Real pain in the arts

TV Review: 'Art is what you can get away with," Andy Warhol once said. This tongue-in-god-knows-where quote came crashing to mind during Artshock, a series of documentaries by artist Jake Chapman which explored extreme examples of contemporary art.

Unsurprisingly, the folks at Channel 4, bless 'em, were to thank for the four-part gore-before-bed fest, specialising as they do in visceral thrills around midnight. The first programme dealt with, eh, the prejudice of positivity, humanistic transcendences and the banality of the lukewarm chattering classes. With that safely out of the way, the performance artists then smeared YR sauce all over their bottoms.

The power of extreme images lies, apparently, in their ability to shock: shock a neurotic with the subject of their neurosis and you'll free the psyche, the first programme argued. But attempting to shake up society through video footage of garden gnomes (with penises where their noses used to be) lathering armchairs with tomato ketchup, as witnessed in the programme, doesn't quite cut the mustard. It's not the puerility of the gesture so much as the indefatigable egotism of the artist that somehow makes you want to rush out and embrace the Horlick's.

Part two of Artshock, Human Canvas, included "gorgeous and lavish" bloodletting from artist Kira O'Reilly, who invites the public to cut her naked body with razor-blades. There were also some "housewife elevations", in which artists did the ironing while suspended from hooks embedded in their flesh and attached to the ceiling, and "body modification", the art of surgically implanting objects below the surface of the skin to change the appearance of the subject, with one convert sporting a couple of underdeveloped antlers under his pate.

Ron Athey, who, at the height of Aids paranoia, employed "public scarification" to challenge society's response to the disease, was possibly the most engaging of the programme's interviewees. Athey (every tattooed inch of him) provocatively and intelligently asked what degree of mutilation is publicly acceptable. Plastic surgery? Piercings? The debate was enlivened by footage of Athey crawling backwards towards a group of spectators with the sun (or some other kind of ultraviolet light) shining out of his highly decorated anus.

Of course, none of this is new, we were reminded; body art and inducing ecstasy through pain has always been part of our cultural and spiritual expression. And although the programme kindly told us that the gut-wrenching discomfort we experience when we watch people self-mutilate is entirely chemical, this is one hit I think I could have lived without.

Anyway, if mortification of the flesh is your thing, you can always look back with fondness on Paddy's Days of old, as Podge and Rodge were moved to do this week: a barefoot hike up Croagh Patrick followed by a nice ESB strike, they cackled.

The cutting edge of Irish science was probed this week in Flashes of Brilliance, a look at the work of our burgeoning and talented research community. Broadcast to coincide with the publication of Irish Times science editor Dick Ahlstrom's book of the same name, the documentary focused on some of the men and women who are changing the face of Irish science with projects in areas as diverse as stem-cell research and the mitochondrial DNA of horses.

Among those whose creativity was under scrutiny was Dr Emmeline Hill, leader of a Trinity College Dublin research group which has discovered "errors" in the bloodlines of thoroughbred horses. Her findings would doubtless have been of interest to the ecstatic racing enthusiasts who have been roaring their well-trimmed hats off in Cheltenham this week - pity they'll have missed it.

"People will invest up to €10 million for a good pedigree," Hill said, and with that kind of money changing hands in the Irish horseracing industry, "art and faith" and the stud book may no longer suffice. Her team has detected bloodline errors dating as far back as the establishment of the thoroughbred industry 300 years ago and Hill believes that, through studying mitochondrial DNA, she can give a far more reliable assessment of the athleticism of a horse. This, apparently, is all down to how it adapts to low oxygen supply during extreme exercise, which explains why some unfortunate nags harrumph towards the finishing line looking as if they need a bath and a lie-down while others simply gallop into the winner's enclosure.

"Science is less visible but more tangible than art," we were told, and although a lot more relevant than a bunch of guys doing the washing up while hanging out of the ceiling, Flashes of Brilliance moved so fast across the spectrum of research projects that at times it felt more like a promo film or a funding application than television. Nevertheless, I now know - and wish I didn't - that each of us has at least two kilograms of live bacteria in our guts. I know too that scientists as well as artists work within "zones of inhibition". And I know that despite Ireland's comparatively small size, a new wave of Irish innovation is having an impact on the world of science.

Oh teddy pom pom, sweet sugar dumpling. It's difficult to see how avant-garde art can possibly shock any more, in a world of reality TV and tabloid news. While I was waiting (without a huge amount of excitement, I must admit) for It's Me or the Dog to kick off, a Channel 4 newscaster diligently confided that a man had been arrested for biting another man's ears off. This was rapidly followed by a deeply depressing commercial for something called a "Mother's Night Off Chicken Lickin' Bucket". The cumulative effect of these two items was enough to make canine brat Teddy Pom Pom, a highly coiffured floor-mop with bulbous eyes, subject of the awaited programme, and his owner, Mandy (who, in true Thurber-esque fashion, looked just like him), an absolute barrel of laughs. It was hysterical and bananas and if you didn't laugh you'd weep.

Each week on It's Me or the Dog, doggy psychologist Victoria Stilwell attempts to restore order in households where the mutt is out of control. In the case of Teddy Pom Pom, who had come to see himself as the last emperor of the family bungalow, her intervention couldn't have been timelier. The aforementioned Mandy's conjugal relations with her husband, firefighter Martin, had been severely compromised for more than a year because Teddy PP bit Martin whenever he tried to get into the marital scratcher. And, in a tactical follow-up that made the US marines look like Santa's little helpers, the darling fur-ball would then urinate copiously on Martin's side of the bed.

"This is Teddy Pom Pom's house and you are all very privileged to live here," was Stilwell's interpretation of Teddy PP's attitude when she first visited the house. Mandy was, seemingly, not bothered by this state of affairs, remaining doggedly oblivious to her husband's discomfiture and blithely indifferent to the fact that Teddy PP liked to nibble her discarded knickers.

Tearfully and reluctantly, Mandy eventually allowed the dog to be disciplined. When her "baby" had been returned to his basket and her spouse had reclaimed his place in their bed, Mandy bravely thanked the triumphant Stilwell, though she looked bereft. But Teddy Pom Pom was no pussycat - as soon as Martin was out of the house "the little dog with the big attitude" reclaimed his old territory.

In a rather strange and tedious linguistic experiment TG4 this week inveigled a bunch of "kind-of nearly celebrities" to live together for a week in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in an attempt either to freeze them to death or imbue them with a cúpla focal. In Ní Gaeilgeoir Mé, an extremely low-tech Big Brother impersonation, the public were invited to vote out the contestant who was making the least effort to expand their vocabulary. Although presented by the vivacious, competent and effortlessly friendly Aoife Ní Thuairisg, the idea felt as flat as a rainy Sunday kicking your heels in the bean an tí's back bedroom. Go-karting blindfolded around Eddie Irvine's indoor track was one of the highlights of the series for the participants.

"They should have central heating in here," moaned writer Marisa Mackle, clutching on to her Prada handbag as if to the pelt of a drowning Celtic tiger. As Gaeilge, Marisa, le do thoil!