan Sontag once wrote “To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.” This quote was from one of her books, which she named “On Photography”. Sontag tells us that she does not like the concept of taking photographs of people because it is not always wanted by the participant. This is a strict thought on the process of photography, showing that not everyone likes having their photographs taken, meaning it is sometimes against their wishes. Photographs can sometimes take away from the complexity and purity of the original viewing, seen by our own eyes. For example, if someone is at a concert or festival seeing a musician they are a big fan of, does the viewer record everything or nothing at all? They do not have to pick. There is a space in between nothing and everything. Nothing needs to be remembered completely by our brains, but this does not mean that our memories must be recorded on technology, through a screen. The main idea is to have an incredible time each and every day, without watching the greatest moments, and also the worst moments, through a glowing screen. Matty Healy is the lead singer from the band ‘The 1975’. His artistic talents to create inspirational music with a mind-blowing setting is a strong way to keep the memories alive with the audience. They create art in the form of music and when performing to his audience he wants them to feel the music in person rather than watching later on a piece of technology. On the subject of technology and taking photographs for the preservation of memories he says, “Some of you might have only seen us on a screen like a phone or a computer, we’re not on a screen now. Please do not watch this next song through a screen”. Roland Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher and linguist. In his book from 1980 called “Camera Lucida”, he wrote “What the photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.” Photography is a process that captures an event that happens only once and can never be recreated exactly the same. Every photograph records the memory and details that our minds will not allow us to entirely remember. The same photograph can be used as many times as we want, in different formats, creating an infinite amount of possibilities in which the photograph can be preserved. The still life screenshots that we have created at one point in time, can add to the memory, or maybe just recreate it in our imagination. When we look back at the photographs, it is usually shown quite differently to how we remember it because our brains do not recall every detail. Sometimes, before even looking at distant memories, we miss out vital information of the situation and need a reminder of what actually happened, which is why photographs are, more often than not, a very positive approach when reminiscing on the past. Colours could be different to how we remember them, significant objects may not be in our memory, and the people we were with sometimes slip our memory meaning that when we look at the photographs we see people who we do not recall being there. Mark Dion is an American conceptual artist who was born on 28 August 1961. He studied at university and was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2003. Dion currently lives in both New York and Pennsylvania. He teaches at Columbia University in New York and is co-director of Mildred’s Lane, a visual art education and residency program in Beach Lake, Pennsylvania. During the summer
of 1999, Dion and a team of volunteers searched the foreshore of the Thames at a low tide, for any pieces of old, scrap materials. They searched between Millbank and Bankside, near the Tate Gallery. He collected lots of different pieces of scrap porcelain, earthenware, metal, animal bones and glass and presented them in a ‘double-sided old-fashioned mahogany cabinet. He did this to looks at a natural and historical concepts of each object. It was first shown at the Tate Gallery as an installation between October 1999 and January 2000. The way this work is shown allows the viewer to see a clear interpretation of preservation, which involves objects from history in an extremely well known place in London. The way he has presented these found objects make it look like the layout of a museum display, and also creates an installation which is very uncluttered.
Cornelia Parker was born in Cheshire, England, in 1956. She studied at the Gloucestershire College of Art and Design from 1974 to 1975. Parker also studied from 1975 to 1978 at Wolverhampton Polytechnic. Cornelia Parker has created work for another one of her exhibitions which explore the preservation and also deconstruction of the London pavements. She creates moulds of the cracks in the grounds by casting them in a rubberised solution. This process allows us to see the detailed shapes of which Parker has preserved in a strong material. The idea of capturing and keeping safe a location is a very advanced idea of preservation and has helped to develop the ideas for my artwork in my sketchbook.
Damien Hirst’s process using formaldehyde is quite similar to the scientific discovery of Cryonics. The living being in both situations have been legally pronounced dead. They are both kept in a specific climate or chemical to make sure that the body remains intact. The animals in formaldehyde will never be able to help anything or anyone again because they can’t be brought back to life. Even if they were brought back, they would not be as much use as a scientific breakthrough human being would be. The little girl, if ever woken up, will be the evidence of a scientific phenomenon. Both of these ideas of preservation are unnatural and hard for some to think about. Cryonics is keeping a dead body frozen for hundreds of years, until the day comes to revive it. They will need a long time to recover, especially because they are literally being brought back from the dead. Cryonics is very unnatural and it will never be 100% safe or certain that the chosen person will wake up. This means that the scientists have all wasted their time making sure the body stays safe, because it was never safe in the first place. Damien Hirst’s preservation in formaldehyde is very unnatural because even though it is seen as art by many, others just believe it is inhumane and callous, just like some people think about Cryonics.
From the research I have done on the subject of preservation there are other question that come to mind when thinking about how and why we decide to preserve things in their original form. Why do we want to hold onto everything? Why not just let some of the memories fade away and let our own imagination be reminded of it naturally? This could be because, if we see one of the significant people or objects involved in that wonderful moment we feel that we need to capture it. Or is it just because we have our camera at that moment and randomly took a photograph? Is there always a reason behind that photograph, will it be used for anything other than just being left on your phone? Or is there definitely a very in depth story behind it? There are also questions I have discovered throughout thinking of Damien Hirst’s work and also the idea of Cryonics. Why and how did Damien Hirst feel the need to showcase dead animals to the world? Is it art or is it just cruel? Once they are dead why can’t they be left alone and laid to rest like humans are? Are we really that different to other animals? Is Cryonics a safe process? Not just emotionally for the family of the deceased, (knowing that your loved one will wake up in 200 years with no one there they know), but also for the people who must wake them up in the future. Do these people know how to wake them up, as well as the person that put them ‘asleep’? Is Cryonics really the way forward? Shouldn’t people just die and leave the future to the rest of the human race to come? These people have had their time so what makes them special enough to be allowed to wake up in 200 or so years? Will this help humanity or destroy it in the long run? My project focuses of preservation and destruction of memories, and each of these artists have influenced me when discovering new and unique ways to keep objects in their original condition. Damien Hirst uses a chemical approach, which in very unrealistic for someone to use if they do not have a big enough space, or enough money to create a huge project like he did. This is a very intricate process that needed to be perfected so that the animals were able to be preserved and also sustain their position without slowly withering away. Gunther Von Hagens has a more eerie process of preservation. The realistic body parts and plasticization techniques were good examples of a more modernized way of preserving the human body rather than just in ice. His work influenced mine in various ways. One way that stands out is the idea of freezing photographs and objects to try and stop them from fading over time. This was not a very successful process of preservation because the ice caused more water damage than was expected. The photographs ended up coming out of the melted ice extremely faded and also very spoilt. The next artist I researched was Rachel Whiteread. When her work was being demolished it made me think about how certain things get destroyed even when they are trying to be kept at a strong standard and quality. I experimented with various forms of destruction. I set an egg box on fire and watched it disintegrate, whilst filming at different angles. I made a short film with some of that footage in which is presented on my blog page. I also ripped up an old pair of jeans to the point where they are unrecognizable as jeans. Throughout this project and personal study topic, I have learned a lot about the multiple processes of preservation, which his improved my development through my sketchbook work, which focuses on preservation and destruction in art. I have described and experimented with simple forms of conservation that have helped me to extend my knowledge of art that uses lots of modern and original techniques. I have analysed lots of different pieces of work, created by artists and writers, which have also influenced my own practical and experimental work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY DAMIEN HIRST Interview; Hans Ulrich Obrist and Damien Hirst 2007: http://www.damienhirst.com/texts/20071/feb--huo Info and videos: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/damien-hirst This video includes a talk with Damien Hirst, looking into each room in the Tate where his work was presented in an exhibition, and talking about his art with Ann Gallagher. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWSb9QMlLoQ CRYONICS Information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics Another example of cryonics: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/us/cancer-immortality-cryogenics.html?_r=0 JS, 14 year old: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/18/cancer-girl-14-is-cryogenically-frozen-after-telling-judge-she-w/ Extra http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/legalstatus.html GUNTER VON HAGENS Information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunther_von_Hagens SUSAN SONTAG Quotes from Susan Sontag’s book of essays, On Photography (1977): https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/768174-on-photography ROLAND BARTHES Quotes from Barthes’ book, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, (1980): https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/799260-la-chambre-claire-note-sur-la-photographie MARK DION – ‘THAMES DIG’ Artist info - http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/mark-dion-2789 Thames Dig info - http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dion-tate-thames-dig-t07669 CORNELIA PARKER – PAVEMENT CRACKS Artist work info - http://www.frithstreetgallery.com/artists/works/cornelia_parker/pavement_ cracks_city_of_london Interview - https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/25/cornelia-parker-interview-idont-want-to-tick-anyone-elses-boxes-whitworth-retrospective RACHEL WHITEREAD ‘House’ made between August and October in the year of 1993 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_(sculpture)