Living Dead Dolls

Was looking online and came across these dolls - they reminded me of Karen Justl's work, with their white faces. They were called 'handmades and you could phone to have them customly made. They come in a coffin-shaped box and have their own death certificate. I think it is a play on what is a live and what is dead? This state in the middle which follows vampires and other 'evil' monsters.

Looking at the website, I read that the first doll that was based on a human was Lizzie Borden. She was thought to be a murderer and they still dont know if this is true or not. A little like Jack the Ripper.

'On August 4, 1892, Andrew Borden had gone into town to do his usual rounds at the bank and post office. He returned home at about 10:45 a.m. Lizzie Borden found his body about 30 minutes later.

According to the testimony of Borden maid, Bridget Sullivan, Ms. Borden's stepmother Abby Durfee Gray, was lying down in her room on the third floor of the house shortly after 11:00 a.m. when she heard Lizzie call to her, saying someone had killed her father; his body was found slumped on a couch in the downstairs sitting room. Andrew Borden's face was turned to the right hand side, apparently at ease, as if he were asleep.Shortly thereafter, while Lizzie Borden was being tended by neighbors and the family doctor, Sullivan discovered the body of Mrs. Borden upstairs in the guest bedroom. Mr. and Mrs. Borden had both been killed by blows from a hatchet, which in the case of Andrew Borden, not only crushed his skull but cleanly split his left eyeball'

I find this story very interesting, to know they still have not solved the mysteries of what happened. The trace of a killer, but no killer to fully convict. Was it right convict Lizzie Borden?

These dolls are alike many other dolls - all dolls have different cultures and backgrounds, suiting different people from different cultures and who have different feelings and thoughts. The idea though, of a doll based on someone? I read in an article of a man who lost his wife last week in the paper. He loved her and missed her so much, he made a sex doll to look like her, so that he could carry on making love to it. Something to me here, feels slightly wrong. They are not allowing themselves to get over the loss. He is holding on to her and not moving on in his life. Not letting her go. Another reason - many females cant have children. Some have been known to buy the dolls, so it feels like they have children. Again, this is where emotion has taken over the brain. They perhaps dont want to come to the conclusion they cant have children and therefore have to refer to using a doll. (very life-like as with the work of the artist Els Oosema - on blog). Is there something wrong in this? I think i will look more into this perhaps.

Little Ottik is a 2000 surrealist film by a Czech couple named Jan Svankmajer and Eva Svankmajerova. It is a live action with stock motion animation. It mixed that reality and fatasy world. At first it is a film about a couple who cant have children and so the ladies husband finds a tree stump that looks like a human figure. he cuts it erms and legs and gives it to his wife. However, as she is tramatised by the fact she cant have children, she see's it as a real child and dresses it, and feeds it. She fakes her own pregnancy to tohers and sppeds up the point she 'gives birth'. Their neighbours daughter reads a fairytale of this story and is suspicious as people are disappearing. The little Ottik ets food and is always hungry and starts eating the cat and then people, getting bigger and bigger.

So this film shows that feeling some woman can have when they are not able to give birth. It also has that realism but fantasy. It crosses both the worlds like the artist Debra Gavant. Maybe this is what dolls are in a way - that drift between game and reality, real and fantasy. As i have said previously, this fantasy idea has come up many a time in my work. Perhaps i need to work on this? Before it was about escaping reality? But perhaps it is more to do with my imagination and me wanting to play, wanting to be a child?