Vilis Christus
Taedet Animam
"As foretold, significance is the essence of reality."
A young girl points out the smell to her mum. As the family walks towards Oxford road, from the carpark and pass a large mound of blankets they notice a puddle and the gentle rise and fall of the large central dome which appears to be a sleeping giants belly.
Ray Philloniac was also a street sleeper, whose last dying wish was to donate his body to art. HE WAS A KIND MAN. He was a good man. And on that day he died his body was harvested, cast, preserved, styled and stuffed. Displayed upside down on a cross, his head tarnished with rosethorn and groomed to a mildly familiar style. In just 5 hours and 23 minutes, he had been turned from a living terminally ill homeless man, into an actual piece of art by an artist known as Valencia Penatrillo.
No funeral.
No mourners.
She had picked several homeless men in Greater Manchester using a pitiful £50 bribe and a form including the mens fingerprints for identification. A further, agreement was obtained from the local city council authority who would send council officers who when allerted of the passing of the street sleepers, identify the claimed body and allow the medical students who belonged to her group to do their thing. None of whom trained in the egyptian art of embalming, nor taxidermy and without any great understanding of the chemistry of decay but most unfortunately, none even the slightest bit trained in biohazardous material nor contagious diseases. Neither trained in autopsies as you would expect such a scenario to demand. So the whole situation was clearly a morbid ruleless investigation to the macabre. A journey of self discovery, right from the dark ages being re-enacted in the nano age, by giddy medical students. Unequipped, uneducated and out of their depth. The laws regarding her indecent crimes, were vague enough to circumvent using the same channels a previous exhibitionist had used to display human remains for medical science reasons. Though, in truth, the council, police or anyone with a shred of decency or moral compass who would have stopped this clear violation, were all indifferent. It was in this relaxed environment she plotted her best idea yet, her art exhibition was a gimmick, she knew it too. Her friends, while she was laughing one evening at a fundraiser and in their intoxicated state a plan hatched in their twisted heads. One which would transform her art into the most morbid, controversial disgrace imaginable and so she set the seed inside the cadaver that following week. Her friends congratulated and laughed at all the imagined situations this statement signified, it had titillated them so completely that they had all over indulged and gone home with headaches and nausea.