The Wax Conspiracy

Terracotta Soldiers and Putrefying Piglets (Two Emperors & Death - The Australian Museum 08/06/0

Years have passed since the last outing into the Australian Museum in Sydney. One thing was certain, if the St. James train station was at the front of Hyde Park, it was somewhere around the back. Spotting a gothic building with spires and people walking in and out of the doors, it was only when I was nearly clipped by a car that I realised I was walking up to St. Joseph's or Mary's college. Next to the college was the aquatic+fitness centre and some skaters. On the next block was a huge building with australian museum in nice sans serif font. Leeched onto the facade of the museum was scaffolding like that of years ago. Construction started then was still going and gave the building a feeling of archaic desperation.

A huge banner outside the footsteps leading in declared that the Two Emperor's exhibition was being extended for another two weeks. This was the reason I was there to pay a visit to the Old Museum. And pay for the visit I did, not like the previous time where everyone just walked in for the open day. Still managing to milk my "invalid" student card I got a concession and instead of forking over $23 for the experience, only had to hand over $10. Two admissions for the price of one.

Down the sloped walk, past the atrium and into...

Two Emperors - China's Ancient Origins

Dimmed, the lights set focus on the various displays in the exhibition. Married to the ambient soundtrack the whole atmosphere is set and you soon realise that odour is no longer present. That is until you happen to cross paths of someone who bathes in perfume. Or whose skin might be in the initial stages of decay. And as soon as you past the guard with no regard for how he rips up the receipts you're in and knee deep in artefacts from the Qin and Han Dynasties.

The first item was a huge and detailed bronze bell for some reason of the Qin Dynasty. Pretty much every display had a tag or plaque spieling all that it could about the name, composition, history and original location of excavation of the piece in question. All save for the one with two terracotta things that looked like mailboxes or birdhouses made to look like mailboxes. Adjacent to this were a couple of pipes cracked and glued back in five places that had a description mentioning something about their pentagrammic design for the channeling of water. It wasn't until navigating around a flock of gawkers trying to read plaques in the dimmed lights that you realise the flow was still smooth and hassle-free.

Lining the first few display cases were huge blocks of terracotta tiles sporting faint carvings and a few salvaged weapons with gold and others of silver, copper and some other metal types. Pretty much every item on display featured intricate carvings of symbols and representations of animals and ideas and with each a little note on the meaning. Little clay statues of a music group with no instruments and a confused singer led up to a terracotta soldier, one of ten similar statues in the exhibition. With the foot print of the display bases being pretty small, the marking of the name at the nape of the soldiers' neck is pretty visible.

Life-sized and with the squarest feet imaginable, these beings cast an unnerving stare as they follow you around the room. And around the room you'll be, soaking up the many other statues and models. A horse stares to one side behind a man and positioned like a timeline, the life-sized statues are taken over by models one third of that of the original castings. A table lined with thirty horsemen on horseback one third the size stare back into the back of the exhibit coaxing you to take one more trip around to fully savour the awe and wonderment of a ten dollar admission.

But beware the wayward and sweaty hand for touching anything in this exhibit is purely forbidden. As is using cameras to make the moment last longer. The fact that things are teased within reach makes for a most tempting sight. One of the last things in the exhibit are large tombstone slabs. Definitely within reach, but the tactile experience must still be forgone, until you walk out of the exhibit and you're fronted with a giftshop. One of the shelves had a lone statue reeking of something on the wrong side of preservation. $6.95 and massed produced in fashion with their bigger clay made inspirations.

A hundred weak crowd had gathered around the atrium's masking taped space. Two dancers from either the Chinese Youth League Dance Troupe or the Sydney Chinese Dancing School held onto their attention and made entry into the exhibit for others hard and bodily. Ten minutes or so and the crowd dispersed as soon as they'd formed. Everyone was gone within seconds.

The elevators were working, but so were my legs and after climbing the stairs up into the aggressively powerful aroma of the second level...

death - the last taboo

The sense of smell is most tested even before you clear the clear way into the floorspace set aside for the exhibit on all things death.

Instead of finding a dead body festering in the air conditioned comfort I walked into a display of coffins. A hatched design, a spring onion, a cheap cardboard box and some rather ornate hardwood ones. All presumably without corpses inside. One can only hope for the full experience.

After you walk past the coffins you end up in a cold laboratory/morturary scene. If the hit from the outer was anything to go by - and it was - this section was like a steel capped kick to the head. Formaldehyde perhaps. Three different outfits were on show; a Jewish garb, a Muslim shroud and a plain suit. Nothing much, the body on the autopsy table proved lacking and only for props.

Past two heavy plastic doors and into a looping video of a 40kg piglet going through various stages of decay. Putrefaction to black putrefaction, then butyric fermentation and finally dry decay. There was no time lapse, only edited shots jumping to unmarked points in time. For those wishing to savour the moments, stills line the wall guiding you into a darkened section featuring tombstones and related worship implements of other sorts sitting atop high perches.

Encased in a glass box and illuminated by indirect light, a woman from Chacalutta, near Arica, Chile. In a fetal position and rather still it was comforting to realise that she'd been dead for some many many years, decades even centuries. Time had been rather kind to her, at least I assumed it was a female. Mummified to a fine detail the hairs on her scalp - which too is still intact - are clearly visible. She might have been an auburn chestnut or ginger. Maybe even blonde. Not more than a few feet away lies a hollowed out femur fashioned into a trumpet.

Other videos playing included that of an edited episode of cremation, talk of Zoroastrain - where a body is left for vultures to pick the meat clean as cremation and burial are out of the question - and a closer on the final segment with one focussed on mourning. Provided you started your journey toward the left, the plan was to have you walk through the various stages of death. From when you realise that you're dead, to the point where they either bury or burn you alive to the final stage, mourning.

Beyond that and past the sign that warned of the content within the cold walls, lights from dimmed hue graduated to a soft brightness... The End of the end.

Time spent in the Two Emperor's exhibit rounded out at thirty minutes but I think I must have spent near an hour breathing in all that I could at the dead exhibit. Speaking of which I passed a deathly looking Pia Miranda and her husband what makes sounds for aussie LoTel as they walked passed the Neanderthals.

Ethan Switch

Reviewed on Tuesday, 10 June 2003

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