…and my workstation

Rather then focusing on the ideas I have gotten during this course I went to my main material for the workstation, fruit and vegetables.

I like the aspect of working whit something that is inconstant and eventually will rot and decay, kind of linking it back to the viwes and ideas coserning base material. The assignment was sculpting in vegetables from pictures depicting persons I various poses, like a reversed Stillben.

I am quit content whit the outcome, a simple and playful assignment and all that is left of the sculptures now are my photos.  

 

The Broccoli Chronicles, A Tragedy

Concerning the Broccoli, well the less said the better. 

Anyway I have moved up to alcohol now, 100% Estonian vodka purchased on the Tallink Silja Line Tax Free shop, in which I have preserved oranges of particular interest from my studies.  

En finsk typ, en lapsk typ och en Bellman

Back on the blog again, better later then never I suppose. I thought it was time to summarise where my project landed. The scientific racism part took overhand over my other ideas and I have focused my work on that angel. 

Various Views of the Human Skull

The thing that mainly made me linger on this aspect was the absurdness of it. Looking at the old photographs of various people representing some particular racial characteristic, put together for racial studies I found it quite hard to tell them apart without the explaining text that told me that a person was a Finn, Sámi or whatever. This kind of science is obsolete today and most people would agree that it really doesn’t matter how wide ones skull is, but that does not take away the absurdness and stupidity of the scientific racism and the fact that these “scientists” more or less was trying to create the differences themselves. People in the twenties most have had as hard a time as me telling these people apart.

So I went back to original sources for these ides and spent two days at the library of “Forum för levande historia” in Gamla Stan, looking trough books from roughly from 1900 to1930 concerning this subject. The thing I was looking for was the formulas, the numbers, what they actually were measuring and how they came to the conclusion that a person was of a specific races. This was rather more difficult then I have imagined, most of these books only accounted for the results of the studies and there main content was picture of people whit particularly interesting noses or foreheads.

Eventually I found what I was looking for, Anders Retzius revolutionary formula for calculating the human skull and determine a person’s head index. The long and short of it is that if your head index is under 80 you are a långskalle (this means that you have good racial attributes in these raciologist opinion) if it is over 80 you are kortskalle (you are slightly inferior). Worth pointing out is that most of the world according to theses guys are kortskallar and only the Germanic people of northern Europe possesses the coveted långskalledness.

 

Anders in action

After my research I simply went back to my oranges and applied old Retzius formula on them, creating a head index or a fruit index I you so will, of my own. The numbers are a little lower then back in the days because oranges are smaller then human heads, but otherwise I am using exactly the same method. The only aspect I have taken note of concerning the fruit is the country they were cultivated in. I have not bother whit what kind variety of orange it is as long as it is an orange, my statistics and numbers will speak for themeselves just as they did for the raciologists. 

 

 

Hemmagjort skjutmått

                        

The Broccoli Chronicles, The Great Opening

Three weeks ago I but a bouquet of  broccoli in a plastic container filled up with glycerol, a chemical that supposedly preserves plants from decaying and today was the grand opening. I uncapped that bad boy and was at first stricken by a foul smell, but after removing the broccoli from the liquid and given it a quick rinse it smelled kind of (in lack of better words) fresh. There is a slight discolouring of the broccoli but otherwise it looks the same as when it went in to the glycerol bath. If my Broccoli stays the same I will mount it as a trophy and it will go up the wall.   

          

A Formless Work Orange

Digging around in the often very blatant racist material concerning colonialism I got stuck in the scientific racism. Particularly one picture caught my eye in its absurdness, unfortunately I couldn’t find any source from where it originated.

So I continue work with my fruit, oranges to be exact! This time looking at them the same way as the good old fashion raciologist would have done. Taking pictures of them from different angels, measuring them and keeping track of which country they where cultivated. I have noticed that most oranges available in Sweden tend to come from around the Mediterranean sea and they are quit hard to tell one and other apart. But I have confidence in a more scientific approach to the enigma that is Mediterranean oranges, maybe I even will find a superior orange, an überorange.  

Kollage av googlad apelsin

      

Den vite mannens börda

The next thing that caught my interest is the expression “white mans burden”, made famous by Rudyard Kipling in a poem of his. In essence it has come to mean that white christian people (women included depending on the agenda) has a duty to “civilize” non white, non christain people they happen to come across while colonising the world. It is a very interesting choice of worlds, because it makes European colonialism sounds like a chore, a burden that people rather would avoid. Well in my opinion this is a mind set that in some ways still is around today, for example, soldier that are sent to Afghanistan to teach democracy and a western way of running things. I am not certain how I will tie this to my collecting of trophies but I very much consider them both a cog in the same postcolonial wheel. The hunting is an extension of colonial thinking and just a form of exploitation!                          

Pears' Soap ad. 1900

Hemmingway land!

Ok it’s on.. I started my formless work in Hemmingway land, hunting just for the sport of it, rather then the necessity of survival. (Something the author Ernest Hemmingway was rather fond of, hence his land) The fact that these hunters pick out game depending on seize of its horn, colour of its fur, length of its feathers etc, with the intention to save and preserve this stuff and rather then eat it. 

Ernest Hemingway on safari in Tanganyika, 1934

I have a deep-rooted fascination for the way these hunting trophies are displayed and presented, the inevitable trophy room! 

Proud trophy room owner

 So I went hunting for some big game of my own, in my case vegetables and fruit, and rather then judge theme on freshness and quality as one usually does, I went for seize of stalks, colour of the peel and attributes that would look good on the wall rather then in a salad. Mounted my catch and made a trophy room of my own.

                    

Hagelbäcks formless