Saturday morning thoughts

Yesterday I posted some 35mm mounted slides of some of my past artworks (paintings, drawings and digital images from the years 89/98) to Dr Simon Park from the University of Surrey who will infuse these slides (and others) with microbial life. I've taken the liberty of copying Simon's description of himself from Face Book:

I’m a scientist but have also been called an artist. Whatever I am, I work merely to enchant others, to make the unfolding of natural laws visible. My materials have their own autonomy, and their own aesthetic, so I am able to set the initial conditions and then relinquish control. It’s important that I become detached from my work, so that it’s the materials themselves that explore their own contexts and through this I try to make some sense of the world around me. I'm really looking forward to seeing what Simon does, because I've seen some of his past projects and he's most definitely an artist as well as a molecular biologist and has certainly 'enchanted' me with his images.

After posting the slides to the UK I took myself off to see A Dangerous Method, David Cronenberg's latest film. I'm not going to say much about it, suffice to say that it was mild Cronenberg  - the body/venereal horror we associate with his films was exhibited only as Sabina's sexuality and her contorted bodily and facial expressions and some scenes in which she dirties herself with mud. However, if we delve a little deeper we may find the subtle references to Jews and Aryans throughout the film evoke memories of  the horrific scenes of emaciated corpses linked with the Holocaust. Of all Cronenberg's films my favorites are still Dead Ringers (1988), Crash (1996) and eXistenZ (1999), but I appreciated Cronenberg's softer touch in this film in which the body as meat is displayed only in the entrails of food on Sabrina's hands as she squelches the contents of her evening meal and the thick rounds of meat that Jung piles onto his plate whilst supping with Freud.

And, on this note, I was disgusted to hear of the starvation, self-harm, drug overdose, suicide attempts and mental illness experienced by many detainees in Australian immigration detention centers. When is the Australian government going to do something to address this issue? People take huge risks to escape from the poverty, oppression and violence they experience in their own country only to be mistreated in ours. Shame Australia. Shame!