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EATER'S DIGEST.


PURE NIGHTMARE OR FONDEST DESIRE, we all dreamed of it; Wim Delvoye Wim Delvoye (Wervik, 1965) is a Belgian conceptual artist known for a number of unconventional projects: Cloaca
Cloaca is an installation that produces feces.

The first Cloaca machine was exhibited at the MuHKA (Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp) in 2000.
 has made it. After eight years of collaboration with a team of experts in fields as diverse as gastroenterology gastroenterology

Medical specialty dealing with digestion and the digestive system. In the 17th century Jan Baptista van Helmont conducted the first scientific studies in the field; William Beaumont published his own observations in 1833.
, computer technology, and plumbing, the Belgian artist debuted his defecation defecation
 or bowel movement

Elimination of feces from the digestive tract. Peristalsis moves feces through the colon to the rectum, where they stimulate the urge to defecate.
 machine at the Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, last fall, just in time for it to leave its mark on the twentieth century.

Any observer of modern art could smell it coming: The history of the relationship between art and excrement excrement /ex·cre·ment/ (eks´kri-mint)
1. feces.

2. excretion (2).


ex·cre·ment
n.
Waste matter or any excretion cast out of the body, especially feces.
 has yet to be written (no doubt dissertations are in the pipeline), but the link is a solid one. We know, for example, thanks to Maurice Denis's Journal, that around 1870, when Manet asked Cezanne what he planned for the Salon, the latter responded: "a pot of shit." Add to that artists' sustained fascination with machines (painting machines, for one, along the lines of the contraption described by Alfred Jarry Alfred Jarry (September 8, 1873 – November 1, 1907) was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side.  in Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien [1898], itself a fairly organic invention); the meditations on waste, human or otherwise, by the likes of Marcel Duchamp Noun 1. Marcel Duchamp - French artist who immigrated to the United States; a leader in the dada movement in New York City; was first to exhibit commonplace objects as art (1887-1968)
Duchamp
, Kurt Schwitters, and Piero Manzoni; and the recent wave of abject art (in which we might classify Delvoye's own turd-motif mosaics made in the early '90s)--and Cloaca cloaca (klōā`kə), in biology, enlarged posterior end of the digestive tract of some animals. The cloaca, from the Latin word for sewer, , 2000, takes its rightful place as art history's greatest inevitability.

So how does it work? Pretty much the way you and I do. While Cloaca resembles an assembly line more than a person on the outside, the digestive process, controlled by a computer that the artist manipulates remotely via the Internet, is faithfully reproduced. At one end stands a stepladder allowing access to the basin into which meals (catered by the museum, with soft drinks and alcohol to wash them down) are fed; at the other, a circular tray receives the output of this complex procedure, one each of us regularly carries out without much thought (provided all goes smoothly). Between the two, a battery of transparent mechanisms and receptacles maintained at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit--body temperature--absorbs, at strategic intervals, the enzymes and juices necessary for digestion. Once activated, the machine eats twice a day (breakfast and a late lunch), even when the exhibition space is closed, which suggests a certain level of dedication on the part of the staff--not to mention the tolerance shown by employee s and viewers alike for the highly realistic odor that emanates from Cloaca's nether regions. Delvoye collects the pungent matter daily and packages it, suspended in resin, in small jars, which he then sells, apparently with much success.

After rest stops in Antwerp, Vienna, and Zurich, Cloaca, still the property of its inventor (who recently refused to sell it to a diaper company that hoped to use it for tests), will journey to the New Museum in New York New York, state, United States
New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of
 this January. To judge by the logo Delvoye designed for his machine--a fusion of the Ford and Coca-Cola emblems--he has something to say to America, a message to be ingested in·gest  
tr.v. in·gest·ed, in·gest·ing, in·gests
1. To take into the body by the mouth for digestion or absorption. See Synonyms at eat.

2.
 carefully if lightheartedly. Watch where you step.
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No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2001, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

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Article Details
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Title Annotation:Wim Delvoye's "Cloaca, 2000"
Author:CRIQUI, JEAN-PIERRE
Publication:Artforum International
Article Type:Brief Article
Geographic Code:4EUBL
Date:Sep 1, 2001
Words:500
Previous Article:A THOUSAND WORDS Russell Crotty.
Next Article:LUCY McKENZIE.
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