Boy oh boy! What a week in US politics. First Obama blows the doors off of the DNC in Denver and then McCain chooses a mom of 5 married to a guy named Todd as his VP pick. Bot more on Sarah Palin later – for now she’s still busy sinking into the world of doubt and made up scandals. But browsing the DNC’s site I had that sinking feeling again[1].

I’ve previously written about the perpetual ‘Americaness’ of Obama; his platform may be Change but in reality he sells more of the same; more belonging, more togetherness. And the price to be paid is the same[2]. One of the strong messages of the DNC was Unity; after a bruising primary race the party needs to reconcile Hillary supporters with Obama, and Hillary was there doing her part to heal the wounds that she had helped to bite open. But what struck me about the DNC was not the unity nor the colour and the pageantry. I got no sense of hope of a bright new era, no sight of change – the DNC was a bombshell display of only one thing – uniformity. Wave the same flags, hold up the same placards, chant the same slogans, sing the same songs, cry the same tears.

This glowing church to the shared experience of belonging was an enormous success, leaving its participants and viewers energized and sated. But despite the odd freaky outfit or wide-brimmed hat they all marched in order in a jubilant parade that makes the Chinese regiments at the Olympic opening ceremony look like nothing more than a stage show. The DNC was raw with the emotion of submission into the warm arms of God and country and having a father figure till you die.

And yes, the protests outside were overrun with individuals with homemade placards and real diversity, but that’s not enough. I want the really dangerous kind of individualism. I want the kind of individualism that doesn’t have to be demonstrated with a wild hairdo, but that exists in the way that people speak and permeates suburbs and schools, and runs into that glowing church.

Why does this keep on happening to me? I get a brilliant idea for a novel, but am then unable to produce anything more than the first paragraph. I fear that history has repeated itself in my doomed writing of Lies, Cowardice, Greed, Power. It’s meant to be a gritty portrayal of life at the very pinnacle of international trade and death. At least this time I’ve managed to design a jacket for my would-be novel.

“I’ve been doing lines since the weekend. How do you think I feel?” Why lie? Duane knew that there was no way that Dynamax Corporation could fire him. He straightened his tie, turned around, farted, and walked off.

I first saw the work of Mark Jenkins on a Discovery channel short feature[1] which shows both his street installations and his nature sculptures. Mark Jenkins is resident in Washington DC who uses clear packing tape[2] to create sculptures that he then installs on city streets or poses in natural settings (notably his hometown of Fairfax Va). He has said that visiting a Juan Muñoz exhibition in 2001 inspired him to start doing street installations using a casting technique that he came upon as a child and later developed while living in Rio de Janeiro.

I was teaching English in Rio de Janeiro and had a lot of downtime between classes. One afternoon I’d made a large tinfoil ball, just to have something to play catch with while lying on the sofa. I decided to make a second one out of tape, but there wasn’t enough left on the roll to do it. The trick I’d figured out as a kid popped back into my head, and I cast the tinfoil ball with the tape. I was impressed with the results and decided to do a coffee pot. A couple months later, I’d gone through several hundred rolls, casting everything in my flat, including myself. The walls were thin in my apartment building, and my neighbors weren’t too thrilled at the sounds of packing tape spinning off the roll all night and day. One annoyed neighbor threw mud at my clothes drying on the window ledge, but I couldn’t be stopped.
themorningnews

Jenkins’s street installations (the series is named Embed) remind me very strongly of Banksy‘s work in that because the pieces are life size figures in everyday situations they are at first invisible to passers-by and only register as art installations when you at the second glance actually see them. The surprise effect of finding an installed/embedded piece of art which appeared over night in your neighbourhood is what makes these installations valuable and fun[3].

I want my work to get urbanites to question the authenticity of their surroundings.

Another series, named the Storker Project, places clear tape babies on streets performing feats that they shouldn’t be able to. The Storker effect is more disturbing than the embedded pieces because the babies are clearly unnatural[4].

Babies are wonderful but also fragile, and installing the kids outdoors to fend for themselves like a fresh crop of cicadas hits an unsettling nerve with some people. [...]. Sometimes I install them in playful positions, while other times they’re scavenging or hanging on for life.
themorningnews

Part of what appeals to me about Jenkins’s work is that the pieces exist, but are not really there. They are either temporary, or partial or fantastic/unnatural or (most appealingly) transparent spectres. And when the sculptures are left transparent they are no longer human or animal, nor are they the cocoons or shells left by humans or animals. They seem to me to rather be nothing more than memories of or ideas about their subjects.

But without doubt it is Jenkins’s nature work that appeals to me most. This consists of two parts, transparent tape sculptures of man made items (and men) in natural settings and transparent animals in urban settings[5]. The sense of displacement that comes from seeing ducks float in curbside ponds is deeply melancholic. And these are the pieces that are the art of not being there[6].

We’ve redesigned our environment to surround ourselves with the artificial and in the process alienated ourselves from the natural environment and our own animal selves. We are more like the tape men then our ape men forefathers.
Belio

Mark Jenkins’s nature sculptures are things that are missing from their surroundings, sometimes their being missing is ok and other times I wish they were really there.

This post contains some potentially disturbing stuff.

I’ve recently read a few stories related to suicides that reminded me of a pamphlet that I produced a few years ago and clandestinely distributed in a local shopping mall. The pamphlet’s name is Suicide is easier than you might think #1 and is intended as a joke. Here it is[1].

The world is a horrible place. Why bother with the pain and disappointment when suicide is easier than you might think?

Here’s how:
• Find a bridge spanning a busy highway (no less than 3 lanes wide and with a speed limit of no less than 100km/h). It is important that during peak times a large number of cars should be traveling together at relatively high speed. A good example is the N1/M5 interchange at about 16:00.
• Take as many pain killers as you feel necessary (alcohol will also do). You may feel that anything less than sober is cheating, in which case you’d want to skip the sedatives. Personally I would want the experience to be as clear as possible, so no booze or drugs.
• Go to the bridge during a time when the combination of traffic volume and speed is at its peak. If you go by car, park it somewhere unobtrusive. Take a few small pebbles or acorns with you. I’d prefer acorns since I’d not want to damage any cars unnecessarily. Whether you have ID or anything that might identify you on your person is up to you.
• On the side of the bridge facing the on-coming traffic stand at a spot directly over the middle lane of the oncoming traffic.
• Pick an oncoming car and drop an acorn when the car is about 10-20 meters away. If it drops in front of the car drop the next one a little later, if it lands on the roof of the car, drop the next one earlier. Repeat this experiment until you have a rough idea of where a car should be when you jump for you to hit the front of the bonnet. This is your jump point.
• Look out for a truck or bus heading towards the bridge at approximately the same speed as the cars against which you tested the drop. Try and choose one as far away as possible. You may want to choose one in a colour that is significant to you. Don’t feel that you have to take the first one, it’s your choice and you can attach as much meaning to it as you want. You should be as comfortable with your choice as possible. The best possible scenario would be if the truck is followed by several other cars in the lanes beside and behind it.
• Get onto and sit on the railing of the bridge with your legs dangling over the side. Do this only once you’ve picked your truck and are committed to the jump. Getting onto the railing too soon might mean that a passerby will have time to stop and grab you. You may want to practice getting onto the railing at the edge of a similar bridge beforehand.
• When your truck gets to your jump point, breathe deep, look up if you want to and push forward with your arms and legs.

The joke here is intended to be about how unexpected it is to find a practical guide to suicide stuffed among adverts for skin treatments, yoga studios, outdoor trance parties and specialist pet photographers. And what better place to contemplate suicide than a shopping mall? I’m not sure if anyone that picked one up laughed, but it made me smile to drop them off and, a few days later, to find that some had been taken[2].
By some random happening the last suicide story that I read occurred a few days ago in the self same mall where I had dropped off my pamphlets some years ago, and the method was even similar – a jump.

A witness, who asked not to be named, said the man had apparently been arguing with a woman, believed to be his girlfriend, before climbing on to the railing and plummeting, landing near Markhams.

Suicide seems to be one of the things that society is most sensitive about, not wanting to touch or discuss it. While suicide isn’t a universal human taboo[3] it seems to be something that our society really cannot come to terms with, perhaps because it is such a melancholy act. It’s reasons are never clear but it is invariably linked to two conditions: grief and honour. This is a strange combination, as if the loss of honour produces a grief too severe to bear. I initially thought of writing about the weird relationship that we have to suicide (a strange mixture of dissapointment, judgement and admiration) but as I went around reading about the act of suicide something else became far more compelling, the brutality of it.

Part of the appeal of suicide is the perception that it frees the individual from an unbearable pain; mostly emotional, but also physical. But if you exclude assisted suicide for the terminally ill, suicide in its classic, solitary form is a primitive, error-prone and brutal thing. I was surprised to find out that there are actually very few ways to commit suicide. Guns, water, blades, suffocation[4], electrocution, hanging, burning, falling, beheading and medication – that’s about it. Suicidemethods.net provides practical detail about suicide and reality checks about what happens if you fail. Unlike Disturbeddoorway.com I don’t think that it intends being voyeuristic about it. However, if you’re willing to deal with the graphic nature of it there are two specific suicide descriptions that I feel captures the terrible physical reality of a suicide attempt. The first is a description and the second an actual video. Both are traumatic and sad. A police officer recalled

We were called 911 to a scene but not told what kind of emergency we had. This was late at night. A man comes walking to our ambulance holding both hands to his face. I asked him what happened? He could barely talk and then he was hard to understand. He had blown off the part of the front of his face. He had lost some upper and lower jaw and tongue and nose by a rifle. He said he pulled it away at the last minute and that is why part of his face was gone instead of head.
suicidemethods.net

The second is the a video of the suicide of US politician Budd Dwyer during a press conference prior to his sentencing for a bribery conviction – it is very graphic and my link is not for the sake of gore but because I really, really didn’t realise how stone cold real a gunshot is.

Albert Camus made an elegant point; There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that. Deciding to die is a very fundamental thing and perhaps our society is right to be fearful of suicide because we are so very bad at it.