International News Digest
LOOKING INTO THE STENDHAL SYNDROME
Does the Stendhal syndrome really exist? As Der Standard reports, Italian researchers want to take a closer look at the syndrome named after the French writer Stendhal who swooned after seeing too much beautiful art during a trip to Florence in 1817. The team of researchers––including doctors and psychologists from Florence and Pisa––want to measure the physical bodily reactions that occur when people look at impressive artworks. The researchers set up a multi-sensory path in a hall painted by the seventeenth-century artist Luca Giordano (1634–1705) in the Medici Riccardi palace. In the set-up, visitors can “walk” on Giordano’s fresco which has been partially copied on the floor of the grand hall. There are fifteen different “stations” that pair the allegories in the fresco with music and sound. To measure the impact of the work, the researchers have outfitted each visitor with an apparatus to measure pulse, breathing, and blood pressure. The data, which is being collected until the end of August, will be studied by the researchers to see if there is a link between the artwork and the Stendhal syndrome.
HAMSTERS IN THE MUSEUM
Miroslaw Balka seems to be executing another type of scientific experiment at the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe, Germany. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Barbara Gärtner reports, Balka made a novel addition to the old German masters section of the Kunsthalle: a large cage filled with hamsters. The installation is titled Wir sehen dich (We see you), 2010. Although there is no word on how many hamsters are looking at Kunsthalle visitors, it’s hard to miss the cage, which is six-feet tall and three-hundred-feet long and which spreads through eight rooms in the building. “We look more closely when our gaze is misaligned,” said Pia Müller-Tamm, director of the Kunsthalle since May 2009. It sounds like the hamsters have the best view in the house.
SECURITY CAMERA ART
The Swiss photographer Jules Spinatsch adopted another type of gaze to create a huge panorama installation at Vienna’s Karlplatz. As Der Standard reports, the artist used two secret cameras to photograph Austria’s Haute Volee ball last year. The cameras, which gradually turned on their own axis for two full rotations, captured guests from the 8:30 PM start to the 5:10 AM wind-down of festivities. With the set-up, Spinatsch produced 17,352 photographs, which have been put together to create a ninety-six-foot-long panorama titled Wien MMIX (Vienna 2009). The work is on view until October 31.
DOG DAYS OF AUGUST
Throughout Europe, August is vacation time, a month that seems
to shut down many cities across the continent. Eurotopics cites Miguel Esteves Cardoso’s more philosophical reflections on the eighth month, which were published in the Portugese daily newspaper Público. “Could a month get more boring than this?” wonders Cardoso. “The warm rains will come, and sultry storms, like pineapple hothouses on the verge of exploding. Even those of us who have no holidays behave as if we were on a break, with no one watching us (or reading us)––we don’t even read our own work the day after.”
While the streets are less crowded and the cities are emptier, Cardoso argues that vacationers are missing a monumental seasonal change, which can link Portugal with points far beyond. “August is divided into two parts: the first half is Atlantic, mild, and Portuguese,” writes Cardos. “The second is Indian, tropical, and African. It is the most interesting month of the year. And we still treat it as if it were the most predictable. Probably because we like to be surprised again every year.” Or maybe just because everyone is too bored to notice.