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meridianday
Galaxy Girl
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From Yahoo news, not Ananova for a change.
| quote: | Woman to give birth in art gallery
BERLIN (Reuters) - A Berlin couple plan to have their first baby at an art gallery, the gallery owner said on Saturday, confirming a newspaper report.
"It's a gift to humanity, a once in a lifetime thing," Bild newspaper quoted Winfried Witt, partner of mother-to-be Ramune Gele, as saying.
Johann Novak, manager of the DNA-Galerie in central Berlin, said the artistic couple wanted to challenge conventional norms.
"It's a bit of test to see if society can cope," he said in a telephone interview.
About 30 people are expected to attend the birth, scheduled for April 24. They would be told to come to the gallery as soon as the 27-year-old Gele's contractions became regular, Witt was quoted as saying.
Novak said the gallery, which usually shows installations and video art, would be closed during the birth. "The private aspect will be maintained," he said.
Another gallery owner in the street said: "I find it mad." |
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Birth as art?
I recall that when UK uber topless model Jordan was pregnant with her first child, she initially planned to make the birth into a pay-per-view internet event. It didn't happen, possibly due to professional advice that the guys who love to look at her tits might be put off by watching her push a baby out of the other bits they like to fantasise about. But I wonder, did she look on the idea as art rather than as a publicity stunt?
Is an event that happens every day to thousands of women, and some time in the life of (probably) more than half of all women even in nations with very low birth rates, art?
What if the birth is a difficult one requiring intervention? Is the ventousse/forceps/c-section also art? I wonder, would the audience stay?
What do you think?
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 Mallanox : "My mother was Irish and my father was an alien. I was an only child and I dress funny."
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17-04-2005 13:18
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meridianday
Galaxy Girl
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I watched all the birthing I could get while I was pregnant, in order to prepare myself because I was in all probability going to be doing it too (and aren't I glad that I didn't?). But that's not art, that's education.
I recall during the run up to the Turner Prize a couple of years ago, when the entries were particularly lacking in merit (some years there actually is something worthwhile, I atually rather liked the dung pictures, and also the vases that won last year), that there was a retired painter and decorator who was asking why he shouldn't enter. For the previous 10 or 20 years he'd been mixing his own paint colours and had been trying them out on his garage doors. So his garage doors were very colourful and abstract. Were they as much a valid artwork as a room with a light in it that kept going on and off?
Cat's litterbox.... there was the full ashtray (did that really get tidied up by a cleaner and have to be remade?), and the untidy bed. There's the artist asleep in a glass box in the gallery - how is being asleep art? You should propose your cat's litterbox to a gallery now, it'll make you famous. It's only a matter of time before it gets done. Except if an artist does it it will probably be human faeces not animal products.
There is a bit of a fuss going on over a guy who has submitted a video of himself scratching 200 cars with keys, as art to a gallery. In the light of being charged with vandalism (that's a lot of angry car owners and a court case for him) he is denying that he scratched any of the cars, that they were already scratched when he got there and he just pretended to scratch them. It's nice to know that if he's guilty, he won't get any Arts Council funding for his project.
There is the odd bit of performance art that I quite like. There are a group of people who do this thing, I can't remember what they call it but it's like a celebrity turning up surrounded by bodyguards. So they rent a limo to go somewhere, one dresses up glamourously, and then 5 or 6 others dress as bodyguards. They're not bothering anyone, they're in and out of wherever they're going quickly, and they're interesting to watch while they're there.
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Mallanox : "My mother was Irish and my father was an alien. I was an only child and I dress funny."
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21-04-2005 07:03
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meridianday
Galaxy Girl
I am a Devilstar.
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| quote: | A woman has given birth as part of an exhibition in a German art gallery in front of dozens of spectators.
Ramune Gele, 27, gave birth to her first child, a healthy baby girl named Audra, in the DNA art gallery in the capital Berlin.
The father, 29-year-old musician Winfried Witt, who said before the birth "it's a gift to humanity, a once in a lifetime thing", called the experience "an existential work of art".
Johann Novak, manager of the gallery, said the couple wanted to challenge conventional norms.
"It's a bit of test to see if society can cope," he said.
Some 30 members of the public were contacted when Gele went into labour.
But the "live art exhibition" was heavily criticised by some including doctors and religious leaders.
"A birth is an intimate act, and should remain that way," said Stefan Foerner, 40, spokesman for the Church in Berlin.
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Nice that it all went smoothly in the end...
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Mallanox : "My mother was Irish and my father was an alien. I was an only child and I dress funny."
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21-04-2005 11:42
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