Reading Log - More Frida

Last night I read about Frida's accident, a slow motion bus and trolley crash. It reminded me of the artist who got the army to blow up a wooden garden shed and then suspended the thousands of fragments in a gallery with a light somewhere in the middle like something from "The Matrix" but with no time element. Frida was pierced by one of these fragments and so seriously injured that it was not thought that she would survive. She did a drawing of the scene and in some funny way, it is quite comforting.

The accident drawing amongst other paintings ( in pdf )

"Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View" - The exploding shed

Biography is the real medium. Nothing can come close to even the driest description of someone's life because it is ALL real - well as real as it is possible to be with history, after all, once a thing has happened, its actual details become more blurred, the edge of the light cone - the event horizon becomes less defined. Even a recorded event can be interpreted in many ways (remember the Guardian advert with the Skinhead and the Businessman!) and even if all facts and images and sounds are available to you, the attitude of the time in which something is analysed can colour its interpretation. A serious re-creation of historical events as drama will not capture a real feeling of the time it portrays because of the re-interpretation that occurs. Part of this is Political Correctness and part is just plain changes in attitude. Life for us was hard and now it is easier.