"Cut
us in half, we're all the fucking same." – Damien Hirst
Hirst’s
bravado may hold true to the world of sneakers. What is a sneaker if not
anything other than a vessel to contain and protect your foot? Cut any shoe in
half and the empty cavity within it is always the same in shape if not size.
Cut any mammal in half for that matter and they will all have mammary glands a
gut and a spine. Why then do it and what is there to learn?
Simultaneously
being able to see the outside and the inside of something is somewhat of a
childish but ever real fascination for many. From the gore enthusiasts to the
scientifically minded, or from the weak stomached to simply curious, thousands
upon thousands have marveled at Damien Hirst’s spliced cows and sheep. Such a
fascination I do share but I hasten to add that it has also crossed my mind to adapt
Hirst’s technique to discover what sort of world exists inside other forms that
don’t necessarily live and breathe. For instance, why not consider an object
such as a shoe? With Hirst’s animals one’s awareness is attuned to be in the
presence of death. The basic impossibility that death can be cheated after
being cut in half is something that we are aware of even from the youngest of
ages. But this is a rule only relevant to what lives and breathes.
However,
to adopt a similar stance to cutting a shoe in half is not that drastically
different. After all, the shoe is completely ineffectual once sawn in half. It
cannot function without all its parts being together in exactly the same way an
animal cant live without being whole. By substituting function for life, the
action of sawing a shoe in half to reveal its inner workings is as effective in
destroying its function as sawing an animal in half is to kill it. By experimenting
in such practices the question is do we learn more about the living by dealing
with the dead? Dissection after all is a scientific way of looking at something
and a way to then explain it.
Keeping
that all in mind, lets then have a look at my collection of dead shoes titled
‘Natural History’ and see if there is any truth in it all.
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