Tied-Together is a cause to help fight the global help crisis, HIV/AIDS.  Various cities around the globe, including New York and Paris, participated in this cause earlier this month by running for 120 consecutive hours. This poster above was retouched by Marc Wyndham, and was created for this cause in collaboration with Nike, (RED). Really great work!

Friend of Morbid Anatomy, frequent Boing Boing contributer, innovative cultural theorist and all around bon vivant Mark Dery will be giving an illustrated lecture this Friday night, June 18th, at Observatory. Come witness the linguistic pyrotechnics as Dery traces the connections betweeb wax anatomical models, pornographic x-ray fantasies of the 1950s, and x-ray fears of the post-terrorist society in his inimitable fashion. People: I have seen this man speak and it is, I promise, not to be missed!

Full info follows; hope very much to see you there!

The Anatomical Unconscious: X-Ray Specs, Visible Women, and the Eros of the Unseen
An illustrated lecture with cult author and cultural critic Mark Dery
Date: Friday, June 18th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $7
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

What do 18th-century wax “anatomical Venuses” doing a striptease in which they expose their internal organs; cutaway views of the imaginary anatomy of Loony Tunes characters; the X-Ray Specs and Visible Woman toys familiar to boomers; and artist Wim Delvoye’s X-rated X-rays of people performing sex acts have in common?

Mark Dery makes these and other provocative connections in his lecture “The Anatomical Unconscious: X-Ray Specs, Visible Women, and the Eros of the Unseen,” a cultural critique of the eroticizing of the scientific gaze. In his hour-long lecture/slideshow, Dery will touch on the pornographic fantasies that swirled around the X-ray from its inception; adolescent dreams, fueled by comic-book ads for X-Ray Specs, of the potential uses for Superman’s X-ray vision; current fears of the potential for abusive use of airport scanners that penetrate clothing; and the artist Wim Delvoye’s series of pornographic X-rays. He’ll theorize the eros of the X-ray, with digressions into the weird cartoon subgenre of imaginary anatomies (of everything from Star Wars At-Ats to Loony Tunes characters) and premonitions of X-rated X-rays inherent in the baroque medical mannequins on display at the Museum La Specola in Florence, Italy.

Mark Dery (http://www.markdery.com) is a cultural critic. He is best known for his writings on the politics of popular culture in books such as The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink and Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century. Dery is widely associated with the concept of “culture jamming,” the guerrilla media criticism movement he popularized through his 1993 essay “Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of the Signs,” and “Afrofuturism,” a term he coined and theorized in his 1994 essay “Black to the Future” (included in the anthology Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture, which he edited). He has been a professor in the Department of Journalism at New York University, a Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellow at UC Irvine, a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome, and, most proudly, a guest blogger at Boing Boing. He writes the Doom Patrol column of cultural commentary at True/Slant (http://trueslant.com/markdery)

You can find out more about these presentation here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Image: Tweety Bird skull: Copyright Hyungkoo Lee, all rights reserved.

Morbid Anatomy is very pleased to present an electricity-and-the-body-on-display themed lecture and performance pairing by Torino:Margolis. Event number one, a lecture entitled "Electricity and the Body in Public Performance," will investigate over 250 years of electricity and the body in spectacular scientific performance via an illustrated historical lecture. Event number two will explore the same rich territory via a historically informed interactive performance. Hope you can make it to one or both of these amazing sounding events!

Electricity and the Body in Public Performance
An illustrated lecture by Torino:Margolis
Date: June 15, 2010
Time: 8:00 P.M.
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Beginning with the first known public performance by Stephen Gray in 1729 and continuing through the present, scientists and artists have been exploring electricity and the human body for hundreds of years. The innate electrical potential of the human body, electricity as a medium of destruction and using outside electricity to manipulate the body have been served as conceptual fodder throughout this rich history. Although the collaboration between the arts and sciences may seem recent, due to its popularization in the media and 20th century art movements such as Bioart, the connection between these two groups have existed for centuries. Benjamin Margolis, MD and Jenny Torino, MS, RD current tinkerers in both worlds, will take you through the history of public performances in this arena and discuss how it relates to their own work using invasive electronics and the body.

________________________________________

Torino:Margolis Performance
A performative exploration of electricity, biomedicine, and spectacle
Date: June 29, 2010
Time: 8:00 P.M.
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Tonight, join Observatory as it hosts Torino:Margolis in a three-part performance investigating the rich history of biomedicine, electricity, and spectacle. First, the audience will have the opportunity to control the movement of the performer using neuromuscular stimulation, which sends outside electricity into the performer’s muscle, forcing their muscle to contract and the performer to move involuntarily.

In the second part of the performance, they will use electromyography (EMG) in a sound-based performance. EMG is a way of sensing the electricity produced naturally during muscle contraction when an individual moves voluntarily. However, when the performer is physically manipulated by another person there is no action potential generated, no signal sensed by the EMG, and no change in the sound is produced. In this way you can hear someone’s free will.

In the third portion they will add a vocal component to the EMG “rig” by manipulating sound coming from the vocal cords using neuromuscular stimulation.

Torino:Margolis will then explain the workings of the biomedical tools used in the performance and the audience will have the opportunity to ask questions.

Torino:Margolis is a performance art team that smashes through physical and psychological barriers separating one body from another using invasive electronics and biomedical tools. They explore the idea that the self is transient, elusive and modular by playing with the notion of control and free will. Their extraction of physiological processes concretizes these concepts and presents them as questions to the viewer — not to illustrate the mechanism, but to explore the experience. The team has performed nationally and internationally at New York venues such as Issue Project Room, POSTMASTERS Gallery and Exit Art, the HIVE Gallery in California, and the Bergen Kunsthall Museum in Norway. They have lectured for institutions such as SUNY Stony Brook and the School of Visual Arts. For more information please see http://www.torinomargolis.com.

You can find out more about these presentation here and here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Just a brief reminder that I will be waxing [sic] poetic on the wonders of medical museum this Sunday at the Coney Island Museum as part of their "Ask the Experts" series.

Full details follow; hope to see you there!

Anatomical Venuses, The Slashed Beauty, and Fetuses Dancing a Jig: A Journey into the Curious World of the Medical Museum
Date: THIS SUNDAY, June 13th
Time: 4:30 PM
Admission: $5
Location: Coney Island Museum (208 Surf Ave. Brooklyn)

This afternoon's highly-illustrated lecture will introduce you to the the Medical Museum and its curious denizens, from the Anatomical Venus to the Slashed Beauty, the allegorical fetal skeleton tableau to the taxidermied bearded lady, the flayed horseman of the apocalypse to the three fetuses dancing a jig. The lecture will contextualize these artifacts by situating them within their historical context via a discussion of the history of medical modeling, a survey of the great artists of the genre, and an examination of the other death-related diversions which made up the cultural landscape at the time that these objects were originally created, collected, and exhibited.

You can find out more by clicking here and can get directions by clicking here.

Image: From the Anatomical Theatre exhibition: "Museum of Anatomical Waxes “Luigi Cattezneo” (Museo Delle Cere Anatomiche “Luigi Cattaneo”): Bologna, Italy "Iniope–conjoined twins" Wax anatomical model; Cesare Bettini, Early 19th Century

Tonight! Hope to see you there.

Saul Chernick
Borrowed from the Charnel House
June 10–July 30, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday, June 10, 6:00–8:00pm

Max Protetch Gallery is pleased to announce Borrowed From the Charnel House, an exhibition of new work by Saul Chernick. The exhibition runs from June 10 through July 30, 2010. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, June 10 from 6:00 to 8:00pm.

Saul Chernick makes highly detailed ink drawings that combine masterful control of the individual mark with an incisive grasp of the history of image-making and various visual media. The exhibition brings together works that display Chernick's penchant for borrowing from the relics of art history to transform them into the constituent elements of his own visual language.

On view are some of Chernick's largest drawings to date, including a piece in extreme horizontal format, almost thirty-five feet long and comprised of roughly thirty drawings done en plein air at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. A meditation on mortality created from a position in the living world, it also proves to be a forum in which Chernick displays his mastery of the use of line and shifts in perspective. The cemetery is seen not only as a landscape but as a museum of funerary sculpture.

In fact, the exhibition's title, Borrowed from the Charnel House, refers to the vaults where skeletons are stored, often after they have been dug up from crowded burial grounds; one of the most famous of these, and noted because it is still in use, can be found at St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, where the monks gather relics from the difficult, rocky soil for both practical and spiritual reasons.

Reflections on contemporary sexuality and technology are embedded into Chernick's intensely detailed riffs on anatomical drawings, heralds, and etchings. The most evident reference is perhaps to the prints, manuscripts, and illuminations of the Northern Renaissance. But like the monks of St. Catherine's relying upon their brothers' relics as reminders of their own mortality, Chernick tweaks specific images and compositional methods from the past to shed light upon current cultural conditions. In this sense, he works like a musician improvising on an existing theme or a writer adapting an older idea for a new context.

Another of the large-scale drawings on view, 'Ars Gratia Artis,' depicts a lion's head floating in a vast alpine landscape. Uncannily reminiscent of the roaring lion that serves as the logo for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, the piece seems to hint at both the history and future of cinema, drawing a connection to the logo's roots in centuries-old coats of arms. Almost eight feet wide, the piece seems to exist at a hybrid scale, between the intimacy of the drawing and the expansive presence of the movie screen. The emotional power of the drawing, however, lies not only in the scope of its cultural references, but in the mysterious way that the lion himself is rendered.

This sensitivity to individual moments, and the subtleties of human and animal forms, lends Chernick's work an immediacy that places it squarely in the present, and that engages the viewer outside of any specific art historical context. It is a question of both craft and poetry. On the surface it is clear that the artist's technique is indebted to the achievements of the Old Masters, but the critical and psychological revelations on view in his drawings are wholly his own, and shed light on the future of our physical condition––in the short term with respect to technology, and in the long with respect to death.

Saul Chernick was recently the subject of a solo exhibition at Franklin Art Works in Minneapolis. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions across the United States, and reproduced in a variety of print and online publications.

For more information, click here. Click to see larger images.

For those of you in or near London, friend, artist, and favorite Observatory presenter Zoe Beloff has a few upcoming engagements in your fair city. I have seen both of these presentations here in New York City and could not recommend them more enthusiastically!

Full details follow; hope you can make it out to see her! You won't be sorry.

The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society Dream Films 1926-1972: an illustrated lecture and screening
Date: June 10, 2010 Time: 7pm
Place: Viktor Wynd Fine Art, 11 Mare Street , London E8 4RP

The members of the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society were filled with the desire to participate in one of the great intellectual movements of the 20th century: psycho-analysis. Additionally, like the Amateur Cine League (founded the same year), many members wished to tap into the power for self expression afforded by technologies like home movie cameras that were newly accessible to ordinary people. This screening presents a range of their amateur films, which reveal an incredibly brave, unapologetic exploration of their inner lives.

Find out more and book tickets here:
http://www.thelasttuesdaysociety.org/coneyisland.html

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Discipline & the Moving Image - lecture/screening
Date: Friday, June 11, 2010
Time:6:30pm - 9:00pm
Admission Free
Location: Birkbeck Cinema (http://www.birkbeckcinema.com)
43 Gordon Square, London
Obedience, Stanley Milgram, 16mm, 1962, 45 mins
Folie à Deux, National Film Board of Canada, 16mm, 1952, 15 mins
Motion Studies Application, 16mm, ca. 1950, 15 mins

Obedience documents the infamous “Milgram experiment” conducted at Yale University in 1962, created to evaluate an everyday person’s deference to authority within institutional structures. Psychologist Stanley Milgram designed a scenario in which individuals were made to think they were administering electric shocks to an unseen subject, with a researcher asking them to increase the voltage levels despite the loud cries of pain that seemed to come from the other room. Milgram saw his test, conducted mere months after Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, as a way to understand the environments that made genocide possible.

Tonight, artist Zoe Beloff pairs Obedience with two earlier works dealing with psychosocial control: Folie à Deux and Motion Studies Application. The former, one of a series of films on various psychological maladies produced by the National Film Board of Canada in the 1950s, presents an interview with a young woman and her immigrant mother afflicted by shared delusions that manifest when the two are together. The latter is an industrial film purporting to present ways to increase efficiency in the workplace: explaining, for instance, a means to fold cardboard boxes more quickly. In stark contrast to the nostalgic whimsy typically associated with old educational films, Folie à Deux and Motion Studies Application play as infernal dreams of systemic power and sources of surprising, unintended pathos.

The concept of ‘motion studies’ is central to cinema itself. Without the desire to analyze human motion, there would be no cinematic apparatus. But the history of motion studies is freighted with ideology. Its inventor Étienne-Jules Marey was paid by the French Government to figure out the most efficient method for soldiers to march, while his protégé Albert Londe analyzed the gait of hysterical patients. From the beginning, the productive body promoted by Taylorism was always shadowed by its double, the body riven by psychic breakdown. We see this in Motion Studies Application and especially Folie à Deux, where unproductive patients, confined to the asylum, understand with paranoid lucidity that the institution is everywhere, monitoring them always. Obedience stands as a conscious critique of these earlier industrial films, co-opting their form only to subvert them and reveal their fascist underpinnings.

You can find out more about Zoe and her work by clicking here. You can find out more about event number one by clicking here and event number two by clicking here.

According to his site Tom Sewell is “a graphic designer & art director based in London.”

I love this image because every time I look at it I see something new. I did not even notice at first that the skull is made of women’s bodies; I was so focused on the smoke. The detached bodies have a Dali-esque feel to them, the way they are separate pieces but also flow into each other. It’s kind of disturbing and beautiful.

Check out Sewell’s other work at his site.

Source.

[via Changethethought]

This Bride of Frankenstein poster by Martin Ansin is a screen printed, 24″ x 36″, with gold, silver and black inks.  The variant version has copper and silver and costs a bit more ($80).  Buy it here!

"The Gallery of Creation: A Museum of Natural History"--a creationist Natural History museum (wait! There's more than one???) in Social Circle, GA--is going out of business with a spectacular bang: their entire collection is being sold at auction!

The now-defunct museum's website describes the collection thusly: "Our displays include a vast array of God’s creations such as minerals, rocks, fossils, seashells, fish, reptiles, animals, insects, butterflies, skeletons, flowers, meteorites, birds, and much more;" Museum highlights are listed as:

~One of the largest mounted butterfly exhibits in the U.S.~
~A monstrous T-Rex skull~
~A 102 pound "touch feel" iron meteorite~
~Our robotic giant pandas, "Chang and May-lee"~

Full details follow for this truly unbelievable auction follow. This one (see above) looks almost too good to be true!

Contents of THE GALLERY OF CREATION, A Museum of Natural History INTERNET BIDDING AVAILABLE

Auction Date:
Friday and Saturday, June 25 & 26

Auction will be held on site:
The Gallery of Creation, 200 Village Circle, Suite A,
Social Circle, Georgia

Auction Schedule:
10AM, Friday, June 25
Lot #'s 5,000 - 5,402
10AM, Saturday, June 26
Lot #'s 5,403 - to end

Preview
10AM-4PM Thursday, June 24 and 1 hour before the auction

Checkout Times:
Friday, June 25 - Two hours immediately following the auction
Saturday, June 26 - Two hours immediately following the auction
Sunday, June 27 - 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Monday, June 28 - 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM

ALL ITEMS SOLD FOR IMMEDIATE REMOVAL

Property Description:

Higgenbotham Auctioneers is pleased to announce the sale of The Gallery of Creation, a museum of natural history, created by Joseph Hurt Studio, Inc.

The Gallery of Creation is designed to present examples of God's creations in such a beautiful manner as to inspire visitors with a greater appreciation for God's handiwork and a greater love for their Creator.

Joseph Hurt Studio, Inc., procured an impressive list of clientele, including: Disney World, Epcot Center, Kennedy Space Center, the Smithsonian Institution and more

Auction inventory will include the entire contents of the Gallery of Creation
Friday's Inventory will Include:

CONTENTS OF THE OLD CURATOR'S OFFICE, INCLUDING:
• gingerbread kitchen clock
• carved and decorated hippo teeth
• onyx
• sabre tooth cast replica
• framed prints
• telegraph equipment
• authentic skulls
• mahogany hand-carved Chinese display case
• MUCH MORE!

FOSSILS FROM AROUND THE WORLD, INCLUDING:
• authentic mammoth teeth
• leaves fossils
• 3-pc dinosaur fossil
• wooly mammoth hair
• MUCH MORE

PLUS>>>
• animated elephant display
• urns
• rodochrosite of Argentina
• display cases
• staurlite crystal stone collection
• heart shaped gems
• dinosaur replicas
• crystal quartz
• obsidian collection
• amber
• malachite collection
• mummified cat from Egypt
• variety of minerals and stones
• pyrite collection
• micah
• animated pandas and display case
• mammals and sea life display cases
• oils on canvas
MUCH MUCH MORE!

To find out more about the particulars of this auction, including full list of inventory, visit the Higgenbotham Auctionhouse website by clicking here. And yes, online bidding will be available! You can find out more about "The Gallery of Creation: A Museum of Natural History" by clicking here. To find out more about the still thriving Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky click here. All images from the museum website and the auction house website.

Whoa now, these images are AWESOME! They were created by the design studio FARROW for the CD art of The Maniac Street Preachers album, Lifeblood, photography by John Ross. The images are totally stunning and, as mentioned on the Farrow site, were created by pouring buckets of fake blood all over a very dashing model, who was later taken out of the images in post production. That must have been an awesome/messy/fun photo shoot set! Be sure to check out both the Design firm and the photographers site for more images!

[via todayandtomorrow]

The space where medicine and art intersects is often … well, weird. And fascinating. That realization is explored in the Morbid Anatomy Blog, written by Joanna Ebenstein, a graphic designer and photographer in Brooklyn, N.Y. One goal, Ebenstein says, is “to bring the art and history of medical museums to the awareness of a wider audience and to frame their artifacts as artistic and cultural objects with as much to say about their makers and the culture their makers inhabited as about medical knowledge...”

The American Medical News--a national trade publication for physicians published by the American Medical Association--just launched a nice little Morbid Anatomy slideshow on their website. If you are interested in seeing a nicely curated selection of images from the greater Morbid Anatomy project, and/or in learning a bit more about the stories behind these artifacts and spaces, I highly recommend you check it out!

You can access the slideshow by clicking here.

Rarely do we at Street Anatomy get to gush over celebrity fashion, so when I came upon this Twitpic of Alicia Keys in the new DSQUARED2 skeletal stilettos, I was thrilled!  Apparently she wore these babies during her performance at the World Cup Kick-Off Celebration Concert and those little backbones held up throughout.

If you want you own pair, they go on sale at Zappos.com in August!

[via Sickathanaverage and everyone else who submitted links!]

Looking for an excuse to get out to Coney Island this weekend? Curious about the art and history of medical museums? If you answered yes to one or both of these questions, why not come down to the Coney Island Museum this Sunday to see me pontificate on the wonders of medical museums as part of their "Ask the Experts" series?

Full details follow; hope to see you there!

Anatomical Venuses, The Slashed Beauty, and Fetuses Dancing a Jig: A Journey into the Curious World of the Medical Museum
Location: Coney Island Museum (208 Surf Ave. Brooklyn)
Time: 4:30 PM
Admission: $5

This afternoon's highly-illustrated lecture will introduce you to the the Medical Museum and its curious denizens, from the Anatomical Venus to the Slashed Beauty, the allegorical fetal skeleton tableau to the taxidermied bearded lady, the flayed horseman of the apocalypse to the three fetuses dancing a jig. The lecture will contextualize these artifacts by situating them within their historical context via a discussion of the history of medical modeling, a survey of the great artists of the genre, and an examination of the other death-related diversions which made up the cultural landscape at the time that these objects were originally created, collected, and exhibited.

You can find out more by clicking here and can get directions by clicking here.

Image: From the Anatomical Theatre exhibition; "'La Specola' (Museo di Storia Naturale) : Florence, Italy "Anatomical Venus" Wax wodel with human hair and pearls in rosewood and Venetian glass case; Probably modeled by Clemente Susini (around 1790)"

The Hairy Underwear set from Nutty Tarts includes:
- Hairy Panties
- Hairy Leggings
- Hairy Undershirt
- Bad Face Day paper bag
for €95.00

umm… Yikes!

Love it!  Check out more of Andreas Scheiger’s work here.

Left is rational. Right is emotional. Left, right, left, right, left, right is balance.
Running is in our DNA.
Asics. Sound mind, sound body.

Run, because Darwin was right about evolution, and Newton, about gravity.
Running is in our DNA.
Asics. Sound mind, sound body.

Agency: Dez Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil
Creative Director: Vitor Knijnik
Art Directors: Getulio Albrecht, Rodrigo Cabello
Copywriter: Michel Zveibil
Illustrator: Platinum
Photographer: Platinum

Nice ad campaign by Asics that I’m sure many runners can relate to.  I like the use of the winding neurons and blood vessels, although one medical illustrator pointed out that the neurons aren’t 100% accurate, oops. Always consult a medical illustrator people, don’t let bad anatomy happen to you.

[spotted by Genevra]

Get the message out to the world that you’re deeply emotional but don’t really give-a-damn with this low v-neck anatomical heart shirt by Dark Cycle Clothing.   I love the texture and size of the heart!  They hand illustrated, digitally altered, and then screen printed it through a high mesh screen using metallic silver ink.  The shirt itself looks nice and soft too.  It’s a win win!

Available for $20.00 via Etsy.

These great type skulls were the work of designer Ross Elliott and “made entirely from unaltered characters of Fette Fraktur”. I imagine they took a while to produce, the symmetry alone would drive me crazy (although I secretly love making things perfect with alignment in illustrator, ha). Major props for the creativity! Be sure to check out more on his Behance Portfolio.

[via visual-graphic]

Behind this beautiful packaging, lies a historical event that boggles minds today.  Way before Street Anatomy and the Skull-a-Day blog, 13 magnificently crafted skulls were found scattered around the world. No one really understands how they were made that well so long ago. The thought is that they hold magical powers that have healing qualities.  After drinking some of this vodka, you too may feel the magic! Check out the origin of this design here!

This weekend, The Morbid Anatomy Library and Observatory--which are next door neighbors, by the way!--will host open hours as part of Atlantic Avenue Artwalk. So, if you're in the hood from 12-6 PM and would like to poke about the library with a glass of wine, or peek into The Secret Museum with the photographer on hand to guide you through the exhibits, then please, come on by!

Following the open studios, Observatory will be hosting a free closing party for The Secret Museum, which will run from 6 PM until the wine runs out (which we are approximating at 10:00 PM); there will also be snacks and the DJ stylings of Mister Friese Undine.

All events will take place at the old box factory at 543 Union Street, Brooklyn at Nevins; enter via Nevins Street alley and Proteus Gowanus Gallery. Click here to view map.

This promises to be good times; very much hope to see you there!

You can find out more about Atlantic Avenue Artwalk by clicking here. You can find out more about the Secret Museum Exhibition by clicking here and more about the closing party by clicking here. You can find out more about the Morbid Anatomy Library by clicking here and about Observatory by clicking here.

Image: Installation view of Observatory's Secret Museum Exhibition.