By Josephine Renee
Event Review Trigger warnings: displayed dead human bodies of all ages described.
“It’s all very real.”
“It’s real. Yeah, that eyeball is real.”
“Please get off the glass.”
“What’s the red stuff?”
“No, cause it’s dead.”
These were all quotes recorded from unknown patrons, mostly children, as we entered the exhibition featuring preserved human bodies.
“Oh wow, fuck.” was all I had playing on a loop in my head.
The sign at the front read, “Please be respectful with the human specimens on display.” I’d been building up the exhibition in my mind for weeks. I kept telling myself that I’d never seen a dead body before. I almost had the opportunity to attend a Body Worlds exhibition in Amsterdam but didn’t have the time. I’d always been fascinated after hearing the way artists would speak about attending it. They would go to gather details about real-life human anatomy for drawing. Just before entering, I remembered all the other dead bodies I’d seen before in my life, multiple churches decorated with bones and mummified Egyptian corpses in the British Museum. I’ll never forget dirty child noses and fingers pressed against the glass of such ancient bodies that never consented to these little pervs using their coffins as bag holders. I won’t go on that rant now, but I remember how furious I was standing in the British Museum surrounded by not a single British thing (possibly the most British thing ever).
The process of plastination preserves the human body so that it is immortal. Everyone has such a morbid curiosity about death. I couldn’t help but feel my body wince at the demonstrations of a stroke.
At one table was a foetus. I wanted to cry. This tiny fish-sized body could fit in my palm. It had such tiny, delicate fingers. Dye was put in it so that we could see the bones forming. When I looked at it from the other side, I could see the eye sockets and mouth gaping like a rotting fish.
It was interesting, even at the start, to see how absorbed I got in the technical and scientific explanation of things. At one point, I was called out on my posture! A physical representation of my future with a metal rod deep inside my spine if I didn’t change.
The human mind is incredible, two rooms in, and I felt completely desensitised. Details still caught me off guard: a tattoo on a shoulder. I felt as if they eased me into it; no full bodies in the first room. Then I walked up to the entire digestive track of a human being, and the woman beside me said, “That’s cool.” I couldn’t help but agree with her.
“You wouldn’t think that’s inside your body,” another woman said, looking upon 9 metres of organ.
“Everyone’s body,” her husband replied.
Age is told by the wear of bones and if they have any metal inside them. Gender is obvious to tell, but the ethnicity and colour of your skin, impossible. Underneath we are all the same.
You can tell who was athletic, their muscles bulging out of their bodies and their larger hearts. I looked at the enlarged thing on the table that was almost the size of my head and thought of all the beautiful, athletic people I know and the massive hearts that must exist inside them. An athlete’s heart can weigh more than 500 grams, as opposed to the average 300. If it’s any consolation for us, (people who would rather be curled up with a book) the thickened heart muscle can make it harder for the heart to pump blood which can increase the risk of an irregular heartbeat.
Every cigarette takes 11 minutes off your life. It has 4,000 chemicals and is as addictive as harder drugs. Stress happens to kill just as much. One in three people experience constant stress: that’s a lot of people.
There was so much put into the scientific examination of things, why not dispel myths? Two plastinates had given consent for their bodies to be placed in a sexual act. This smaller exhibition along with the prenatal gallery was easily skippable. But around the figures was a statistic I had never known. The “myth” behind the female orgasm. Although it’s true, that the female orgasm isn’t necessary for conception, a woman will hold 70% more sperm if she does orgasm. That is no small percentage.
I always find it fascinating when results are listed separately for men and women. I wrote a piece about the wage gap, exploring the statistics behind an ABC article that aimed to help determine how much jobs paid; the male and female earnings had to be listed separately. You can read this here. Weight was especially interesting. You would think that women and men would share a similar diet, being from the same country. But Australian men, for instance, are significantly more overweight, reaching a BMI of up to 30%. Australian women reach 10-20%, which isn’t even considered overweight (25%). Another statistic looked at happiness in marriage. Married people live longer, are healthier, make more money per capita, have more sex, and are reported to enjoy it more than being unwed. But the divorce statistics were interesting in that men cope significantly better. Both levels of happiness improve after separation, where men’s levels tank beforehand, they skyrocket afterwards.
Although children are reported as a source of happiness, they are statistically proven not to meet the expected level of happiness, and the couple’s overall happiness significantly decreases after the birth of the first child. Non-parents are reported as the happiest people, followed by parents, and the lowest rung is parents with young children.
At the end, it asks, what do you want to do before you die?
“I want $1,00,000,000,000,000,000.”
“To travel the world and have children.”
“Marry someone hot.”
Were the three most popular answers written on the board.
In Uptown Brisbane (The Myers Centre) tickets are on sale for this limited exhibition until late August (it’s near Dopamine Land). Tickets are on sale for students at roughly $23 – $26. You can also listen to the free audio walking tour here.
