Created by: Roberto, Brad, Andrew, Jason and Joe
By: Phineas
I knew this sort of imagery was bound to start turning up, but lordy it freaked me out putting this one together. A lot. I don't really have anything else to say about it right now.
October 10, 2001 10:04 PM
By: Kevin
Yeah. Aliens scare the bejeezus out of me too...
October 10, 2001 11:43 PM
By: Mel
This one leaves me flat. Parts of it are obvious and pedestrian. Although the work succeeds technically, the use of blatent images only serves to trivialize recent events. It represents a step backwards for the project, in my humble opinion.
October 11, 2001 01:35 AM
By: Joe
Phineas - Yes. Freak City. Had no idea.
Mel - Maybe we don't have enough emotional distance yet to move beyond pedestrian and acheive "art". Who knows.
October 11, 2001 07:28 AM
By: jocelyn
i don't know. it didn't strike me as pedestrian at all. is the function of the artist to show something only representational or the abstract of brutality? i found it honest and telling. but that is my humble opinion.
October 11, 2001 08:46 AM
By: bran
'Pedestrian?' Ouch. I'm not sure that I agree at all with that assessment of the use of the images of our recent tragedy/travesty.
Certainly the central section could be considered 'simple' in its composition and key elements, but consider this: anexquisitecorpse.net is an experiment with subconcious collaborative creation. And I, for one, find it this peice to be an extraordinarily eerie and cool one as a finished product because it synergistically speaks, as a whole, about our fears - as individuals and as a culture - of invasion - sic., invasion into our culture by 'aliens,' invasion into our bodies by 'violence' ('sex...is...vi-o-lence...'), invasion into our minds by images and thoughts that we're either not ready to deal with or unwilling to dealk with.
Almost worse than invasion alone, though, I think is the notion that the motive behind an invasion might somehow be valid or true. That attacks on individuals or cultures have valid motivational basises makes them all the more threatening, fearsome, and harder to put safely in the victims' pasts so they can move on with their lives. I see (and, again, this is an extraordinary testimony to me of this project's strength to illustrate the collective unconscious) in the image the artists pointing toward possible motives behind invasion. In the last two segments, money and the influence of our flag and culture (bar codes) are the obvious signifiers/targets; but I find other evidence (the spermatoza making their way toward an unseen ovum - an assualt of its own kind - in the Cobain section) in the image, too, that some invasions might have just motivations.
Now, I'm not saying that we were justly invaded. What occurred was an act of terror.
But what I want to say is twofold:
(1) That our culture was assaulted and we as individuals need to respond thoughtfully to that event.
(2) That art historically has encouraged us to look at our world both unflinchingly and with altered visions, and this image above offers us the opportunity I think, to do both.
The image is, in my opinion, neither a pedestrian nor a crass use of what is topically on the mind of all of our fellow citizens, nor do I feel that it is a step back for the project. It is simply - and quite extraordinarily considering the very nature of this project's process - an inquiry into the nature of invasion.
October 11, 2001 09:41 AM
By: Phineas
A very compelling argument, Bran. But how do you explain the moose?
October 11, 2001 10:18 AM
By: Andrew
I didn't realize we were supposed to be cryptic.
I guess the questions is, how do define obvious, and what makes something pedestrian? We're talking about a 450X200px work of imagination, culled from whatever is on our minds at the time, created (theoretically) within seven days. Does the use of current events and everyday objects somehow make a piece less artistic than others? I don't believe so.
Anyway, when I saw the image of the man falling from the WTC, I thought of the Hanging Man tarot card, and took off from there. The simple composition was intended to match the style of the tarot using contemporary imagery. Sorry if I hit a raw nerve of some sort.
Besides, I think the corpse as a whole works really well, especially the last three segments.
October 11, 2001 10:39 AM
By: bran
The moose is sort of Twin Peaks-y imagery - invasion of another kind: it's the blue spirit moose from the White Lodge - just north of One Eyed Jack's. It threatens to invade our space, lead us astray - away from the dancing backwards-talking midget, Laura Palmer, and into the clutches of (pause for horror) Bob!
October 11, 2001 10:41 AM
By: Charles
I think I am pretty much with bran. Socio-political issues are sticky. Personally I don't think the images trivialize current events. I believe art is valid as an outlet to examine these things that have bombarded us from every news, media, and even entertainment source. I've seen this all before, played over and over on CNN. It's hard right now to see people falling from towers, whether in the media or in art. And there is the humor and irony in surrealism that is a little bitter to swallow without some emotional distance, as someone said. I think the people working on this one made an effort to be provacative. Art often is. I doubt anyone intended to make fun of the victims or tragedy of 9.11. But there are many political and media frenzies going on that deserve a closer look. Many of your classic surrealists made ironic statements about the events in WWII. It's a tough one, using humor to demonstrate the absurdness of tragedy. Buñuel and Dali come to mind as two surrealists who used their art in the ways bran mentions in points (1) and (2) below.
I'd rather have art that provokes a reponse than easy art. Sorry if I've rambled- art history major here.
October 11, 2001 11:03 AM
By: Charles
That being said, I want some of whatever bran was smoking when he made the moose comment.
October 11, 2001 11:04 AM
By: Phineas
I can't tell exactly, but one of the postcards in the first segment looks like a Manhattan skyline picture. Considering that wouldn't have been visible to subsequent artists and that the segment was created before 9.11 adds something to the idea of the collective unconscious at work. Maybe Roberto can confirm whether this is the case or not?
October 11, 2001 11:20 AM
By: jocelyn
bran - i shuddered when i read your comment about that image reminding you of the hanging man in tarot - the night i saw that image on the television, it is *precisely* what i thought. so much so that i ran to look in a book. i also think it was the specific image that brought me from the abstract shock of the chaotic sequences to...something else.
October 11, 2001 11:39 AM
By: Mel
There's always one thing. As a designer, I'm contantly in search of the one thing, the master stroke, the elusive detail that will change a work from average to excellent. Sometimes it's only apparent in hindsight. Using the hanging man tarot card in place of Norberto Hernandez falling to his death would have been such a thing. And yes Joe, I hope with time I will see this corpse differently.
October 11, 2001 01:55 PM
By: andrew
Indeed, hindsight is 20/20. As is meta-analysis.
Out of curiosity, how do you know his name?
October 11, 2001 02:37 PM
By: bran
Re: the falling man and my previous message concerning image-based depictions of invasion, please consider the following: 9-11 has left us all hanging. Had Andrew used the image of The Hanging Man from a Tarot Deck, I think the piece as a whole wouldn't make the same statement. Like it or not, the peice is addressing 9-11, and as a viewer I feel that it was the right image to use. Maybe it hits too close to home for some, and maybe to others it could be seen to somehow cheapen the life of this poor man who leapt to his death to spare himself of the slow torment, the agony of the flames... But, in a way, his decision to jump: that's key, that's crucial and central, in a way, to everything we're going to experience as a culture after this event.
He could've stayed inside and roasted to death or waited for the world to come crushing down in on him. But he chose to jump. In his defense, I wonder if he didn't hope that - in that moment - he'd spread wings he never knew he'd had and fly to safety. But regardless, he made a choice, he wasn't passive, and he chose to embrace his own fate.
I applaud us all for this corpse, for our comments about it, and our willingness to chose to say something about it. Because one way or another in the coming months, in fashion after fashion, we're going to do the same: we're going to have to take stands to preserve and better our culture in light of what has happened. I encourage us all to chose not to act fearfully, to not shut out what we know, what we have seen. I encourage us all to see with renewed hearts the world around us.
I see this corpse as an illustration of all of that: We've been invaded, we're now left hanging. There's no perfect corpse. There's no perfect world. But we can make the choices necessary to improve our world.
October 11, 2001 04:04 PM
By: Mel
Here is his story.
October 11, 2001 04:42 PM
By: Andrew
Wow. I hadn't seen that article. Thanks for posting it.
October 11, 2001 05:00 PM
By: Jason
Who knew a moose could cause so much speculation. I had no idea I was getting something WTC-related. I thought the blue thing on the strip I received was a starfish. So I attached a moose to it. Wouldn't you?
(Also, I really need to learn how to fix gamma settings on my laptop.)
October 11, 2001 05:25 PM
By: cinnamon
Hey, Joe! What is the icon in the upper left corner of your piece?
October 11, 2001 11:27 PM
By: PhotoDude
I think this corpse, and the reaction to it, is quite interesting. While the members of this collective are a very diverse lot, the commonality is the creative nature it takes to even have an interest in helping assemble a corpse. Creative people, by nature, process input from their environment, either the one they've chosen or one forced upon them by circumstance, and hopefully output it in some aesthetic form.
We have had some nasty toxic input to process in the past month, the worst of our lives, virtually force fed in a massive stream of horrible imagery. In many cases, it's been a bit paralyzing (we discussed this a bit at PixelPile.org), and in other cases, what's "come out" has been sometimes disturbing. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised we haven't seen more of it. And the other side of the equation is that "art" (these corpses) is the most subjective thing in the world. One man's art is another man's drop cloth. I would argue that processing these events can add another layer of subjectivity in the viewer, depending on how they've been impacted by the attack.
We may have stopped bleeding/crying (mostly), but we've still got a lot of tender spots.
October 12, 2001 12:20 PM
By: bran
Kudos, Photodude!
And re: the drugs/substance that caused me to connect the moose to David Lynchian otherworldiness: it wouldn't be very Lynchian of me to reveal that source, now would it?
(Prince Humperdink: "*Sniff.* It's iocane power! I'd bet my life on it!")
October 12, 2001 01:31 PM
By: bran
oops. I meant "powder." "Iocane powder." damnit.
October 12, 2001 01:32 PM
By: roberto
re: postcard image of manhatten skyline, yes and no. the image is actually a collection of pictures i took and pasted together of the brooklyn bridge and the manhatten skyline-unfortunately the skyline portion w/ the towers didn't come out in the final edition of my segment ... certainly feels like the collective unconscious at work ... disturbing.
October 12, 2001 04:53 PM
By: Joe
Re the icon in the upper left: It was a stumbling attempt at subtlety. It's the crest from the center of the Afghan flag. There are a few other hidden meanings in there too that I guess were a little too subtle for their own good.
October 12, 2001 06:41 PM
By: mirla
I viewed the corpse and breathed "Wow" before I read any of the comments. I see the globe of the earth in the first piece, morphing into an alien motif in the second, the recent national tragedy in the third, a George Washington nickel in the fourth, the American flag in the fifth. A corpse of collective (un)consciousness if ever I saw one. I'm curious about how quickly the strips travelled from one designer to another.
Pedestrian? No. From the gut - yes. I'm disturbed by the third piece, and I find the whole corpse a bit unnerving, but I recognize the impulse to address the recent tragedy. I went crazy doing so the week or two following the event. Now I'm merely dealing with nightly nightmares, and this will add to them, but I'd rather experience nightmares than the apathy I'm sensing in many places.
October 13, 2001 07:34 PM
By: Andrew
I think the creepiest thing about this image is that if you put your cursor over Norberto Hernandez, your browser tells you he's a 'corpse.'
*shudder*
October 17, 2001 04:13 PM
