The first alchemists practiced a mix of philosophy and proto-chemistry in pursuit of the elusive philosopher’s stone and the elixir of immortality. The alchemists of today are engaged with new technological medias, altered forms of subjectivity, artificial life and reconstituted consciousness, tinkering away at the forefront of scientific endeavours. While their forebears sought an elegant unifying God principle or particle, one that fundamentally governed and determined all forms and even life, today’s alchemists delve into an expanding multiplicity of transmutation.
Ian Haig’s dinosaur sized bone, Some Thing(2011) pulses like a discarded remnant from a David Cronenberg film or a confounding footnote from ‘Origin of Species’. The quivering artifact makes us uneasy because the skin is peeled back, exposing the visceral interior, an aberration of something unknown or, as yet still coming into being. Haig characterises this as undifferentiated tissue, a term coined by William Burroughs. ‘No organ is constant as regards either function or position… sex organs sprout anywhere… rectums open, defecate and close… the entire organism changes color and consistency in split-second adjustments…’1
Other works in the exhibition provoke unsettling relationships between animals and humans. For I, Goat(2015), Thomas Thwaites arranged to develop goat leg prosthetics so that he could ‘live’ amongst a herd of goats in the Swiss Alps for a couple of days. His goal was to escape the pressures, endless demands and expectations of being a human, stuck in the modern age. Needless to say, the experience did not go entirely to plan. He found himself uncomfortably cold, the mountainous terrain was difficult to negotiate and eating grass was not entirely wholesome. The experience revealed that, even goats have behavioural norms and hierarchies and
Art Oriente Objet, May the Horse Live In Me, 2011.
Video still; Michaela Gleave, We Are Made Of Stardust, 2011/12.Pine structure, LED’s, RGB controllers.
