David Cronenberg presents this year in Cannes a film about vital organs as a work of art. And to lead by example, the 79-year-old Canadian filmmaker has put up for sale an NFT of the kidney stones he expelled from his body.
For two years the director of films like Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Naked Lunch and A History of Violencehad several renal colic.
“My doctor told me, ‘I’d like to keep your kidney stones to do a chemical analysis and see if there’s something wrong with your diet,'” Cronenberg explained to his fans on crypto art platform Superrare.
“No way. I find them too beautiful to be destroyed,” the filmmaker replied. “Art always has the last word,” he says.
So he gathered the 18 pebbles and took a picture of them. “Inner Beauty” is for sale on the crypto art platform Superrare for just over three weeks, and has a “reserve price” of 10 ethereum (digital money that would be equivalent to about $30,300 at current prices). That means the “non-fungible token” (NFT) auction, limited to 24 hours, will start automatically from the moment someone puts those 10 ethereum on the table.
I find them too pretty to be destroyed.
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This is not Cronenberg’s first NFT, last year he released a 1-minute short filmin which he appears next to a very faithful, and disturbing, reproduction of his corpse and sold it for 25 ethereum.
The decision to sell that NFT of kidney stones stems from the movie ‘Dead Ringers’ (1988), explained the director. Jeremy Irons simultaneously plays two twin brothers, gynecologists who share everything in life, including women. “At one point, one of the twins says to the other: ‘I don’t understand why there are no beauty contests about the inside of bodies'”Cronenberg recalls.
Another topic: ‘Veneciafrenia’, a provocative farce by the Spanish filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia
“‘Inner Beauties’ Is Too”a reference to my new movie, ‘Crimes of the Future’with Viggo Mortensen, about a ‘performance’ artist whose art involves live surgery on his own body,” he adds. That production is competing for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes festival (May 17-28).
The plot focuses on a future where people are experimenting with their bodies, there is no pain and the environment has become a synthetic and strange space.
Also starring in Crimes of the Future: Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart and Scott Speedman.
You can read: ‘The Northman’: a Viking thirsty for revenge
Cronenberg’s landing in the world of NFTs is not the first for a filmmaker. Another disturbing film maker, American David Lynch, did a joint project with the rock group Interpol in October last year.
For now, Cronenberg “didn’t indicate anything in particular about whether he would send a physical copy (of “Inner beauties”) but normally that is what is done,” said a spokesman for Superrare, about this this “body treasure” with cinematographic halo .
AFP
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