(Above) Ansuman Biswas has been described by some as "the David Blane of the artworld."
Manchester Museum’s bold plan to employ a ‘hermit’ to respond to its collection is about to come to fruition. Calcutta born artist Ansuman Biswas was yesterday revealed as the lucky man who will live in solitude in one of its remote storerooms.
Beginning on June 27 2009, the London based artist will be ensconced in the Museum’s Gothic tower for 40 days and 40 nights, during which time he will select 40 objects from a vast reserve collection.
Using an internet blog, he will talk about his chosen items and invite responses to his musings. The blog will also try to engage people in a wider debate about how and why museums collect and preserve objects, and why species and cultures become forgotten and extinct.
A new house for Mr Biswas?
According to the Museum, some of the chosen items will be “highly valued objects in terms of their academic significance, rarity or aesthetic beauty.” Others will be idiosyncratic selections that have been overlooked until now.
Since the Museum launched its search for a volunteer hermit in 2008, they have been inundated with applicants. The hermit's challenge was to confront environmental themes. Taking up this issue Biswas will reflect on the relationship of human beings to the natural world and ponder the inevitable extinction of the human race.
To help Biswas through this bleak confrontation, he will use meditation techniques and “respond by personally embodying this loss”. This will lead to a state where he is “symbolically dead, renouncing his own liberty and cutting himself off from all physical contact.”
Eventually, Biswas will put himself at the heart of the Museum’s collection as the ultimate exhibit.
Manchester Museum is home to a wide variety of live animals including frogs, toads, snakes and other reptiles and amphibians. One of the star attractions in the Museum is the T.rex, displayed in its pre-historic gallery.
Anyone concerned for the sanity of the Manchester Hermit need not worry. Biswas, who has been described as the “David Blane of the art world”, boasts a CV that includes a variety of bizarre escapades, including a spell as an ornamental hermit in the English countryside and ten days sealed in a box with no food or water.
His slightly more conventional artistic pursuits have involved designing underwater sculptures in the Red Sea and flying a real magic carpet in Russia.
The Manchester Hermit will be in residence at Manchester Museum from June 27 to August 5 2009.
