Take the 2018 case of the venture capitalist Martin Shkreli, who after obtaining the manufacturing license for the antiparasitic drug Daraprim, immediately its price by a factor of 56 (from US$13.5 to $750 per pill), leading for him to be considered at one point the most hated man in America. One does not have to dive too far into recent history for examples. Today, medicine and life saving treatments continue to be co-opted by financial power structures that dominate the patent industry, where monopolies on patents for life saving drugs and treatments proliferate that create barriers to widespread access to health care and affordable medicine. The result was nonetheless a sign that powerful forces can and often do impede human access to important and potentially life saving medical developments. Petr Davydtchenko, ‘Perftoran’, exhibition view, image courtesy of Dušan Josip SmodejĪs a result of the scientist’s strange death, clinical trials of perftoran stopped, although by then the point was made that perftoran could revolutionize some areas of medicine. The exhibition includes the censored bat video, truisms and wall texts relating to Big Pharma’s monopolistic grip on medicine and human health, documentary videos, an assembled alchemist lab featuring propolis and apicultural materials, and an installation of 13 hazmat suits designed by FOUNDRY UNIFORM specifically for this project. The title of the exhibition – Perftoran– draws on the tragic story surrounding a Soviet scientist who developed a blood emulsion formula, it’s brilliant phosphorescent colour earning it the nickname ‘blue blood.’ After its inventor Professor Beloyartsev won a major state-sanctioned prize from the USSR in 1985, he was placed under investigation by Soviet authorities who accused the scientist of illegally procuring money and equipment for research and development, resulting in his detainment and eventual death by a mysterious suicide. Entitled Perftoran (5 July – 30 August) curated by Maurizio Coccia, the exhibition builds on Davydtchenko’s long standing interest in performative responses to food consumption and the abuses of progress, only here extended to the affects power of pharmaceutical multinationals. One artist, Petr Davydtchenko, responded by eating a live bat in a video that went viral this past June, a video that has since been censored from the artist’s YouTube channel.Īccording to the artist’s press statement, the video was made to protest medical patents by companies like Gilead and Pfizer, large pharmaceutical companies who “‘refused to take part in a World Health Organisation (WHO) proposal that would ensure that any medicine would be patent-free and fairly distributed to those in need.” Not long after the artist’s bat-eating viral went down, an exhibition of Davydtchenko’s works opened at the Palazzo Lucarini Contemporary arts center in Trevi, Italy. When the virus that gripped the world in December became a full blown global pandemic this year, many artists wondered how or even whether to respond at all. The onset of the coronavirus has engendered numerous responses from artists all over the world, some strange, some odd, others radical.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |