The Plastinator and Our Labyrinth

In another work, The Rider, a human and a horse's corpses are plastinated in a rider's position. At the same time, parts of the bodies of the man and the horse are replaced. The author apparently is making an alusion to the mythical centaur. The rider holds two brains in his two hands, the one of the horse, and his own.

"Pregnant woman" is the body of a woman pregnant in her eighth month. The womb is cut open to display the baby. Both the mother and the baby are actual human corpses. There is something horrifying in the sight of crowds paying to watch dismembered dead bodies. There is something pervert in amusing oneself at the sight of somone else whose body has been cut into small pieces hanging in the air to illustrate "the explosion of the flesh". There is something deeply twisted in a scene where teenagers are giggling around a dead woman and her unborn child. The dead pregnant woman has been used by the organizers as an advertisement item. She has been placed in a special bus that toured the cities' streets to attract visitors to the exhibitions.

"The Doll" is a corpse, cut in hundred of pieces that have been hanged under the ceiling on nylon strings.

Another plastinate is a man's corpse, symetrically cut into pieces that can open like drawers – a direct imitation of Dali's painting The Anthropomorpic Drawer.

"The Chess Player" is a reverence to a Paul Sezanne's painting. In a cylindrical shelf one can see dead babies rotating like mechanical toys.

These are only a part of the some 200 items that make the exhibition. All exponates are anonymous, unrecognizable by their relatives, because in the process of plastination part of the skin and the fat under it are removed in order to preserve the anonimity of the corpses.

In the exhibition you are offered to hold a plastinated liver or a lung in your hand. All items can be touched; this is actually expected from the visitors. The goal is "to touch the marvels of the human body in ways that until now has been accessible for the pathoanatomists only". The original arguments behind the exhibits have been "to democratize" anatomy through "an anatomical entertainment". "The exhibition allows the people to relate to Death in good spirit, even in a feastal mood", the Plastinator says. "We never show decay and dying itself; our bodies are frozen between death and decay, in a moment when the body is a beautiful sight".

The Business

In an interview for the British ITN, the Professor shares his plans: "Within ten years I forsee at least three travelling exhibitions, in America, Europe and Asia. Just like Disneyland".

So far the exhibitions in Tokyo, Koln, Berlin, London and other major European cities have been visited by at least 8 mln people. More than 4000 of them have made a testament to donate their bodies after their death to the institute, headed by von Hagens. The institute issues special cards to carry along with your personal documents, in case of a sudden death. The number of visitors to the exhibitions makes these happenings to the most successful in the history of exhibitions altogether.

The plastination centres are already 250, in 34 countries, even in cities like Bishkek, Kirgizstan. 200 people are workin in the Chinese branch of the institute alone – a result of a successful investment amounting to $10 mln.

The Reactions

In most modern societies where Christian worldview has been abandoned, reactions against plastination usually are limited to vague qualifications such as "unappropriate for the non-scientific audience". Even the Roman Catholic church, traditionally strong in its public statements on controversial ethical issues, so far has not provided a clear evaluation of the huge public interest towards plastination and its possible implications on ethics and morals. Among the visitors of the exhibitions one can find people who identify themselves as believers and even claim that the show has provided, through exposing of the "inner" beauty of the human body, a witness for God's existence. Emotional reactions, however, range from nausea, faintings and vomiting, through weeping and mourning, to exuberant outbursts of "aesthetic bliss".

In German Catholic churches memorial services have been performed for the plastinated dead – a clear sign, that some of the traditional Christian societies in the West still have not lost entirely their capacity for straightforward moral judgements.

Dignity of death is threatened, religious leaders say. Plastination crosses beyond the final frontier of respect we owe to other human beings. "This life is mine and I don't care what the Church says", a Brigita Burkhard responses. She has donated her body and it has already been plastinated. And she continues: "If I am put in the graveyard, I won't be useful to anyone. I can do whatever I want with my body". According to Catholic priests, the dead body is inviolable and should not be exposed, even if the person has explicitly stated his/her will to do so before his/her death.

"I have never wanted to be burried in the old traditional way and I cannot stand the idea of the worms down there. That is the main reason I leave my body for plastination", another donor says, also a woman. Women are the majority of the visitors to the exhibits and among those who willingly leave by testament their bodies for plastination. Von Hagens himself comments this phenomenon: "Women are more dependent on their bodies, with respect to beauty and cosmetics, but also because of maternity and the raising of children. This explains their higher interest about the fate of their own bodies". "Donating your body for plastination is no sin", he concludes.