FAKfulness Art Magazine 2nd Issue

FAKfulness magazine 2nd Issue

On Reality Of Human Body

october 2019

FAKfulness Art Magazine Founder and Editor: Piotr Kuszyński facebook.com/fakfulness/ pkuszynski@op.pl instagram.com/pr.qski/ Wrocław, Poland 2019

COVER ARTIST: Hassan Ghasedi Model : MJ Make up: Sanaz Arjmand Photo by : Mortez Afazel stylish design : Hassaqa copyright reserved by MS 2013

hassanghasedi@gmail.com facebook.com/goorkanhim Instagram.com/oostaassanenaqash/

EDITOR'S NOTE After the great response I got with the very first issue of FAKfulness Magazine, it gave me the courage and enthusiasm to go a head with the second one. The second issue topic „On reality of human body” aims to provide a platform for various aspects of the human psychophisical identity in contemporary art and to stimulate the viewers critical reflection on the current cultural, political, sexual and socioeconomic issues.

As we know, the human body has been shown in the art of different eras, and the ways of its representation differed from the time of ancients; from transcendental to transgressive understanding of the body. Transcendence and transgression, in my opinion, are interrelated because they grow from the same root, which is overcoming basic biological existence.

I believe that the works presented in this issue are in line with this great human tradition of "going beyond" As a result I feature diverse artists from all over the world whose works are driven by an urge to express their interpretations of our human corporeality condition.

In the present issue of magazine I am initiating a new column, that invites commentaries on the current topic to be made from a critical point of view. The author of the first article in this column is Ben Baruch Bilich from Bazalei Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, who presensts his point of view in „Body Rapresentations in Art and Photography”.

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In addition to promote interesting and valuable artistic movements you can find texts by Zita Vilutyte presenting IAF ANIMA MUNDI association from Lithuania and by Andreas Smyrylis Liakatas presenting MUSIC ART MAGAZINE from Greece.

I would like to thank all the artists from around the world who have contributed to this independent project.

Regards Piotr Kuszyński

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FEATURED ARTISTS

Mani Saemi Andrii Dostliev Catriona Clark Daria Konshtik João Gil

Tarini Sethi Cheryl Rose Rudd Gilian Ho Jenny Nguyen Mauricio Suarez Mehreen Hashimi Aleksandra Issa Zita Vilutyte RA Solaris Giancarlo Venturini Mafalda Gonçalves Mär Martinez Neeraj Gupta Pam Schmidt Miri Eitan Sadeh 4

Adam Plant Dimitri Ostroumov Marina Shkarupa Brigitte Dietz Samantha Wilson Ernest Atakora Tanor Andrei Rodenau Sinasi Gunes Kayankwok Sea O. Dax Ritam Talukdar Satadru Sovan Banduri Marta Włusek Fatma Al Ali Prashant Singh Monika Traikov Gamze Yolal Erini Kini Aleksandr Gordeev Stefanos Folinas Agata di Masternak Ravi Kattakuri Alessandra Guttagliere 5

José Crúzio Khim. M Hipol Lexi Jude Lily Fei Sam Gimbel Suzie Pindar Silvia Sanna Marta Galmozzi Michael Levchenko Portia Jiabao Li Cypress Atlas Van Jesus Anne Cecile Surga Runa Halleraker Terry Graff Amnon David Ar Angelo Troilo Jans Muskee Patricia Trindade Jörg Wascher Hakan Lidbo Cameron Lings Flavio Hodel 6

Manar Ali Hassan Daria Baiocchi Stancu Dan Armand Ari Ardalan Soumya Talwar James Bullimore Hassan Ghasedi Nikita Manoj Mahale Teri Anderson Mr Tractor Inspector Rivka Cyprys LINKS TO EACH ARTIST'S ON LINE PRESENCE YOU CAN FIND ON:

facebook.com/fakfulness/

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Source: https://pixabay.com/ More about: http://clinchem.aaccjnls.org/content/clinchem/59/11/1687.full.pdf

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On On Reality Reality of Human of Human Body Body

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On On Reality Reality of Human of Human Body Body

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source: https://pixabay.com/

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source: https://pixabay.com/

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PHOTOS BY PIOTR KUSZYŃSKI PIIETA

Świdnica Cathedral st. Stanislaus and st.

Wenceslaus 14

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BODY RAW PHOTOS BY: PIOTR KUSZYŃSKI 16

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PHOTO BY: PIOTR KUSZYŃSKI

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SOURCE: https://pixabay.com/ DNA 19

PHOTO BY: PIOTR KUSZYŃSKI

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SOURCE: https://pixabay.com/ DNA 21

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Body representations in Art and Photography Ben Baruch Blich

Introduction

The purpose of my paper is to present, discuss and debate the problem of body representations in art and photography. In fact, my interest in the problem of representation, i.e.: of conveying information by visual images, goes back to my paper 'Pictorial realism' (Blich 1991), in which I raised the question as to the nature of pictures. A visual image: a painting, an illustration, a photograph and the moving picture in the cinema are all enigmatic vehicles of information. They are considered the most common and most readily perceived means of communication, much easier to create and apprehend than words and sentences, but as soon as we try to explain the reality for which they stand for, it becomes clear that unusual perceptual processes are involved. On the one hand their relation with reality is denotative, and as such they truly reflect and frequently also preserve reality, serving as an easy channel for acquiring knowledge. Yet on the other hand, pictorial rendering raises the complex issue of understanding the act of visual perception: what do we see in pictures? Real lively objects, real scenes, or do we interpret what is actually seen, i.e.: the conventions of colours, lines, dots etc., to be seen as if real objects. This equivocal understanding of pictures stems mainly from our dilemma on how we are to treat the 'aboutness' of pictures.

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The Weight of Photography

While pictures are made of paper, canvas, covered with paint, dots, lines, all to be perceived on their own merit, they are also, after all, vehicles of representation, in which we are presumed to identify real objects.

Indeed, visual images raise epistemological questions as to how we perceive them, and through them, the world we live in. By confronting painting to the photographic act of representation, I intend to examine remarks colloquially referred to their extent of similarity that lies between them and reality in general, and to the human body in particular. I will show that photography in this respect, alludes to, and sometimes even takes painting to be its source of inspiration. Yet on the other hand, I will show that photography has an advantage on painting even when it strives to convey metaphors, in this case the body as a metaphor.

The discussion starts with a note on the epistemology of photography in comparison to painting. Then I go on to discuss the many facets of the human body as represented by painting and photography.

Visual information by Painting and Photography

Among the possible means of communication, pictorial representation has accumulated a momentum that none of its counterparts, including language, can credit itself with. Today, more than ever in the history of mankind, pictures have become the main means of transferring information: in education, in moulding public opinion, in advertising, not to mention their traditional role in the visual arts. With the penetration of photography into the arena of representation in the middle of the 19th century, the rules of rendering were changed, and with that the scope of images, which, for ages had been exclusively in the hands of artists. Though it seems odd at the beginning of the third millennium to be still justifying the act of photography, it is nevertheless true to say that the history of modern times is ipso facto the history of the camera. Modern life has flirted with the camera, has worshiped it, and, to a certain extent, modern times would not have been possible without it.

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It is true that in contrast to the hand-made, one-off, traditional craft of representation by painting, photography is an easy, straight forward, technological, mass medium, that each and everyone can handle. Photography does not need much learning or skill to produce, especially today in the digital era, in which the camera is part and parcel of our cellular telephones.

Photography is no longer a myth, it has freed itself from the obscure darkroom, from Plato’s cave, to become a medium that not only represents, preserves and artistically exhibits reality, but also dramatically has violated, traditional epistemology by constituting new and unfamiliar attitudes towards the act of representation. Though a photograph is easy to manage and produce, still to this day we are amazed and fascinated by being able to hold in our hands images representing ourselves. On the one hand a photograph is a pictorial representation, and it enhances visual information as paintings do, and yet, on the other hand, a photograph is a real depiction, and as such, deliberately brings to our attention, scenes which traditional vehicles could not portray. Being the most realistic vehicle of representation, photography moulds new and sometimes unexpected points of view onto the scenes depicted, and as such it brings to the open questions concerning perception as well as ethical dilemmas.

It was Walter Benjamin who taught us ‘that everybody who witnesses its accomplishments is somewhat of an expert’ (Benjamin, 1968, pp. 231), that is: the aura of being a one-off rendering customarily attributed to the traditional means of representation, does not play a role in photography. According to this view, advocated later by Slavoj Zizek and others, the camera is indeed an intricate agent; it serves as a vehicle of documentation, of memory, of preservation (Sontag 1977), and by the same token, it is a voyeuristic vehicle which invades the private and transfers the scenes depicted into the spectator’s possession. The gaze, the seeing, the information retrieved from the photograph, is the essence of the camera’s attributes and the bottom line of the photographic epistemology. One does not simply look and register a photographic scene; one sees and perceives a photographic scene in the same way a child, according to Jacques Lacan, (Lacan 1949) recognises for the first time its own image in the mirror – a stage which marks the child’s ability to reflect on his own body and construct his own self.

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The reflection of the self in a photograph, a mirror, or in the water, as in case of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image, is indeed one of the major problems Western civilization is preoccupied with. Painting, sculpting, engraving, carving, were for centuries in the service of mimesis, the only pictorial vehicles denoting the real and the imaginary alike. With the penetration of photography the rules of mimesis were changed, and with it, the status of the observer: from a passive stance to an active, involved, critical observer.

The same is true of the object represented by a photograph. From an aesthetic experience, as in the case of a painting, we are faced with a reification of the object depicted by the camera, or, to use Laura Mulvey’s (Mulvey 1989) terminology, the photograph is an agent of fetishistic scopophilia, since what is seen by the photograph is not only an aesthetic experience, something pleasing to look at; a photograph is also an object through which we experience a frame, a window onto reality, and that very photograph, the frame, may become an object in itself, a fetish, replacing the so called ‘real scene’. To look at a photograph is in many ways to become a voyeur, to unveil the forbidden, the private, and be exposed to real scenes as if they had happened to ones self.

To substantiate that statement we can compare a painting made by a skilful painter with a photographer: let us take as an example Goya’s The Third of May, 1808, and place it next to a photograph of a similar scene: Eddie Adams’s A street execution of a Vietcong prisoner (1968).

This comparison will point out that being exposed to a painting is in many respects a different experience from being exposed to a photograph. It is true that both pictures depict horrible and horrifying scenes. And yet, if you disregard for a moment aesthetic values and artistic excellence, and concentrate on the information retrieved from the two depictions, and reflect on the epistemological point of view each one of them demands, you may agree with me that a photograph is a spectacle, a hyper-reality representation because it complies not only with truth and objectivity, but also with what is so eloquently defined by Guy Debord (Debord 1992) as the transparency of vision, and to what is labelled by Jean Baudrillard (Baudrillard 1992) as the precession of simulacra.

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Being a transparent vehicle, a photograph is an icon, a simulacrum, which precedes and in many ways also facilitates the scenes it exemplifies. Not that we would not have knowledge about horrible executions without a photograph, but a photograph has the power of articulation, and it turns vague knowledge into a concrete testimony, giving it an ontological credibility.

Practically speaking, a photograph is in the position of replacing reality, and as such it represents a state of affairs we would not have been exposed to unless by the act of photography. Moreover, in contrast to a painting which may successfully (or occasionally may fail) to symbolize a certain idea or value (as in the Renaissance art), a photograph has always a reference, and is expected to be relevant even when it depicts aesthetic scenes (landscapes, sunsets, impeccable bodies, etc.), or when it alludes in a roundabout way at political atrocities (as in the case Adams's photograph). This in turn has an impact on the viewer's position towards the scenes he sees in a painting and in a photograph. Since a painting is an opaque medium, that is, it denotes a certain scene, let us say - two human bodies at a certain posture, but represents an idea, for example the idea of Creation, as in the case of The Creation of Adam by Michaelangelo, a photograph, on the other hand, always denotes the scenes it represents, and will hardly refer at an idea without depicting the real scene. That is why a photograph goes beyond the represented and functions as a simulacrum, whereas a painting is a visual story recruiting narrative devices, such as metaphor, oxymoron, etc. in order to be able to convey its ideas.

Goya's painting is an illustration of a real execution which took place during the French occupation of Spain; it is a painting which denotes an execution, but its intension is to convey the idea of rebellion, liberty, etc. But since the scene is aesthetically depicted, that is, the painter used narrative devices to convey his message (combination of colours, contrasts, etc.), the painting may aesthetically please the viewer and fail to convey its horrible message, as in the case of Adams's photograph. Would it be incorrect to say that a photograph, due to the nature of its characteristics, is a vehicle which has the power to put the viewer in an awkward position, embarrassing him by the gaze the photograph implicitly imposes on him? Whereas a painting, though horrible and repelling, as in the case of Nicolas Poussin's The rape of the Sabine Women, or Theodore

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Gericault's Medusa and many other paintings, as well as scenes in the theatre, for example Othello's strangulation scene, not to mention scenes in the cinema – are all directed towards the aesthetic, and hardly call for the viewer's involvement or put him, by the very act of looking at the painting, in the same epistemological position, a photograph (of the same scene) would do. It is, therefore, inconceivable to think nowadays on a painting as a vehicle of information, or take it as a means in moulding our points of view. Again, look at Adams's execution photograph, would it not elicit questions as to the position taken by Adams? Why did he photograph the scene? Why did he not intervene to stop the execution? And perhaps the most annoying assumption is that probably the execution took place only because of Adams's presence, and that his camera urged it. Poussin, Goya and Gericault are all excused of raising these question, not only because a painting is a narrative interpretation of the scenes depicted; the same goes also with photography, which is an interpreting vehicle as well, but unlike painting photography has changed the rules of denotation and with it the conventions of perception. A painting would never impose on the viewer the burden of justifying the act of perception: am I looking at a picture as in the case of a painting, or, by looking at the picture, I witness scenes beyond it, as in the case of photography? Am I examining the picture from its aesthetic and narrative points of view (painting), or by being exposed to the picture, I am ipso facto involved, an accomplice, invading the subject's private as in the case of photography.

These are not simple minded questions, and the fact that I raise them vis-a-vis photography, means that in my view the camera, although a mechanical, automatic vehicle, is a medium that puts us, the viewers, in a reflective state of mind, compelling us to adjust the scenes exemplified by the picture, with our dissonant interpretations of the real and the quasi-real alike. This is indeed the crux of the difference between a painting and a photograph; the one is a narrative aesthetic display, whereas the other brings to the open ontological questions, and with it the unresolved ‘distinction between what we really see and what we infer through the intellect’ (Gombrich 1972, pp. 15).

To conclude: we all live in reality, and we all have a certain amount of knowledge as to how reality manifests itself, and yet, when we talk

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about scenes we witness, paint them and photograph them, and try meaningfully to interpret their various manifestations, we consciously or unconsciously turn to use different levels of language games – the language we commonly use (if there is such a thing), and languages of representation, used by painting and photography. Reality, so it seems, is a theory laden concept, exemplified by various sign systems, and my purpose was to point at two options: the one advocated by painting, and the other by photography.

The body

The human figure, the body and its parts, were for centuries and are still to these days in the focus of the arts. Bodies were painted, sketched, sculptured, engraved, etc. Poets and writers were inspired by the human body and eloquently described it. The new two modern media – photography and the cinema, could not disregard the body, and turn their face from it. It would not be an exaggeration to say that photography is possessed and haunted by the body ever since.

My intention in this part of my paper is to discuss several artists, some of them are notoriously known as photographers, whereas others are commonly defined as multimedia artists, and examine their interpretations of the human body.

Before doing so, let me say that to understand photographs and be able to apprehend their iconography, one has to bear in mind that they continue developing what was already debated by traditional means of rendering in the visual arts, such as painting. Though photographers do not refer consciously to the history of painting, and some of them deny any influence from other media, it seems to me correct to say that they can not refrain from absorbing into their work ideas painters dealt with. After all human figures were painted in the history of western civilization since antiquity, and I am confident that all of you are familiar with hundreds if not thousands of paintings which portray the body, and therefore to deny any connection between painting and photography, would be a careless conclusion.

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And indeed, painting, especially 19th century painting, has much to do with the photographic point of view made by the camera. The first painter, which impressed me deeply, is Theodore Gericault, who in a series of sketches painted legs, limbs, hands, heads gathered from dead people, and portrayed them as in the genre of still life (see his series of paintings 'severed limbs' painted in 1818). The paintings are actually studies made by Gericault as did many artists before him, and yet he is the first who actually painted them as dead parts, as organs dissected from corpses as if to put an emphasis on the fact that the human body is made of fractions, is an assembly of parts, and has nothing in common with our concept of the divine human being as portrayed by the Renaissance artists.

Though artists, philosophers and scientists, seem to reach and construct their notions individually, the truth is, even today, that they unknowingly lean on 'background' knowledge articulating intuition, hypothesis and theory. It should not, therefore, come as a surprise to find out that the new bodily formation concepts in the late 17th and 18th centuries, were attributed mainly to the idea that nature is a mechanized system. Advocated firstly by Thomas Hobbes, who in a roundabout way expanded the exclusion of theological necessitation by recruiting Euclidean geometry as the basis for his analysis of nature, and elaborated later on as a materialistic reductionism by Charles Darwin and Ivan Pavlov. In the course of this model Hobbes defined space and motion as the sole means of reality, coupled with the notion of interaction he concluded that sensible change is due to the fact that there is nothing but bodies in the universe.

Substance is synonymous to 'body', which exists independently of our thoughts. This materialistic trend was attenuated for a sort period of time by Hobbes' contemporary Rene Descartes. Though he did not completely reject materialism, at least vis-à-vis the inanimate world, he endowed human beings with immaterial and immortal spirits which were not subdued to causal processes.

A turning point in spreading materialism as the sole basis for the understanding of the universe at large and in particular the human being, appeared in Julian de la Mettrie's book published in Leiden 1748, L'Homme Machine. As a medicine doctor who fled from Paris to find refuge in Holland and Prussia, de la Mettrie expressed the view of man

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as a self-moving machine. By enumerating bodily needs, such as hunger and sleep, and by pointing at its processes in acquiring knowledge of languages, habits, moral conduct, and aging – de la Mettrie embarrassed the well established belief that the spiritual soul is the sole explanation of human behaviour. Since man is a segment in nature, and nature as such is a collection of laws, human being's actions are constituted on natural causes. Sensation, intellectual abilities, thoughts, passions and even beliefs, were identified as inner bodily motions.

Hobbes, de la Mettrie, Holbach, Descartes, if to mention well known names who have transformed European thought during the 17th and 18th centuries towards the idea of nature as a mechanized system, had atomized the human body, stripped it of its appearance and Godly qualities, only to render it on physical qualities such as size, shape, colour, motion, weight, etc. Bodies had become matters in motion, randomly interacting, without any specific divine cause.

It should not surprise us that less than hundred years later, in 1818 Mary Shelly published her epic novel Frankenstein which was an expression of the romantic aspiration towards creating a human body made by man (and not by God), to overcome sickness and death. And that Gericault's paintings, painted at the same year, were in fact a visual statement of the materialistic point of view, advocated later on by Charles Darwin (Darwin 1881), who treated the body not as a divine Godly impeccable created substance, but as an accumulation of organic parts, each assigned to accomplish a job, like a machine, created in the course of evolution.

This is in part the reason for painters like Francois Boucher, Jean-Honore Fragonard, and above all – Gustav Courbet, the 19th century artist, who made an explicit reference to the body, the erotic body and to its organs. Let me in brief mention the Odalisque by Boucher (painted in 1745), who invites us to look at her private quarters in which she offers her body and her flesh, in a tempting look. Or Fragonard’s bathers (painted in 1765), a painting influenced by Rubens, in which fluidly bodies are painted in extreme erotic context.

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Courbet went a step further in his paintings, the sleepers (1866) a woman in the waves, and in his provocative painting The origin of the world (1866).

Looking at these paintings, one can not stay indifferent to the allusions to pornography at large, and especially to hard core pornography. Courbet stripped off not only the clothes of the figures he painted, but explicitly pointed at their sexual organs, ignoring their identity as in the case of the origin of the world.

His paintings can be interpreted on the borderline between traditional high art, and mass production art, and the reason I find them in the twilight zone between traditional art and modern popular culture, is the fact that none of the subjects he painted refer or disclose information as to their background, or give us a clue why they were depicted in the paintings, except for exhibiting in public their organs. It is in these paintings that Courbet and Gericault have prophesized the agenda of photography, and both paved the road for thousands of photographs depicting the human body.

The first photographer who complied with this agenda was Eadweard Muybridge. Eadweard Muybridge is in no doubt a pioneer, and may I say a paradigm photographer, who took his work to the extreme by placing his subjects as if they were specimen of scientific research. His endless series of pictures, of animals and human beings alike, are a testimony to this interpretation: Muybridge is not a documentary photographer; Muybridge is a scientist who has in a roundabout way turned the camera into an involved agent in the process of seeing. Due to his studies the camera has become a medium, an apparatus, of representing movement one could not perceive and experience without. As such it has extended the borders of information and has conditioned our knowledge; it is the utmost modern vehicle to absorb and by the same token - create knowledge, much the same as was the telescope in the days of Gallileo. By stripping off the clothes from the figures photographed, and isolating them against a bare background or a grid for purposes of measure, Muybridge elevates perception into Plato’s world of ideas. These studies have become an historical cornerstone of photography one can not ignore.

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And indeed, photographers of all periods could not but relate to Muybridge’s works, especially those who took the body as their subject matter. Man Ray on the one hand together with Cindy Sherman and Gilbert and George, and on the other - Robert Mapplethorp, Helmut Newton and Jeff Koons – in spite of the differences among them, dialectically correspond with Muybridge, and in many ways continue his experiments.

Man Ray in his 1947 series labeled Mr. And Mrs. Woodman, had opened to my mind, a new frontier in the understanding of the human body, which was adopted later on by Cindy Sherman, and to some extent also by Helmut Newton. It is a series of well staged scenes, which exibit encounters between two subjects – Mr. And Mrs. Woodman.

By using special puppets which customarily are used as model mannequins, Ray empties his pictures from any direct reference to reality; after all what we see are not human beings, but models, and yet by using puppets as models of movements and of postures, Ray sheds light on the body as an object.

By extending the semantics of the body to refer also to models, Ray had opened the gate before artists such as Cindy Sherman, who constantly and some may say – obsessively, raises in her works an existential question of identity. Now it is true that Ray has objectified the body, and has emptied it from subjective personal identity, but by doing so he raised the meaning of the photographic act: from a scientific objective means of rendering reality (as in the case of Muybridge), into an involved vehicle which is in the power to make statements concerning the human condition. And indeed, his works at large, as well as this bitterly humorous series of Mr. and Mrs Woodman as marionettes of love and lust, were influenced, no doubt, by Frued’s Interpretation of dreams, in which the unconscious, the dream, and the absurd condition of the human kind, are revealed and debated. The camera in Man Ray’s hands is an anarchistic vehicle as it maneuvers us to apprehend facts concerning our body we tend to repress or deny, and by using a model of two figures, of two puppets, Ray rewinds our fantasy and turns it to be true.

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Using an artifact, such as a puppet or a doll, either as a model or as a means to elicit in the viewer sentiments towards his or her own existential condition, is meticulously done by Cindy Sherman, who steps one pace ahead and endows to the body a new, and a morbid meaning. I refer to her series of works done in the beginning of the nineties, in which anatomical figures and parts of dolls, replace the complete human figure. Some of the critics who referred to her work have defined it as an expression of hysteria, others have given it a feminist meaning and stated that they continue her previous works. These are all legitimate and interesting interpretations, and yet I want to point at another option which puts her work in line with Theodore Gericault, Muybridge and Ray, and state that these special works in which the body is dissected and deconstructed, are the utmost expression of the loss of humanity, of despair, of fear, of nihilism.

In an interview Cindy Sherman said that her works are meant not only for the pleasure of the viewer, but as she said her intention was to ‘bite him back’, to put the spectator in the position of gazing at her works, invading the scenes she presented as in pornography. Her provocative series of body parts constructing hybrid dolls which are made of training mannequins, were correctly described by Amanda Cruz as “gruesome, hilarious, which we can not help but relate because they appear so familiar” (Cruz 2001, pp. 12).

It is, indeed, a shocking series as the sexual elements stand for death, power, aggression, beauty, sadness, etc., and they compel the viewer to reflect on his or her dreams, uncontrolled thoughts, desires, as if the stimuli presented are not fictional but constitute a realistic context.

The added value of Sherman’s photographs, is what I refer to as an epistemological revelation which puts the educated and sensitive spectator who is familiar with the history of body representations in art, in a reflective position, as he or she are required to observe their intimate body, private erotic images, and their subconscious libidinal dreams in a photograph exhibited in a public arena such as a museum, a gallery, a book.

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n order to deepen our understanding of Sherman’s approach to the body let me compare her works with Mapplethorpe, Newton and Jeff Koons. One does not need a sensitive eye to see the differences between them. Whereas Mapplethorpe, Newton and Koons treat the body as a signifier, that is – with the help of the body they point at and signify state of affairs beyond the photograph, Cindy Sherman’s works should be taken as presenting an end on their own, that is – they should be treated as relics which serve as a signifier and a signified of the missing abused body, of the deformed amputated parts of the body, of the mutilated body. Cindy Sherman represents the absence, the void, the silent, as did Gericault in his sketches mentioned above; Mapplethorpe, Newton and Koons depict the presented, the attendant body, as in the paintings of Boucher, Fragonard and Courbet.

Indeed, when we come to examine their works, especially those made by Mapplethorpe, one can not ignore his insistence on the presented, on the real, on the well balanced, clear, aesthetic body, even when he depicts parts of a body, like a hand, a leg, and sexual organ.

It was Arthur Danto (Danto 1996) who nicely defined Mapplethorpe's works as a rare combination of Dionysus and Appolon, the two opposing gods in Greek mythology, one representing lust and ecstasy the other representing order, virtue and steadiness. Later on it was Germano Celant (Celant 1992) who added Narsissus to the list of gods characterizing Mapplethorpe’s works, who play a major role in Mapplethorpe’s understanding of the body. It seems to me correct to say that his approach to the body as well as his treatment of parts of the body, such as a hand, a leg, a head., and sexual organs – are all depicted under the veil of Appolon, i.e.: they are well staged, delicately photographed, and yet on the other hand – the subjects chosen and their contexts, unveils Mapplethorpe’s indulgence, sadomasochistic undercurrent, and fetishism.

Take for instance his model Lisa Lyon, a body builder, he photographed for almost 3 years, and who served in his photographs as an epitomized body – both male and female, a masculine physical identity with a female embodiment. It is one of the best examples in which the body becomes not only a means but also an end for Mapplethorpe to express his desire

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for a body full of energy, a virile dynamic body, a “kind of deity for whom everything is possible – a very strong and unreal sexual power” concludes Celant (Celant 1992, pp. 48).

By glorifying the body and its organs, it might be wrongly thought that Mapplethorpe takes the viewer back to the Renaissance, to the ideal impeccable body, ignoring sickness, death, misery, and mutilation. This is indeed a wrong interpretation; Mapplethorpe’s works are loaded with aggression, with loneliness and fear, he successfully disguised behind his Renaissance approach to the body.

In spite of the body’s glamorous appearance, and its healthy athletic built up, it would not be an exaggeration to say that his obsessive drive to exhibit the body and present it as an offer to the gods, Mapplethorpe (and the same goes with Helmut Newton and Jeff Koons), is publicly referring to his actual self, to Robert Mapplethorpe, the private concealed person. In that sense, the body depicted is an expression of the needs he strives for, and one may conclude that his works presented in books and galleries were done for the one and only receiver, i.e.: Robert Mapplethorpe.

The same goes with Helmut Newton. Newton took the ordinary fashion model, stripped her off, and stressed her erotic and pornographic aspects. By displacing the fashion model from her ‘natural’ context – the fashion show, and transplanting her in a cold, alienated environment – an office, a cellar, a garage, an hotel room, he undermined the glamorous side of the fashion model and pointed at her carnal, erotic aspect.

His insistence on undefined backgrounds, and his use of dolls, window shows mannequins, and especially his insistence on an obscure, film noir, narrative in his photographs, Newton skillfully takes Mapplethorpe’s legacy of legitimately depicting the naked body, to defy any reference to the straight, to the normative, to the virtuous. Newton’s bodies are chaotic, sometimes even mutilated, maltreated, confined, and to some extent they are surrealist, all meant to stir our imagination, our daydreams, our hidden and forbidden sentiments towards what are considered models of beauty.

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Putting their insured bodies in unusual environments, twisting them, ordering them to perform harsh gestures and movements, dressing them with strange clothes, and above all – photographing them in quasi-pornographic scenes, Newton no doubt challenges and provokes the innocent eye of the viewer as if to seduce him to look again and again at the photographs, as do voyeurs who can not but look and gaze without any conscious control.

This very trend was brought to the extreme by Jeff Koons who had bluntly exposed himself and his wife, known as “La Cicciolina”, in his series ‘made in heaven’ as part of his artistic project which glorifies mundane and ordinary objects, personas and labels. It is one of the rare occasions in which the artist, in this case the photographer, turns the camera at his private and intimate world, as if to defy voyeurism and fight back the notion attached to the camera as an intruder, an invader, as a means to get hold of the concealed. Koons opens the door for us, and by exposing himself and his wife, he undermines the tasks attributed to the camera as a vehicle of representation which presents scenes one would not be able to see without.

Moreover, Koons and let me add also Gilbert & George, are calling upon us the viewers to see their bodies as they themselves do. In the case of Gilbert and George we see pictures in which Gilbert and George are staged in between brown human excrement, and the message of the body, that is to say – the body depicted from its bodily anal perspective, is an existential message, which puts forward their decaying and old bodies to say that “we are human being, dressed up in suits or not, full of complexities, of differences. We are naked, we are full of shit – that is what we are trying to show. It is a kind of existence, the realism of existence. That we are here” (cited from the Stedelijk Museum catalog, 1996).

In between the lines we can hear that Gilbert and George attribute to their bodies an existential meaning, that is to say – they take their anatomical built up to symbolize the fact “that we are here”.

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This exhibitionist approach to the body, shared also by Jeff Koons, is in fact a new interpretation of the body and of the role of the camera as well. If the body in previous interpretations was seen as a scientific specimen or a victim, and the camera as a means by which we the viewers invade the private and the concealed, now under Koons and Gilbert & George approach, the body serves as an existential statement and the camera is its reflection.

To conclude my paper, let me return to one of my earliest statements. The fact that we are corporeal, that we are all bodies, and the fact that most of us are familiar with the look of our bodies and the ways they function, does not entail that the images we produce by the photographic vehicle, are formed by the same ‘language game’. The photographic image, in spite of its causal link to the object depicted, is nevertheless a subjective product, and as such it contributes to our understandings as to what bodies are, and in a roundabout way it enhances our beliefs in the power of the camera to create as much as possible points of view vis-a-vis our reality.

Would it be a fair conclusion to say that without the camera we would not be able to grasp our own intimate image of our body? Would it be a far fetched assumption to say that with the help of the camera we reflectively construct our reality? There are no straightforward answers to these question, yet we can say for certain that without the camera these questions would not have risen at all.

Ben Baruch Blich, ph.d.

Senior lecturer

History and Theory Unit

Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem baruchbl@013.net.il

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SOURCE: https://pixabay.com/

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MANI SAEMI https://www.manisaemi.com

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Andrii Dostliev www.dostliev.org

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Anonymous, 2017 - present

Digital archive, digital prints in various sizes and techniques.

All these images come from the artist’s archive of photos posted by men to their public profiles on dating websites and apps (gay and straight ones alike). None of the images was edited, they are shown exactly the way they were found.

These men rely on more than textual descriptions and default avatars to present themselves, they show their photos - therefore, clearly identify themselves - and yet, at the same time, they take conscious measures to hide their identity, to ‘become unrecognizable’ with an act of artistic intervention into the image (not just by cropping the photo or by posing with their faces not visible). The degree of this artistic intervention clearly marks their personal border between self-representation and preserving anonymity.

To what extent people can add black geometric shapes or colourful scribbles onto their faces and still remain themselves in the photo?

What amount of blur effect hides someone’s face beyond recognition while still preserving portrait’s identificational function?

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Cationa Clark https://catrionamarym.wixsite.com/artanddesign

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"As a Queer Artist, I understand how both Body and identity go hand in hand. The way in which you present yourself through mannerisms and form define who you are within and out-with the LGBT+ community. the celebratory new-age reality of same-sex relations brings with it new categorisations of body and physical attraction. I hope to represent this through my works using obscuring colours and censoring tassels; exploring how this affects the view you have on your own body with the duality of being out and proud."

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Daria

The Great War Acrylic on Canvas, 90X70, 2019 https://www.dariakonshtik.com

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Konshtik

MATRYOSHKA Acrylic on Paper 140 x 140 cm 2017

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João Gil Creatures Why is there so little that moves you? Because we want to ignore evil and deny the body.1 Looking under often denied emotions such as isolation, pain, solitude and grief Joao creates ascetic and impotent portrait of ambiguous creatures thus revealing our inner distress.

Departed from gender and culture these beings reveal the flesh as a construction of our inherent trauma and anxiety associated with our experience.

These characters wear their bare skin without masks and usually take very formal portraiture poses, trying to conceal their emotions in a dark seclusion. But the shape and texture reveals every mark of anguish, pain, sin, guilt, trauma and grief in one being of angst. .

These bodies undertake a certain reflection of our body as an intimate ruin.

Exploring the complexities of identities, these figurative creatures are embodiments of society's darker themes such as death, war, racism, and sex.

Thus, these portraits rather than representing an actual person, they represent an emotion or a state of mind. The often ambiguous and genderless form represents our complex relationship between our identities and our bodies, expressing emotions and feelings that are at the core of what means to be human.

The nude instead of sexualised here appears damaged, dimpled, or altered to express our contemporaneity.

Common themes include gender and sexuality, guilt and innocence, violence and tenderness.

— Joao Gil, 2019

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1. Untitled (Creatures), 2018, 148 x 210 mm, ink on 240gsm paper 2. Untitled (Creatures), 2018, 148 x 210 mm, ink on 240gsm paper

3. Untitled (Creatures), 2018, 148 x 210 mm, ink on 240gsm paper

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Tarini Sethi https://www.tarinisethi.com

Snakes and Ladders Snakes and Ladders Ink on paper 56

In this house of our secret lie Ink on paper

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MR TRACTOR INSPECTOR

instagram: mr.tractor_inspector_

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CHERYL ROSE RUDD https://www.instagram.com › artthroughlines

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As an artist Cheryl tends not to be restricted to one signature theme of collage, instead she explores all corners of her creative abilities. Often leaning more towards themes linking to sexuality and surrealism.

For her, creating collages is just another way to understand the external and internal world, to make sense of modern day mayhem.

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SOURCE: https://pixabay.com/

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Gilian

https://www.instagram.com/groovygillianarts/

b i t e m e

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Ho

Jenny o r i g i n s

Nguyen 65

NACIMIENTO

Mauricio Suarez 66

Mehreen

Hashimi https://www.mehreenhashmi.com

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Aleksandra Issa

FEAR https://www.saatchiart.com › zzeuart

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facebook.com/fakfulness/

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RA S O L A R I S 70

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Giancarlo Venturini instagram: gian_venturini gian_venturini

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Mafalda Gonçalves

NOT MY FAMILY 73

Mär Martinez

Habibti 2 oil on wood

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Neeraj Gupta

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PAM SCHIMIDT https://www.artchik102.com

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MIRI EITAN SADEH

YOUTH oil on canvas 100 x100 2019

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IAF ANIMA MUNDI movement and „NO standART“

by Zita Vilutyte (Lithuania)

ANIMA MUNDI movement was born to be the platform of a new high culture, longing for transcendence and real meaning. We bring together art professionals, inovators and keepers of ancient folk traditions: painters, writers, poets, musicians, IT artists, educators, scientists and researchers. Rooted in traditional values, we transport the eternal spirit against the dissolution of the profound, using different means, old and new, from Folk arts to Avantgarde.

The IAF ANIMA MUNDI association connects people from all over the world and represents three streamlines of possible activities and now concentrates the spot on social practice art. The association by itself first of all connects people and organizations who want to work and collaborate in different short term projects, exhibitions, festivals, conferences, education and researching programs. Second section is the Gallery IAF ANIMA MUNDI. The Gallery represents the artists of the association and not only. The gallery can represent artists in different kind of solo or international group exhibitions and fairs. And the third area of our activities is on the way to start, this is Migrating Academy ANIMA MUNDI.

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Generally speaking, Migrating Academies are dedicated to innovation and sharing experience in art education, exploring new forms of creativity in a changing, mobile, learning institution. But these are certainly not all the functions of a Migrating Academy to fulfill. Migrating Academies should also take on another very important task before starting a project - the creation of a theoretical basis for the social practice art. They would have far more opportunities than other types of training institutions, since the Migrating Academy has a large variety and flow of artists, practitioners and theorists from around the world, and the Migrating Academy itself has great mobility potential. In addition, they are politically independent of state structures and can move anywhere in the world if needed.

In fact, the most successful social practice art projects are created by people who have never defined their work as art or knew what social practice was until now. Activists who are artists tend to create the best projects because they understand the need to do so with great patience and caution. Their practice is discussed in research and their projects are explored as examples because for them, working with people is a natural expression of creativity.

So the goal of Migrating Academy ANIMA MUNDI is to develop artists' thinking

beyond art so that working with people does not worsen current problems. The Migrating Academy will seek to design its programs with core teaching modules on social justice, postcolonial theory, neoliberalism, race theory and critical, radical pedagogy that can help artists who need knowledge and development in social practice art missions.

Modern man is experiencing the effects of the process of globalization, which is

dramatically affecting the political, economic and cultural levels, generating conflict and unrest. The influence that globalization has on communities and individuals is one of the most significant factors in the restructuring of social and political relations around the world. Contemporary art becomes part of the social and political imagery through various forms of representation and engagement.

Contemporary art resonates with specific realities of political conflicts - historical (arising from the aftermath of past wars), economic (arising from resources and their location disputes), sectional (arising from conflicts between neighboring communities), and a noticeable result of political conflicts - anti-justice (Sowel,1987).

The way contemporary art resonates with these political realities helps to understand how art politics works in practice and to see how political images are created and used against the backdrop of a globalized economy.

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Although our projects may include traditional studies, they are realized in various visual or social forms (depending on the changing context and demographics of the participants), such as performance, social activism or community mobilization to achieve a common goal. The variety of methods poses specific challenges in documenting social practice, as the aesthetics of human interaction is rapidly changing and involving many people at the same time.

The projects of social practice art are of great importance, both politically and

morally. And this is the result of constant work in certain areas. The social practice art is finding its place in today's Europe, even though we are living in a very exciting, widespread and fundamental time of transformation when new technologies are changing our lifestyles (Florida, 2015). We are living in an extraordinary period that is turning into an era of extinguishing capitalism, torn by crises, competition for production and consumption. However, according to Fulcher (Fulcher, 2007), crises of capitalism are not exceptional events, but rather "an integral part of the normal functioning of capitalist society" (Fulcher, 2007, p.

162). The present period creates grateful situations, and artists have tremendous opportunities to use their creativity and ideas to turn them into reality and make them function in a positive way. With this in mind, artists can move in the right direction and change current situations through creative projects.

In 2019 a social study on "Generation of Social Practice Art Creative

Approach in Migrating Academy" by IAF ANIMA MUNDI was conducted. It was attended by 9 members from nine countries around the world. Thus the IAF ANIMA MUNDI project is pursuing its long-term goals in a comprehensive and focused manner and is organizing the 2nd International Contemporary Art Biennal “NO standART. The Nomads” and inviting artists, researchers, educational and scientific innovators to join an interdisciplinary program. The “NO standART” project will be based on this study. As all exhibitors present themselves "live" not only with their creative works, other events are planned during the Biennal - lectures, workshops, focus groups and etc. All events will be open to the public and involved in interactive activities. The event will last one week. The exhibition will be on display throughout the month. The papers of all resaechers will be published in IAF ANIMA MUNDI portal. The Biennial will take place in August, 2020 in Kaunas, Lithuania. Details will be posted on www.iaf-animamundi.com .

The list of references:

· Florida R. (2015). Kū?rybinė?s klasė?s ilikimas, Vilnius: VGTU, TECHNIKA. · Fulcher J. (2007). Kapitalizmas: labai trumpas į?vadas, Vilnius: Eugrimas.

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Sowel T. (1987). A conflict of visions, New York:William Morrow.

Zita Vilutyte Listen to your heart vibes acryl on canvas 120x180

Zita Vilutyte A moment before sunrise acryl on canvas 100x100

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Zita Vilutyte

TWIN FLAME acril on canvas 100x100

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“We are going through a very exciting, broad and fundamental time of transformation, where everything is changing, from lifestyle to technology. Although it is a time of great opportunities, it is still full of dangers. Now is the moment when we have to make a decision and become responsible for our own lives, and not just for our own, but for our live in general. For thoughts, words, every action and everything we do. To think that changes in the consciousness of all mankind will be easy and fast is a utopia. But those who realize - they must act.

Where is the artist’s place in this period of changes?

Being an artist in today's world requires a lot of effort. Not only is it the duty of the artist to create an original expression, the artist must also be able to share what has already been created. A constant threat to the artist’s authenticity is commercialism, a consumerist society that can easily defeat the artist’s spiritual growth and blur the boundary between true live art and dead, stagnant art.

I live in a special country that, after the collapse of communism, has transformed itself into an era of extinguishing capitalism, torn by crises, and fierce competition for production and consumption. The old period has left us with a degraded environment and a sclerotic political culture enslaved by prejudices and interests. Nevertheless, this new period offers great opportunities. Everything changes, today becomes history tomorrow, and our time is now. ” Z.Vilutyte

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MusicArtMagazine is an online artistic community with a purpose of disrupting the world of art and give the free space to all artists and their friends to express themselves, but also promote their work through our various services and channels.

Owner and Founder: Andreas Smyrlis Liakatas, Greece

MusicArtMagazine’s Manifesto

How a startup will disrupt the world of Art and Artists. Technology is changing the world so fast that the traditional bases of Human Spirit and Civilization like Art should adapt fast to the changing Environent. It's not only the evolution of human expression, it is mainly the digitalization and the social exposure of everything in earth that makes the artists’ desire to touch, to smell, to hear their expression quite a task!! Mag project is an ambitious plan to disrupt Art’s Global Network having an ultimate scope of Promoting the talent and free expression of young artists. Mag is an open source project that is coordinated from the team of MAG. Stay tuned because we are breaking the rules!!! MAG Beta is published and open to Professional - Amateur Artists and Art related professionals that will be the first time users of our web project. This Artists community will help us to finalize our startup.

https://blog.musicartmagazine.com

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdHKa8Z2wXhPleNraXXx-jg 84

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ADAM PLANT

ALL THIS ELASTIC 86

Dimitri Ostroumov

"Pixeled Humanised" Digital Abstract Art Photomanipulation 6666x4441 pixels

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Marina Shkarupa

from the Thin Line series 200ч150см 88

TERI ANDERSON

SELF PORTRAIT 89

Brigitte Dietz

Flüchtling Panther (eng. refugee panther)

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Samantha Wilson

crossing borders

FREE FOR ALL

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Ernest Atakora Tanor

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ANDREI RODEANU Maps of Creation was born out of the concept of creation itself.

Starting from the ideology of a creator God, I asked myself what is creation, really? Everyone has a different but similar idea of a meaning. The artist represents himself through his own art, starting from a blank canvas, through progress, to the finished piece. I have chosen the flesh, the skin as a metaphorical representation of the canvas, focusing up close on the human elbow.

Analysing every odd of the skin, almost mapping the unknown.Creation comes from inside, each of us is a creator, an artist and this is what I accentuate through this project. It is about vision, what does the viewer will see when observing and analysing my work. The point is to let free the imagination and create a meaning of the visual representation of an elbow, of my canvas, of creation.

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Sinasi Gunes Simulation of my production was formed through creating inflation of installation in works which may be based as vanishing art. My works were built upon understanding to understand (commenting on meaning – Hermeneutics) in the present form.

Seek of art here involves a deep “reconstruction” process in the context of forming relation between the inspected and inspecting devices and research purposes.

Interdisciplinary – intermethodical relationships were formed.

It is based upon forming new perception systems by fastening the vanishing process of the art.

wine barrel

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stairs

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Nikita Manoj Mahale

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Kayankwok

dancer 99

Sea O. Dax 100

pushing/pulling

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Ritam Talukdar

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Forms of mental illness

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Satadru Sovan Banduri "I use to do the male body as a social taboo, as well as a tool of social mockery. I love to play a sarcastic role in face of today’s “Globalized” society, which might also be known as a “Technological Jungle”. My work is explores masculinity. It presents assemblies using analog and digital media; treasuring his paintings inside plastic materials and colouring i use skin as a medium with neon lights during own live actions. My series Hexyhcxtter, Hetrohexxy ,# tag,HIVI offer my body, through a hybridisation of the male human body and the nutcracker. In the series Annihilation of the human race he makes fusions between fakes and weapons. And in My performances it is from own body that i denounces my experiences the experience of being a man in South Asia.

In today’s increasing world of social and political conflicts, following neoliberal models of a predatory capitalism, based on intensities of cutting-edge technology and the assimilation, by a large part of the global democratic society, of the right and far right political structures, the desire to exchange and share is what drives us in our desiring subjectivities, thereby affirmed. Such experiences, in micro-politic spaces, are forces able to transmute structures of vigil and control of bodies, rectifying complex moments of contemporary time. We want freedom and for it we live and work, and the experience shared from the Otherness is a form of altered strength in the difference."

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MARTA WŁUSEK Title: MMXIX History overlaps with the present in Marta Wlusek’s work MMXIX created during an art residency, which she attended this year in Plovdiv, the European Capital of Culture of 2019. Using a 3D scanner as the photographic medium and engaging the city's residents in the process, the artist asked twelve participants to re-interpret and perform Roman statues of Plovdiv. The work is an examination of the medium of sculpture in regard to its role in art and architecture, and addresses the influence a statue bears on the construction of a local, historical narrative and the formation of cultural identity. Playing with dimensionality and hybridism in contemporary arts, Wlusek reflects, furthermore, on a shift in perception of sculpture and photography, as an effect of inevitable technical evolution, and reconsiders the relationship of the respective media to each other.

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Fatma Al Ali

Those photographs are part of conceptual recent work under the title of 'MOVE; now' that investigates the relation between the self and the environment, often times you find yourself surrounded by an environment that is hindering your growth and forcing you to be in a position that knowingly that if you stay any longer you will lose the essence of yourself, and makes you decay with the loss of movement. ironically the sculptural object is placed in water that is a substance that is considered the source of life and growth; but it is not that way in this series of images. what might be perceived by others as growth inducing can also be a reason to drown and suffocate and eventually decay. the artist is speaking about social expectations and limitation that are placed upon women in her region, many are often oppressed and forced into things that they don't want.

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Portia Jiabao Li Portia works in a variety of media as performance, video and sculpture. The different media often works together and combine in Tableaux Vivants, as the performance often reveals a familiar picture from legend, myth and Buddhism. She is interested in different forms of communication among human, and questions how to elevate the body as the subject to the intangible state as body without organs, like in her early work The Flea, the performers became metaphoric of the conscious from the fleas, and the sculptures are the romanticising fleas. The sculptures and performers have a narrative dialogue; sometimes, this appears through the video. Her recent work deals with the relationship with cosmic that creates a narrative link to Nibiru, a controversial planet in the astronomical world, meanwhile a God in Sumerian mythology. The uncertainty of Nibiru is what Portia interested in that she provides the East and West legends connected to Nibiru, and questions in work that how ancient are connected to the cosmic. Moreover, the performers are instructed under choreography to provide conscious communication that could happen between human and Nibiruians.

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Title : There Exists Neither This Shore Nor the Other - The Inorganic Data and The Organic Human Medium: Mixed media- performance, Duration: 17 mins The investigation into how human sense the world around them has gone further as the tribute to ancient Sumerian belief and mythology of Nibiru, a planet whose existence remains contested among the astronomical field. The artist seeks to explore the link between an ancient civilisation’s observation of objects and the myth-making of human, thus how the myth intercepts with Nibiru.

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Prashant Singh

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MONIKA TRAIKOV

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Through collage and photo manipulation, Traikov plays with the division between the realms of memory and experience in relation to the body. Her works explore the concept of landscape and the body and how they relate to each other. She investigates their dynamics, and the different ways they can be perceived by the viewer. Rather than presenting a factual reality, an illusion is created to evoke the imagination and allow the viewer to question their personal relationship with nature.

The images weave together both truth (the tangible photograph) and illusion (the distortions and fragments) to create a sense of uncanny nostalgia. Feelings, colours and emotions are often remembered more than the tangible. This series of images reflect the process the mind uses when reconstructing a memory. We find that important details may be hazed over, blended or missing while snippets of time are reconstructed in a new, idealized and illusionary way. Traikov's explorations convey how memories can be seamlessly reassembled into a new, meaningful whole. The temporal aspect of the clouds in her work emphasizes the fluidity of our memories. Never static, they are always in the process of change and movement, their shape and form dependent on countless other factors. Similar to memories, they are only able to keep their shape for moments at a time before they are transformed into something new. Rather than presenting a factual reality, the images create an illusion which conjures the realms of our imagination, and allows the viewer to question what landscapes mean to them.

The work has an uneasy affect about it. The graphic and bold nature of the work is inviting and familiar, while the lack of fine edges and shifting color are unsettling and uncomfortable. The art works to establish a dynamic push and pull relationship with the viewer, leaving them to digest the piece according to their own experience

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Gamze

Yolal 120

ERINI KINI

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Aleksandr Gordeev

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"I explore the perception of a human in the context of digitilizing the self in social media. Our pictures, videos, stories in Instagram construct a new "digital" body, "digital" persona that lives in that reality and one that uses it a lot forced to live in two realities at the same time. One started to perceive his real body through the digital one and the vision is very distorted"

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Stefanos Folinas www.stefanosfolinasart.com

egomion 124

hypnosis 125

Agata di Masternak

"Head series represent my journey through illness, self discovery and healing process.

The Heads is a series of paintings that was created over a period of 10 years since 2010. It became my personal diary that illustrated my life journey and long term treatment and 30 surgeries" 126

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"The Heads series of paintings is made up of 8 large scale (2m x 2m each) paintings by Agata di Masternak. Distinctive and visceral, this evocative series of works communicates from the depth of the artist's own suffering and despair. Each work explores a different perspective on the theme that of the artist examining the impact of her own mortal demise on both herself and others around her.

The knowledge that these paintings were immediately preceded by a nightime hemorrhage - so severe that the artist was not expected to last the night and was given life saving surgery the next morning - does strongly impact the way the works are experienced.

What is accessed through these works is beyond the experience of most and it is this rare, privileged viewpoint that we are invited to share.

Sometimes featured are columns and rows of friends, family, acquaintances - some completely obscured, others still visible in different stages of visibility or dissolving back into the ether or in various states of obstruction. Sometimes her own floating ethereal outline connects these people together - as if part of her wider identity. In other works she focuses exclusively on her own terrified and distorted physiognomy - which tells the story - the feelings she went through when she was staring death in the face.

Ultimately, I see these paintings as Agata's testament to life shining brightly inside her - a concentration of her complete life-force - an expression of her dismay, terror and her determination to draw something positive from the real likelihood of her own demise.

The works are a protest against just letting go without a fight, of hope over despair and the power of art to say something of the ineffable, of that which can last well beyond our own mortality; they capture something of the artist's extreme experience in a way that directs us to contemplate what life is at its core all about.

They are an opportunity to consider what can emerge when all seems lost - it is an art form both sacred, profound and about as authentic as you could imagine".

Alexander de Cadenet

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Ravi

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Kattakuri

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Alessandra

Guttagliere 132

José Crúzio

"NOTES TO SELF" The self-projection on the Other's work. A new visual narrative from a specific context. Me and one of my artistic influences. Part of me. A still life of my present. And the context where i live.

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Khim M. Hipol

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Lexi Jude

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Lily Fei

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Through my painting, acknowledging the distinction between “sexy” and “sexual” is critical.

When a woman is sexual, she is the subject of her own sexuality.

As a painter, I reclaim female sexuality as one’s own right. I work with the found erotic photos in which women were objectified to please men. I paint female bodies as if they were expressing their own sexuality by playing with layers and using expressive brushstrokes to reverse the perception of the imagery.

I alter connotations that come with female sexuality such as pornography and objectification and indicate it is something more than a social construct. I aim to change the consistent narrative that female sexuality comes from women’s physical and sexual appeal to others, and not from women’s own desire. I adapt the gesture of action painting, trying to work with these seemingly inappropriate imageries, not to certify the objectification of women, but to reclaim female sexuality as one’s own right.

Sam Gimbel

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SUZIE PINDAR The Naked Artist

Letting go 138

Bound

gas mask 139

Silvia Sanna

ABITARE (eng.live)

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P R o F U M I

(eng.scents)

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RIVKA CYPRYS

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Arena of being, 2019

Integrating inspiration from Butoh, a Japanese form of dance and movement, to explore perception, grappling with the ontological impossibility of overlapping space of one and the other, or the ideas beyond the limit of ones body and mind, the body as a medium of immediate and raw encapsulation of the human experience.

As performed as part of an Exhibition at Chelsea College of Arts, London.

Performers: Rivka Cyprys Roxani-Eleni Garefalaki Glkeria Kissa Sarah Kent video: https://rivkacyprys.wixsite.com/rivkacyprys/arena-of-being

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Marta Galmozzi

Untitled, 2017 mixed media (photograph printed on textile, wires, concrete), ambient size.

A research about the equilibrium between two different elements: the face of the woman standing in the middle of the space and the strength of the wires connected from the ceiling to the ground. Thanks to the transparency of the textile, it's possible to walk around and see the picture even from its back.

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Michael Levchenko

ALONE 147

Cypress Atlas

'in your truth you are a wide and open field.'

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Photo cred.: Kat Hoban

It is an examination of internalized notions and limitations of possibility, received from existing in our cis-heteronormative dominated world of patriarchal capitalism, in the transgender body. The piece considers ways in which we become complicit in our own internalization of these limitations and also how we can remove these limitations to experience and live with greater freedom.

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VAN JESUS

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Looking for the West Vídeo-Performance |27min| Black Sea, Vityazevo, Krasnodarsky krai, Russia| 2018

27 years will pass, but where to look? What are the references?

What do we want and what do we have as references?

Who is with us?

Counting the time, while searching in a gaze for answers on where to look and where to go, a trip in the middle of the Black Sea. The work makes reference to the navigations, to go to the sea to discover new lands.

Here the idea is to look for new references, partnerships and ideas. We are 27 years after the dissolution of the USSR, but what are the referents and models that were used to think what would come next?

To whom do we have references and partnerships?

What models do we want to mirror?

We look to the west because on the maps the world has been planned and Russia is on the right, so we look for models on our left. To the west.

But I believe it is a task to do together, collectively.

And as we sail and search, time goes by ... it doesn't stop for us.

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Anne Cecile Surga

My Body the Battleground

Pink Portuguese Marble, 2019, 24.5x15.5x15.5

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Black Corset

Pink Portuguese Marble and Leather, 2018, 20x30x4cm

"I am searching the spectrum of the personal and the emotional, and how our contemporary consumerist society affects the way we live, feel and develop the notion of the selves.

I am interested in how human continue to be true to their core in this environment despite the daily violence it obliges us to face and to commit to other. My works can be understood as elaborations of emotional reactions to societal issues.

I often use myths as my primary support: I question and I twist them in order to extract the intrinsic meaning they are caring within themselves into the contemporary society. I try to express the myths in innovative ways in order to open up a new discussion about a topic.

As a woman, my work is reflective of the distinctive challenges that I face in my private life, and I believe it shines a light and a commentary on societal issues that are inherent of our time.

I decided to pursue my inquiry into identity through the specific lens of Trauma, whether it being physical, emotional or psychological. I am exploring how it affects one or more persons, and which strategies of survival can be found."

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Runa Halleraker

PUSH-PULL

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"The line on a surface. Mixed in, dissolved, covered up. I dance the surface, sense the hand, which is the body, the short moments where I, through the hand, through the tool, am connected to the surface, we are one, linked, physically but also mentally. And how the muse is with me, and how the muse is both the muse who I think about, and is myself, and is the surface itself. The stroke, over bumps of earlier layers of paint or writing, earlier such moments - constant renewal is the only constant. Cross out a verse, a flaw, but was it really a flaw, because the new cannot be without the old. Who are we really, who decides, and who are we without those around us and their reactions, mirrors, new layers because new muses and new flaws which never really are flaws.

I work with poetry of the body, the written word and the painted media. Mainly, I work with abstract painting where sensing the presence of the body is at the core of my process. We all share the experience of life through a body, and in knowing the movements of our own hands and bodies, we are able to read so much into how a single line is put down. Through being present and honest in my body and mind, I find the truth in paint and art."

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warbird with inner demon

Terry Graff 156

BIRD AND BOMB

ASYLUM SEEKER

157

DEATH

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Amnon David Ar

amputazione

Angelo Troilo 159

Jans Muskee

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I

N T R O D U T I O N

200x300cm, oilpastel on paper, 2018 161

PROTEST

162

Jans Muskee 200x300cm, oilpastel on paper, 2017 163

Patricia Trindade

(DES)VELAD LO

164

EROS 165

Jörg Wascher

MUSEUM OF HATE

NOTHING NEW, UNTIL IT IS YOUR TURN

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I PUT MY EGO DOWN...

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Hakan Lidbo Following a career in electronic music with more than 350 records released within numerous genres, Hakan Lidbo is now exploring new ideas with the same inexhaustible energy in the fields of interactive art, games, innovations, architecture, society, media, events, and robotics. He also founded the Rumtiden Idea Lab in Stockholm Sweden, where his team explore the intersection between new art forms, science, and society

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Re:sense is a series of wearables that block out one sense and replace it with a non-human super-sense.

Some sort of super hero costumes that gives the wearer an experience what it's like to have a new sense.

1 "Vibrasense" is a helmet that blocks the wearers eye sight, but instead the helmet has ultrasonic distance sensors pointing in all directions, connected to corresponding vibration motors inside the helmet.

This gives the wearer 360° vision - with vibration.

The glove also has a distance sensor in the palm, connected to a vibration motor on the inside.

2 "Telesonic" blocks the wearers ability to communicate with people nearby, but with a built in super directional parabolic microphone connected to built in headphones - and a built-in microphone connected to a super directional loudspeaker in the palm of the glove, this super hero can communicate with people very far away.

By Hakan Lidbo, Magnus Frenning, Simone Gierz and Ellen Sundh Videos: https://www.hakanlidbo.com/resense 169

Cameron Lings

'Borderline'

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"The set boundaries of the human psyche, create the foundation for this artwork. We see how a person can loose grasp of their humanity, by behaving in initially an abnormal manner - yet having little-to-no self control over their actions. Mental illness is captured, presenting correlations between PTSD, schizophrenia and borderline insanity. Also severe examples of trauma, both physical and mental, can act as if to burrow into the mindset of a person; it can sometimes be contained, held back, and reserved. Never the less, this does not mean it has ceased to exist; more often than not, these restrictions only allow madness to grow stronger. The question arises, how do we identify, cope and cure those who experience the inhumane, something that our average minds will never be able to comprehend. "

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Flavio Hodel

UM-ARMUNG 172

.......questions about fragmentation and pictures consumption 173

Manar Ali Hassan

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Imprinting the Forces and Trapping Convulsive Figures - Series 1 (2019) This body of work aims to trap particular facts about the human experience, hinting to the shape of an elusive ache (Fibromialgia) as well as flickering bodies kept in a static existence by invisible forces.

The Viewer initially is not encouraged to imagine a story or a narrative that would explain why these prints came to be where they are.

Moreover, thinking about the corporeality of the ink and the abstraction of the background one is reminded that it is possible to break down the barriers of the body that no longer holds us together, nor contains us, nor protects us.

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Daria Baiocchi

h ps://soundcloud.com/dariapi/sospeso-for-cello-solo-fixed

Sospeso- is a composition for electronic music and cello solo with the possibility of a live performance. All the electronic sounds come from the recording of cello sounds. The soloist plays on a pre-recorded cello quartett . The quartett is on the 4 speakers (cello1-speaker1/cello2-speaker2/cello3-speaker3/ cello4-speaker4) together with the elctronic part. The audience is inside the quartett and will have the soloist in the front.

Sospeso means that period when nothing is going ahead, everything stops in your life. You try to go on but nothing happens. A special thank to Mattia Pacilli (cellist)

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Stancu Dan Armand

THE ESENCE length: 9:08 "making a comparison between the human and the machine, drawing different comparisons on empathy and inability to create a liaison with AL"

video: h ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bec33dmI7rI 177

ARI ARDALAN

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"In my work, I use different media such as painting, sculpture, and text. I have endeavoured to choose the medium most suited to the subject matter. My areas of interest are often rooted in my personal experience, while they also contain collective dimensions. I have tried to bring about tension and contrast to create a context for a critical approach to the issue in question.

At times, I have used a classical medium such as painting in contrast to a period characterized by speed and the registration of events in a fraction of a second. This, by itself, can provide a critical atmosphere over this surge of speed and technology. " 179

Soumya Talwar

Philippa

The Dissection and Exploration of Morality

An artistic exploration of a philosophical inquiry regarding the worth of a person’s life, inspecting the grounds of moral status and mapping it onto a logical framework to build an intelligent system that is capable of measuring the morality of an action.

You are the driver of a trolley car that is hurtling down the track at sixty miles an hour, and you notice there are five workers working towards the end of the track. The brakes are faulty, and you feel desperate because you know that if the trolley was to crash into these people, they will surely die.

You feel helpless until you notice that there is a sidetrack off to the right, and only one worker is working on that track. Your steering wheel works, so you can turn the trolley car, if you want to, onto this sidetrack- killing the one worker, but sparing five.

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Which is the more ethical option?

•

To do nothing and kill the five workers working on the track.

•

Or to steer the trolley car onto the

sidetrack and kill the one individual worker.

This problem illustrates two kinds of moral reasonings- Consequentialism that bases the morality of an action on the consequences of the action, and Deontology that bases the morality on the nature of the action.

Consequentialists would argue that it would be morally unethical to kill five when you can kill one, that it should always be one’s goal to consider the greatest good for the greatest number. On the other hand, Deontology states that murder is murder, no matter the consequences.

This thought enthused my exploration of morality, specifically into trying to evaluate the worth of a person’s life. I inspect the moral worth of beings with respect to personhood, and try to identify the grounds for the hierarchy of moral statuses assigned to different entities on the basis of rationality and sentience.

The goal is to dissect our moral codes and build a framework where logic meets morality. I fabricate a system that is able to understand these moral variables and make decisions beyond what the scope of a simple quantitative comparison would allow.

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Contents

1.

2.

3.

i.

ii.

iii.

iv.

v.

vi.

vii.

viii.

ix.

4.

5.

6.

7.

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Abstract Preface Theoretical Paradigm Personhood Speciesism Human Exceptionalism Rationality Sentience Utilitarianism Multi-Factor Utilitarianism Doctrine Of Double Effect Positive & Negative Duties Methodology Acknowledgements References Appendix

Preface

Theoretical Paradigm

The intent behind this work is to have people stop, take a step back and think about their moral stance, reflect, introspect and question if their morals are as well-grounded as they seem to believe.

Because here’s the thing about beliefs, Barry Schwartz explains, if you hold false beliefs about the cosmosit wouldn’t matter. The sun and moon work the same way regardless of what theories we come up with to explain their working.

But beliefs about the human nature have a very big influence on how we think and behave. Clifford Geertz, described human beings as the “unfinished animals.” And what he meant by that was that it is only humans who have a nature that is very much the product of the society they live in.

That human nature is much more created than discovered.

“If you believe that your poverty is God’s will, you pray. If you believe the source of your poverty is the result of your own inadequacies, you shrink into despair. And if you believe that the source of your despire is oppression and domination, then you rise up in revolt. This is the power that ideas have in shaping us as beings.”

If there’s a bad piece of technology, it disappears. But false beliefs don’t vanish if people believe them to be true, because they then construct institutions and ways of living that are consistent with these false beliefs.

I want people to really think about the kind of beliefs they harness about their moral standpoint. Morals are not taught to us, our moral codes are a product of the environment we grow up in, and it is our responsibility to raise the quality of our beliefs to help design the kind of society that we live in.

What is the moral worth of a person’s life? Many have concluded that such a task is not only hard but impossible- that there is no value that can be placed on such a thing. You cannot place a value on a person’s life. But before we explore the question, we must first examine the three keywords in the inquiry namely, person, life and worth.

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i.

Personhood

First, person doesn’t equal human. Human is a biological term. Person is a moral term, persons are beings who are part of our moral community, they deserve moral consideration.

An entity has moral standing, or is worth moral consideration, if the entity or its interests matter to some degree for the entity’s own sake. An animal, for instance, has a moral status if its suffering is at least somewhat morally corrupt, on account of the animal itself and regardless of the consequences for other beings.

By the utilitarian approach, moral consideration is given to entities if their interests bring about the consequences that maximize utility. Utilitarians consider only those actions morally correct if they bring about the greatest good for the greatest number of persons. The non-utilitarian approach states, to have moral status is for there to be reasons to act for the sake of the entity and its interests, reasons that are prior to, and may clash with, what seems to be the course of action that brings about the best consequences for beings other than the entity.

And just how is the moral status determined, and which beings deserve moral consideration? It is usually taken for granted that only human beings naturally have moral status due to their sophisticated cognitive capacities.

To say that a being deserves moral consideration is to say that there is a moral claim that this being can make on those who can recognize those claims, a morally considerable being is a being who can be wronged.

It is often believed that humans are the only beings that can recognize moral claims, but is it to say that just because humans are the only beings that can recognize moral claims, then humans are also the only beings that can be morally wronged? The two classes are not coextensive. ii.

Speciesism

The view that humans are the only beings that deserve moral consideration is referred to as “speciesism”. It is a humancentered prejudice favouring one’s own species while exploiting members of other species.

Peter Singer focuses on the way speciesism, without moral justification, favors human interests. He states that like a racist, who violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race, a speciesist allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species when there is a clash between their interests.

Speciesist actions are prejudicial because there is no prima facie reason for preferring the interests of beings belonging to which one also belongs over the interests of those who don’t.

Within the Biblical framework, all animals have been said to have arisen through divine intentional creation but humans were the only ones created in the likeliness of the deity, and therefore enjoyed a special, privileged role in the workings of the cosmos.

But, with the modern biological discoveries, humans may be unique in some respects, but we are only one species of animal among many-only one tip of one branch of the phylogenetic tree of life and hence hold no special higher moral status than other non-human animals.

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iii.

Human Exceptionalism

An approach in favor of speciesism is that of “human exceptionalism” which states that humans have moral status and others do not, because there are certain distinct capabilities that only humans possess. One way humans have attempted to distinguish between themselves and other non-human animals is the cognitive criterion – primarily their consciousness, believing that consciousness is an innate endowment of exclusively human beings.

Aristotle asserted that only human beings have rational souls, and locomotive souls are shared by both human and non-human animals, gifting them with instincts for the purpose of survival and reproduction. Philosophers like Descartes, have taken the mechanistic approach, introducing the idea that non-human animals possess reflex-driven behavior with no intellectual capacities. He deemed non-human animals as “mindless automata” devoid of consciousness.

For many, it probably feels obvious to think that animals such as dogs and cats have conscious mental lives that include perceptual states, motivational and hedonic states, basic emotions and social attachments.

Perceptualism is the view that there is a direct perception of mental states of others, when we observe another in a mental state, their mental state is part of the content of our perception.

Even if we may argue in favor of perceptualism, pointing out that our everyday practices of attributing mental states to nonhuman animals are deeply ingrained, automatic and empirically powerful, there are sharp limitations to how far this will get us toward solving the general problem of animal consciousness. We may have perceptual access to the mental states of some non-human animals that are comfortable interacting with humans and are biologically similar to us, i.e. mammals. However it’s much harder to perceive the mental states of beings. like spiders or squids, because these animals may express their mental states differently or they may have a very different repertoire of mental states. iv.

Rationality

A common argument made in favor of excluding non-human animals from our moral community is the idea of rationality.

Immanuel Kant states that “autonomous beings” are persons, acting based on reasons and reflecting on their consciousness is the quality that makes beings valuable and morally considerable.

“…every rational being, exists as an end in himself and not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will…

Beings whose existence depends not on our will but on nature have, nevertheless, if they are not rational beings, only a relative value as means and are therefore called things. On the other hand, rational beings are called persons inasmuch as their nature already marks them out as ends in themselves.”

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Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

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Our reflective capacities allow us to examine our impulsive nature and determine our actions. In stepping back, we create a distance between us and beings who possess no rational aptitudes. When we determine whether we should take a particular desire as a reason to act, we are engaging in a further level of reflection, a level that requires a distinctive description of ourselves.

Korsgaard describes how non-humans regard the problem of normativity:

“A lower animal’s attention is fixed on the world. Its perceptions are its beliefs and its desires are its will. It is engaged in conscious activities, but it is not conscious of them. That is, they are not the objects of its

attention. But we human animals turn our attention on to our perceptions and desires themselves, on to our own mental activities, and we are conscious ofthem. That is why we can think about them…And this sets us a problem that no other animal has. It is the problem of the normative…. The reflective

mind cannot settle for perception and desire, not just as such. It needs a reason.”

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Christine Korsgaard, The Authority of Reflection

Not only does Kant’s description of rationality as the moral center denies non-human animals personhood, it doesn’t deem personhood and humanity coextensive either. Kant’s view rules out fetuses, infants, human bodies in persistent vegetative state or those who have experienced a complete and irreversible loss of brain function.

v.

Sentience

Utilitarians agree that personhood shouldn’t focus on the rational, self-reflective nature of humans, but instead on the being’s sentience.

What is important, utilitarians claim, is the promotion of pleasure and satisfaction of interests, and the avoidance of pain, and neglect of interests. Jeremy Bentham defends this sentient view on moral consideration:

“The day has been, I am sad to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing, as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day

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come to be recognised that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line?

Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog, is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

- Jeremy Bentham (1879) The utilitarian argument may seem very similar to that of animal rights but there is a very important distinction. The utilitarians aim for the greatest good for the greatest number, and each individual’s interests are weighed fairly, be it human or non-human.

The utilitarian argument for the moral significance of animal suffering in meat production is not an argument for vegetarianism. If an animal lived a happy life and was painlessly killed and then eaten by people who would otherwise suffer hunger or malnutrition by not eating the animal, then painlessly killing and eating the animal would be the morally justified thing to do. In many parts of the world where economic, cultural, or climate conditions make it virtually impossible for people to sustain themselves on plant based diets, killing and eating animals that previously led relatively unconstrained lives and are painlessly killed, would not be morally objectionable.

It might be objected that to suggest that if it is morally acceptable to hunt and eat animals for those people living in arctic regions, or for nomadic cultures, or for poor rural peoples, then painlessly killing other morally considerable beings, like humans, for food consumption in similar situations should also be considered morally tolerable. If violating the rights of an animal can be morally tolerated, especially a right to life, then similar rights violations can be morally tolerated. In this regard, the utilitarian logic is egalitarian, it focuses solely on pain and pleasure, regardless of the being’s identity.

vi.

Utilitarianism

Carrying on with the idea of sentience, one of the biggest influencer of the notion was the ethical system of Utilitarianism proposed by Jeremy Bentham, founded on the moral reasoning of Consequentialism.

Utilitarianism states that the best course of action is the one that maximizes utility. And Bentham describes utility as “the sum of all pleasure that results from that action, minus the suffering of anyone involved in that action.”

Utilitarianism would argue that, in the case of the trolley problem, it is morally impermissible to kill five when you could just kill one. It can be said that Utiliatrianism takes a mathematical approach to the worth of human life, however it is egalitarian in nature. It does not deem any entity greater than another, it purely decides that it is obligatory for us to choose the course of action that benefits the majority. This school of thought can be seen in the 19th century British law case - The Queen v.

Dudley and Stephens. The court case described the incident as follows:

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“that, on July 5,1884, the prisoners, Thomas Dudley and Edward Stephens, with one Brooks, all able-bodied English seamen, and the deceased also an English boy, between seventeen and eighteen years of age, the crew of an English yacht, a registered English vessel, were cast away in a storm on the high seas 1600 miles from the Cape of Good Hope, and were compelled to put into an open boat belonging to the said yacht.

That in this boat they had no supply of water and no supply of food, except two 1 lb. tins of turnips, and for three days they had nothing else to subsist upon. That on the fourth day they caught a small turtle, upon which they subsisted for a few days, and this was the only food they had up to the twentieth day when the act now in question was committed. That on the twelfth day the remains the turtle were entirely consumed, and for the next eight days they had nothing to eat. That they had no fresh water, except such rain as they from time to time caught in their oilskin capes. That the boat was drifting on the ocean, and was probably more than 1000 miles away from land. That on the eighteenth day, when they had been seven days without food and five without water, the prisoners spoke to Brooks as to what should be done if no succour came, and suggested that some one should be sacrificed to save the rest, but Brooks dissented, and the boy, to whom they were understood to refer, was not consulted. That on the 24th of July, the day before the act now in question, the prisoner Dudley proposed to Stephens and Brooks that lots should be cast who should be put to death to save the rest, but Brooks refused to consent, and it was not put to the boy, and in point of fact there was no drawing of lots. That on that day the prisoners spoke of their having families, and suggested it would be better to kill the boy that their lives should be saved, and Dudley proposed that if there was no vessel in sight by the morrow morning, the boy should be killed. That next day, the 25th of July, no vessel appearing, Dudley told Brooks that he had better go and have a sleep, and made signs to Stephens and Brooks that the boy had better be killed. The prisoner Stephens agreed to the act, but Brooks dissented from it. That the boy was then lying at the bottom of the boat quite helpless, and extremely weakened by famine and by drinking sea water, and unable to make any resistance, nor did he ever assent to his being killed. The prisoner Dudley offered a prayer asking forgiveness for them all if either of them should be tempted to commit a rash act, and that their souls might be saved. That Dudley, with the assent of Stephens, went to the boy, and telling him that his time was come, put a knife into his throat and killed him then and there; that the three men fed upon the body and blood of the boy for four days; that on the fourth day after the act had been committed the boat was picked up by a passing vessel, and the prisoners were rescued, still alive, but in the lowest state of prostration. That they were carried to the port of Falmouth, and committed for trial at Exeter. That if the men had not fed upon the body of the boy they would probably not have survived to be so picked up and rescued, but would within the four days have died of famine. That the boy, being in a much weaker condition, was likely to have died before them. That at the time of the act in question there was no sail in sight, nor any reasonable prospect of relief. That under these circumstances there appeared to the prisoners every probability that unless they then fed or very soon fed upon the boy or one of themselves they would die of starvation. That there was no appreciable chance of saving life except by killing some one for the others to eat. That assuming any necessity to kill anybody, there was no greater necessity for killing the boy than any of the other three men.” But whether upon the whole matter by the jurors found the killing of Richard Parker by Dudley and Stephens be felony and murder the jurors are ignorant, and pray the advice of the Court thereupon, and if upon the whole matter the Court shall be of opinion that the killing of Richard Parker be felony and murder, then the jurors say that Dudley and Stephens were each guilty of felony and murder as alleged in the indictment.”

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The Utilitarians would argue that in such dire circumstances, if the death of one could save the lives of the rest then their decision to kill Richard Parker out of necessity could be morally tolerated. And it wasn’t just the lives of the three crewmen but the lives of their dependents back home- their families and loved ones, and the suffering of only one person, in this case- a cabin boy with no family, can’t outweigh the collective happiness of the families.

With this reasoning, we can also argue for the steering of the trolley in the original trolley problem. It is for the greater good to kill one worker instead of five, it would be unethical to kill five when we could kill one.

However, if pain and pleasure are the primary forces that govern us, take for example, the case of the Roman Coliseum, where Christians would be thrown to the lions for sport. In this case, the collective ecstasy of the Romans outweighs the suffering of one person, and with Jeremy Bentham’s version of Utilitarianism, the murder of that one Christian is justified since the Romans derive much pleasure from the spectacle.

vii.

Multi-Factor Utilitarianism

Jeremy Bentham’s idea of pleasures was egalitarian- he didn’t distinguish between higher or lower pleasures, he stated that everyone’ preferences count, regardless what people want or what makes them happy. John Stuart Mill, a later day Utilitarian worked to distinguish between what should count as pleasure, and what are essentially corrupt, worthless pleasures like the one of the Romans.

The intuition that one shouldn’t merely value all pleasures and desires as equal brings us to the multi-factor utilitarian perspective, that takes into account the kinds of interests that are possible for certain kinds of morally considerable beings, and their relative weight.

These interests can be categorized; crucial interests are weightier than important interests, important interests are weightier than replaceable interests, and all are weightier than trivial interests or mere whims. When there is a conflict of interests, crucial interests will always override important interests, important interests will always override replaceable interests, etc.

So if an animal has an interest in avoiding suffering, which is arguably a crucial interest, and a person has an interest in eating that animal when there are other things to eat, meaning that interest is replaceable, then the animal has the stronger interest and it would be wrong to violate that interest by killing the animal for food.

Often, however, conflicts of interests are within the same category. Consider a seal who has spent its life freely roaming the oceans and who is suddenly and painlessly killed to provide food for a human family struggling to survive a bitter winter in far northern climes. The Inuit’s interest in food is crucial and the seal’s interest in avoiding suffering is crucial. If you take the interests of an indigenous hunter’s whole family into account, then their combined interest in their own survival appears to outweigh the seal’s interest in existence. Indeed, if painlessly killing and eating the seal were the only way for the family to survive, then this action could be morally condoned.

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viii.

Doctrine of Double Effect

Consider this example- imagine that you’re a transplant surgeon. Five patients have come to your clinic, each in dire need of an organ, one a lung, two for a kidney, one a heart, and one a liver. There are no donors, and these patients are going to die. Then suddenly, a healthy patient comes to your clinic for a regular checkup and he’s seated in another room. You could, if you wanted to, cut up the healthy patient, yank out his organs to save the other

five patients and effectively kill the one healthy patient.

The consequences in this scenario are the same as that of the trolley problem, five lives against one. The desires of both the parties are crucial, they both hold interests in continued existence. The utilitarian logic would lead you to think that it’s morally permissible to kill the healthy patient and use his organs to save the other five patients.

But, here your moral intuition would tell you that despite the consequences, it is immoral to use another individual’s organs to save the other five. Why was it morally permissible to steer the trolley towards the one worker, but not use the healthy patient’s organs?

The distinction between the two scenarios is the intent behind the action. According to the principle of double effect, sometimes it is permissible to cause a harm as a side effect of bringing about a good result even though it would not be permissible to cause such a harm as a means to bringing about the same good end.

“The doctrine of the double effect is based on a distinction between what a man foresees as a result of his voluntary action and what, in the strict sense, he intends. He intends in the strictest sense both those things that he aims at as ends and those that he aims at as means to his ends. The latter may be regretted in themselves but nevertheless desired for the sake of the end”

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Philippa Foot, The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect

The words “double effect” refer to the two effects that an action may produce: the one aimed at, and the one foreseen but in no way desired. The doctrine states that it is sometimes permissible to bring about by oblique intention what one may not directly intend.

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The doctrine consists of four conditions

that must be satisfied before an act is morally permissible:

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The nature-of-the-act condition- the act itself must be morally good or at least indifferent.

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The means-end condition- the bad effect must not be the means by which one achieves the good

effect.

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The right-intention condition- the intention must be the achieving of only the

good effect, with the bad effect being only an unintended side effect.

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The proportionality condition- the bad

effect must not be disproportionate to the good effect.

Philippa sheds light on why most of us would choose to steer on the course with one worker, but would be appalled at the suggestion of using a healthy individual’s organs. It is one thing to steer towards someone foreseeing that you will kill him and another to aim at his death as part of your plan. There’s no certainty that the worker will die, it is possible that he may find a foothold in the tunnel to cling onto till the train passes. The driver does not jump out of the trolley to kill the worker.

The surgeon, however, needs the death of the healthy man for his purposes.

This is the distinction between direct and oblique intent. As the trolley driver, you do not directly intend the person’s death, but as the transplant surgeon, the person’s death is necessary for you to save the five patients.

x.

Positive & Negative Duties

Negative duties can be thought of as the obligation to refrain from killing or robbing, and positive duties as the duty to look after our children, the aged, etc.

“The steering driver faces a conflict of negative duties, since it is his duty to avoid injuring fivemen and also his duty to avoid injuring one. In the circumstances he is not able to avoid both, and it seems clear that he should do the least injury he can.”

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If the choice is between two negative duties, injury to one or injury to many, then there is only one rational course of action.

Imagine a case where you are a doctor, and there are five patients whose lives could be saved by the manufacture of a certain gas. But this leads to the release of lethal fumes into the room of another patient who, for some reason, you cannot move elsewhere. Would the death of the one patient for the sake of saving five be morally condoned?

Here, the death of the one patient is a side effect, it’s not directly intended. But even then most of us wouldn’t find it morally permissible to kill him because even if the death is obliquely intended, our duty to not cause injury overrules our obligation to aid.

Methodology, Acknowledgements,References, Appdendix: h ps://mya-kiwi.com/philippa

h ps://mya-kiwi.com/project/philippa

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facebook.com/fakfulness/

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SOURCE: https://pixabay.com/

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James Bullimore

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My work explores the authenticity of self-portraiture through performance and photography. This series of selfportraits were captured during a three-hour durational performance.

The performance depicts my on-going struggle in both masking and expressing my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. OCD is a manifestation of my own brain preventing me from accomplishing the most mundane tasks, through persistent, unwanted and overwhelming thoughts.

‘Obsessive’ stems from the Latin ‘obsedere’, literally, to sit in front of.

Sic, as both the willing and unwilling portrait sitter I confront myself: I am absent and present, naked and masked.

Five cameras on tripods set to autofocus captured the photographs, using a pressure plate positioned within the set. The images therefore lack sharpness, i.e. they are blunt. The pressure plate is sensitive to the subtlest movement, which will trigger the cameras. My compulsions are an attempt to quell my obsessive thoughts and control events around me. This set-up allows me to exert that control as both photographer and subject.

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HASSAN GHASEDI

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Title: study my own Body style that is no as shape as usaul beauty fashion Style on these years.

The style and concept I seeking is play with Body, pull it until loose his shape, you now all days we are on presure of world, rent, eat, pea and peoples talk ! so why we don't make it suffer with our hands exept the world ! on Feb. 2013 i start the project to style and photography from unsual shape of body that show this humanity suffer, gattering fat and skinny with some curves that make you turn off and let you think more !

Model : MJ Make up: Sanaz Arjmand Photo by : Mortez Afazel stylish design : Hassaqa copyright reserved by MS 2013 205

Title: Urban sculpture design as pathology and human behavior, that related to Immortality & the human Living life style in this modern century.

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i believe we can control people with art, and show them what is true and what is not ! on one of my idea i tried to show the bad and ugly form of human's body on crossing from fence as colorful or Alarm colors sculpture made with Fiberglas or plaster. when people see this Hard and Bad form of themselves, it will be so effective on their future behavior and make them think more that when the ages pass and getting old then there is no Immortality and we should be careful about the Living style.

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Shireen Bano Rizvi 208

“O jejku” oil, 36x48 by Giancarlo Venturini

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