Is Empathy only present if you are well and well fed?

Starvation Diet. What is it?

Mmmmmm chocolate, Mmmmmm sandwich, Mmmmmm doughnuts, Mmmmmm beer. Spoilt for choice. Trying to resist. When I resist I put the money in a pot. When the pot is full I send it (the money, not the pot) to somebody who needs it to survive. The art comes about through the documentation of the process, here and in other places. There is no end to this project.


4 Dec 2009

Setting up the starvation diet website

I have been doing the diet for a few weeks now. I have £23.33 in the pot. I don't know if I've lost weight, I don't posses as set of scales, maybe, if this was to be scientific that was an oversight. But never mind I'm an artist not a scientist. I shall appraise myself ascetically and say yes I am much less chubby around the back. I wanted to make this process part of my art work and let people know what I am up to. I set about creating a website to look like a diet site, all smiles and people full of vigour, pictures of food you can get away with, all pink and fluffy and friendly. Most of these sites must be aimed at women or very feminine men. They are invariable littered with pictures of women, they have round corners, sprinkles and soft womb like colours. My site has turned out distasteful. It has all these features but along one side is the picture of the starving child you see at the bottom of this blog. It may be a bit much for some people. Who wants to see a picture of a burger alongside the exposed rib cage of a barely alive child. It seems perverse, as our mouths naturally salivate at the site of food, our eyes are drawn to the deprivation. I think I'll upload it anyway. You can see it here if you want. http://www.bethbarlow.com/completed_pages/starvation_diet.html

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