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THE VOID at 'The Sensory Clinic', a group show at International3, Manchester. April 2005
The first one night event at which viewers were invited to partake of a transformative experience, moving from simple observer of the artwork, to its host and site. Participants agreed to take one of the methylene blue pills, becoming 'self-experimenters'. The effect was to turn their pee blue (after 12 hours), for up to four days. A private public artwork?
Evidence and installation details:
Inflated Chamber, Alcohol, mixers, table, glasses, menu, safety sheet, pass thru cabinet, neon sign, video monitor, DVD - 'Twelve Steps from the Void'
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THE SELF-EXPERIMENTER
Newspaper/journal published by Neal White
as part of THE VOID at
Barbican Gallery, July 1st 2005.
Edited by Neal White and Simon Gould
Contents:
Lets Experiment with Ourselves
Neal White
A Science that isn’t a Science – A tale of attempted Self-Experimentation.
Simon Gould
The Colour of the Void - A correspondance between John Latham and Neal White
From an Aching Tooth to Philosophy. Benjamin Paul Blood’s An-aesthetic Self-Experiment\
Katrin Solhdju
SANGUIS GRATIA ARTIS – BLACK PUDDING SELF-PORTRAIT
BEAGLES AND RAMSAY
COUPON for methylene blue pill, served as an artwork (see image).
Text from the short film "Twelve Steps from the Void'
Clinical Manufacturers Safety Sheets for Urolene Blue Pills
Reprinted account of the original Yves Klein exhibition that inspired this event, and this paper
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On the NIMR Residency - An article taken from The Self-Experimenter, published for THE VOID at Barbican Gallery, July 1st 2005.
A Science that isn’t a Science
A Science that isn’t a Science – A tale of attempted Self-Experimentation.
Simon Gould
I don’t remember exactly how it happened. It was a while back, in London, 2004 or 2005. He wrote to me wanting to conduct a study in to self-experimentation. It would involve inviting scientists to drink a cocktail containing Methylene Blue, which would stain their urine blue for three days. He said he was an artist. I’ll call him NW. I’d read accounts of famous self-experimenters of course – Werner Forssmann who would eventually receive the ‘56 Nobel Prize for Medicine, or Barry Marshall, who’s selfless 1990s ingestion of Helicobacter pylori led to a complete turnabout into the understood causes of peptic ulcers. Elsewhere I recalled Timothy Leary who’s research at Harvard in the ‘60s led to his iconic status in all things psychedelic, and more recently the image of Franko B’s own blood dripping down his whitened body still resonates in my mind. But here in the institute I hadn’t seen or heard of any such goings-on. I mentioned NW to a few scientist colleagues over coffee one morning. Talk turned quickly from specifics to something more vague, evasive even. I received a few friend of a friend tales, more LSD antics from the 60s, a ‘crazy’ fellow who’d infected himself with malaria for the cause. But there was a folkloric nature to these stories. This was no longer the tutorial into hard science that I was used to hearing. There was no doubt in my mind that the practice of self-experimentation had accompanied the history of medicine for as long as man had been interested in his own body, but its documentation, its cultural position appeared somewhat disorientated. You won’t read about it in the rows of impressive leather volumes that line the library’s walls. Usually it’s the sample sizes, loss of objectivity or ethical uncertainties that are pre-emptively quoted to counter the validity or intention to self-experiment.
And yet I was pretty sure it still existed, buoying Romantically in some parallel channel of exploration. So here was an artist offering a completely different way to ponder self-experimentation. I invited him in. We talked and drank coffee and I heard a different language of self-experimentation. Here was a cultural experiment who’s product could not be calculated, only observed and considered. His proposal was not a maverick challenge to the future of medical science but a very present probe into the heavily regulated behaviours within the institute. We planned the event, NW had derived the cocktail’s ingredients from Yves Klein’s 1958 opening of ‘Le Vide’. We proposed the event. A wall in the shape of an ethics committee appeared. They met anonymously and we were rejected. The interests of the institute needed to be protected, as someone might have put it. We met informally with some committee members and chatted. Talk quickly turned to tales of self-experimentation and other ‘pranks’ to change the colour of urine. A personal interest appeared in lieu of institutional approval. NW’s probe had not been in vain – much had been unveiled in rejection. NW wondered what it would be like to propose this to an art gallery?
For a copy of this publication please email, and instructions will be forwarded.
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