Items · The Medicine Chest

The Mother of all Firewalls

'The Mother of all Firewalls' (2012), is a sculptural piece by Kim Gurney made from beeswax, gold glitter, bitumen, repurposed tiles, rabbit skin and glue, which seems to depict an EEG graph in its format but in reality references a graph plotted by Google Insights after Gurney inputted a range of new words that emerged from the ‘Eurogeddon’ of 2012, showing their incidence in news reports pertaining to this financial crisis between 2008 and 2012.

Suspicious Mind (Performance)

UCT’s Professor Mark Solms, then chairperson of the NPSA and one of the main organisers of the annual international Neuropsychoanalysis conference (2013), highlights Katherine Bull’s contribution to the 'Suspicious Mind' exhibition as one that stood out for him. His interpretation of the ambidextrous portraits she painted of him reveals an insider’s insight of an outsider object and shows how Bull’s artistic process enables theories postulated in his field to manifest in unusual ways: "She painted my double portrait – with her left and right hand simultaneously – over Skype, and she did the same of my beloved (now deceased) colleague Jaak Panksepp on site at the exhibition. I am the grateful owner of both of those double portraits. They hang in my sitting room, so I am reminded daily of the conference and of my departed friend. It is fascinating to see how Bull’s two hemisphere’s processed both me and Jaak each in their different ways. In both of our cases, her left hemisphere painted us with heads that sloped slightly to the right and contained more precise detail; while her right hemisphere painted us more impressionistically, but I think captured our ‘souls’ more accurately" (Liebenberg 2021: 233 - 234)

Dialogue goggles

Film still from Paolo Pasolini’s 'Salò'

A film still from Paolo Pasolini’s 'Salò, or the 120 days of Sodom' (1975), in which a protagonist turns his binoculars around to create distance between himself and the scene of torture playing out in the courtyard below.

Rats laugh when you tickle them

In 1999, Jaak Panksepp and Jeffrey Burgdorf successfully demonstrated that tickling young rats spurs them into letting out the same ultrasonic giggles they make during play.

Rede de elásticos (Elastic Net)

The Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920-1988) produced relational objects to be inhabited and activated by groups of people. Her net made up of elastic bands attached to each other, allows a complex structure, a complex grid, inviting a choreographed dance between strangers as they play with it by pushing and pulling these bands.

Strange landscapes

In a short story by the writer Alice Munro titled, 'Walker Brothers Cowboy', a young girl joins her father, a fox farmer turned traveling salesman, on his visits to homes in the countryside where they live. After observing her father nearly getting doused with a chamber pot of urine by an unwelcoming customer, he veers off his usual rounds to visit a woman whom she slowly understands to be his sweetheart from when he was younger. Driving back home, she thinks about the events of the day: "So my father drives and my brother watches the road for rabbits and I feel my father's life flowing back from our car in the last of the afternoon, darkening and turning strange, like a landscape that has an enchantment on it, making it kindly, ordinary and familiar while you are looking at it, but changing it, once your back is turned, into something you will never know, with all kinds of weathers, and distances you cannot imagine. When we get closer to Tuppertown the sky becomes gently overcast, as always, nearly always, on summer evenings by the Lake" (Munro 2010: 23).

A perfect day for bananafish

Extract from J.D. Salinger's 'For Esmé - With Love and Squalor' in which Seymour Glass interacts with a young girl while swimming in the ocean on holiday. “Miss Carpenter. Please. I know my business,” the young man said. “You just keep your eyes open for any bananafish. This is a perfect day for bananafish.” “I don’t see any,” Sybil said. “That’s understandable. Their habits are very peculiar.” He kept pushing the float. The water was not quite up to his chest. “They lead a very tragic life,” he said. “You know what they do, Sybil?” She shook her head. “Well, they swim into a hole where there’s a lot of bananas. They’re very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs. Why, I’ve known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas.” He edged the float and its passenger a foot closer to the horizon. “Naturally, after that they’re so fat they can’t get out of the hole again. Can’t fit through the door.” “Not too far out,” Sybil said. “What happens to them?” “What happens to who?” “The bananafish.” “Oh, you mean after they eat so many bananas they can’t get out of the banana hole?” “Yes,” said Sybil. “Well, I hate to tell you, Sybil. They die.” “Why?” asked Sybil. “Well, they get banana fever. It’s a terrible disease.” “Here comes a wave,” Sybil said nervously. “We’ll ignore it. We’ll snub it,” said the young man. “Two snobs.” He took Sybil’s ankles in his hands and pressed down and forward. The float nosed over the top of the wave. The water soaked Sybil’s blond hair, but her scream was full of pleasure. With her hand, when the float was level again, she wiped away a flat, wet band of hair from her eyes, and reported, “I just saw one.” “Saw what, my love?” “A bananafish.” “My God, no!” said the young man. “Did he have any bananas in his mouth?” “Yes,” said Sybil. “Six.” The young man suddenly picked up one of Sybil’s wet feet, which were drooping over the end of the float, and kissed the arch. “Hey!” said the owner of the foot, turning around. “Hey, yourself! We’re going in now. You had enough?” “No!” “Sorry,” he said, and pushed the float toward shore until Sybil got off it. He carried it the rest of the way. (Salinger 1986: 20-21).

Echolocation (Part two)

"In Steinbeck’s 'Of Mice and Men', Crooks consoles the simple, unaffected and kindly Lennie when his friend, George, doesn’t return from town. He tells him he should be glad that he at least has someone. 'S’pose you didn’t have nobody. S’pose you couldn’t get into the bunk-house and play rummy ‘cause you was black. How’d you like that? (…) A guy sits alone out here at night, maybe readin’ books or thinkin’ or stuff like that. Sometimes he gets thinkin’ an’ he got nothing to tell him what’s so an’ what ain’t so. Maybe if he sees somethin’, he don’t know whether it’s right or not. He can’t turn to some other guy and ast him if he sees it too. He can’t tell. He got nothing to measure by. I seen things out here. I wasn’t drunk. I don’t know if I was asleep. If some guy was with me, he could tell me I was asleep, an’ then it would be alright. But I jus’ don’t know' "(Steinbeck 1973:62 in Liebenberg 2011: 102).

Ma

The Japanese have a word, ‘ma’, for this interval which gives shape to the whole – this ‘gap’, ‘opening’, ‘space between’ or ‘time between’. Ma is not something that is created by compositional elements, rather it can be understood as the thing that takes place in the imagination of the human who experiences these elements. A room, for example, is called 'ma', as it refers to the space between the walls. Or a rest in music, which indicates a pause between the notes or sounds (Pilgrim 1986: 255).

Where their lives took on true weight

In Alice Munro's short story 'Post and Beam', the two protagonists return home from a short vacation: "Up Capilano Road, into their own part of the city and their own corner of the world, where their lives took on true weight and their actions took on consequences. There were the uncompromising wooden walls of their house, showing through the trees" (Munro 2001: 212).

The Northern Lights

Histology slides of the brain (human and animal), scanned and converted into video projection

Mozart's Antimony

Medical bedside cabinet, gramophone player with a hypodermic needle substitution, Mozart’s Sonata in C, KV 279 and Sonata in D, KV 576. The needle is slowly scratching irreparable grooves into the record whilst the record in return, is making the needle blunt.. "On 20 October 1791, Mozart told his wife Constanza that he was being poisoned. On 20 November he developed a fever; his hands, feet and stomach became swollen, and he had attacks of vomiting. He died on the 5th of December. Although Antonio Salieri confessed to Mozart’s murder several years later, it is highly unlikely as Salieri suffered from senile dementia. In 1991, Ian James of London’s Royal Free Hospital attributed Mozart’s death to antimony, a poison that Mozart may have been given by his doctor - not to kill him but to cure him. Antimony was prescribed for what was then diagnosed as melancholia. In small doses it leads to headaches, fainting and depression. In large doses it can be fatal within days (Emsley 1999: 225). In the autumn of 1791, Mozart, suffering from severe depression, exacerbated by debt, the ill reception of his new work La Clemenza di Tito, and a commission to write a requiem which he believed was for his own funeral, dosed himself with a variety of medicines – one of these being antimony – and what was meant to cure, killed" (Liebenberg 2011: 85 - 91).

"I have scars on my hands from touching certain people"

"The words of Seymour Glass, eldest sibling of the Glass family – a lesser known creation of J.D. Salinger’s literary world. The story of this family of child geniuses, who appeared on a 1927 radio quiz show called 'It’s a Wise Child', is chronicled in three of his books – mostly centering on the relationship between the two eldest brothers, Buddy and Seymour. Salinger favours Seymour. He was the most brilliant and idiosyncratic of all the children and unfortunately, for the most part, only present as a memory – since he committed suicide, age 31. Buddy reminisces about one specific Seymour moment: His mother urging him to see a psychiatrist and him telling her that he doesn’t need a head doctor – he needs a hand doctor or a dermatologist, whereupon he looks at his hands and tells her he has these scars – these discolourations on them – from touching certain people. Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on him. When he put his hand on his little sister Franny’s head when she was still in the carriage, it left a mark. Or with her twin brother, Zooey, when he was six or seven, during a spooky movie. He put his hand on Zooey’s head when he went under the seat to avoid watching a scary scene. It left a mark. Other things, too. Charlotte, the girl he was in love with, tried to run away from him once and he grabbed her dress. It left a permanent lemon-yellow mark on the palm of his right-hand (Salinger 1964:59). His hands were filled with these discolourations – these physical manifestations of his emotions. They became a type of medical condition. And he needed to cure it" (Liebenberg 2011: 91 - 93). Salinger recounts the day of Seymour's suicide in a short story he later wrote, called 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish'.

Amelia's letter

Amelia Earhart sat down on the morning of February 7th, 1931, and penned this letter to her publicist and future husband, George Putnam: "Please let us not interfere with the others’ work or play, nor let the world see our private joys or disagreements. In this connection I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself, now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinements of even an attractive cage".

Avoided Object

Photographs of the sky above the Imperial War Museum taken with the camera that belonged to Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz

Looking up

In 'Looking up', the artist stares intently at the sky until he has attracted a group of curious bystanders to do the same (at which point he retires from the scene).

Resonance

Demonstration of sympathetic vibration using the optical (flame) microphone

The Green Ray (Jay Gatsby)

“Gatsby believed in the green light, The orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eludes us then, but that’s no matter – to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning – So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (Fitzgerald 1983: 188).

Ammonium Bromide

"Nerve sedative. One or two, dissolved in a wineglassful of water, three times a day, in hysteria, headache or neuralgia. As a sedative, four at bedtime " (BWC 1925:116).