Juan Munoz at the Tate Modern

If you’re interested in ideas of self and the body go and see Juan Munoz’s show on at the Tate Modern at the moment.

There, I stood alongside an inanimate man, considering his supersize shadow, and screaming it seemed. And I considered my shadow supersized. Was it about projecting elements of the self, creating that shadow image so large and imposing? Or was he shouting at this shadow? – did he know it was his own or did he think it something scary and unknown even though he produced it? Did he see himself as the small compact figure of rage or desperation, or as the large two-dimensional shape of darkness?

I peered over the shoulder of another figure, which was in turn peering over the shoulder of a fellow human-shaped model, both looking at a mirror. They both wore cardboard masks through which they could see, but which disguised all of their faces – what did they see? What were they looking at? Was my self in the mirror as masked to me as the faces of these figures?

I walked through a room full of laughing, smiling clusters of small Asian-featured men. At first I wanted to laugh too – that kind of laugh that rolls up from your stomach in not quite a normal laughing place, that makes you feel a little crazy or nervous. And then I felt slightly panicked at being outside these happy groups.

I stood and wondered about body language, and about what the artist saw in backs, or mouths. And thought about the spaces we live in and interact with.

I won’t describe too much more less I ruin the surprise, but I found it very provoking and very moving. There is a lot that is very human in it. Expressions of different senses and parts of the body, places that humans occupy, self-image, components of our ideas of selfhood. There is a lot that I felt quite powerfully was reminding me of something, but I couldn’t work out quite what and I wanted to just sit there and think about it.

It’s very good. Do go.

Interesting site where you can see installation views, text and pictures - http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/munoz/project/title.html
Tate Modern info - http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/juanmunoz/default.shtm
Guardian obituary - http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/juanmunoz/default.shtm

Osteopathy, Silver lining

After I last wrote, I took myself and my injured neck off to an osteopath, where I was clicked and cracked and manipulated and massaged and given some exercises to carry on with at home. I emerged freed of pain and with fluid movement again; a wonderful feeling after the kind of pain that restricts everything you do and how you think, even if only for a few days.

It made me think that I would like to be working with people, knowing about joints and bones and muscles, and freeing up tense muscles or over-pressured joints. For a while I wondered about training to be an osteopath. I like the idea of working with a whole person and talking to them and being able to advise them what to do, and being able to help them with frozen up muscles, or sore joints. I liked that she also took into account my lifestyle and suggested different ways of sitting for example, practical things to help with the aches and niggles that come from that sedentary lifestyle we are always told is so bad for is.

In the end, I wasn’t sure it would suit me. I don’t like the fact they can’t explain what the ‘crack’ is that you hear – I want to have an explanation behind what I’m doing. I'm not sure, but I think my shoulders and neck 'crack' a lot more now, following the treatment, and I want to know why this is. I also think I'm more interested in the prevention than the cure - I don't want to be sending people away thinking they are cured then slipping back into bad habits; I think I'd like to spend more time helping them help themselves than cracking things into place or out of tension.

The main problem I suppose is that to justify all that training time and money, I’d have to be pretty sure about it being what I wanted to do. It is just aspects of it that appeal to me, not the whole shebang.

Still, it was very interesting to experience. I had been interested before, but in ignorance – having no idea what they would actually practically do, so now I have been enlightened. And anything where you get an hour with the focus on you is a real treat (I was reading recently an article about Drs referring patients to homeopathic clinics when they know that the actual remedies have no greater effect that placebos in trials, because the time the homeopath spends with a patient is what makes them feel better, and what GPs often can’t offer).

And that feeling of absence of pain when you have just been bound up in the pain is such elation. Every now and then if I have a localised pain in my body I try and concentrate on other parts of the body – ‘feel how light your head is without pain’, I think, ‘feel how smoothly your joints work’. And it does work to reduce the overall thoughts of ‘I am in pain’ to ‘I just have a small pain in a spot in my knee’ for example.

So there were a few silver linings to a minor injury I think. It made me go slower and not overwork myself before exams and it allowed me to find out more about osteopathy. I’m still going slowly with yoga having had a month off for being injured, and not going back into inversions until I feel fully painless in the neck region. I think it was probably a good reminder not to go too far until I am absolutely sure of my strong foundations.

General Osteopathic Council - http://www.osteopathy.org.uk/about_osteo/
Telegraph article on back pain and osteopathy - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2008/02/04/hback104.xml