Day: June 3, 2016

[gallery] Patrick Villas

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Patrick Villas is a contemporary Belgian born sculptor who is currently working in France. He studied drawing and painting at the School of Fine Arts of Antwerp. He is a self-taught sculptor, spending hours at the Antwerp Zoo to watch the cats. This same zoo that in 2002 commissioned a jaguar for its gardens. He is an animal sculptor in the tradition of Rembrandt Bugatti, he developed a varied bestiary but the most striking works are undoubtedly the big cats that he likes to observe at the Antwerp zoo. These are an opportunity for him to study the different feline postures, their movement and behavior.

He begins by working on the skeleton, building the internal frame of the feline so to clear the lines of force of the animal can then be seen. His technique has evolved in recent years to appear more abstract, by using more diverse materials. The artist remains at the boundary between abstraction and figuration. The pattern is present but less intelligible.

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Pure cacao, the not-so-new drug

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The man behind the "chocolate shooter" is Belgian chocolatier Dominique Persoone. His company, The Chocolate Line, makes a device that is basically a tiny catapult, with two small, spring-loaded spoons that fling cocoa powder into the nostrils.
The man behind the “chocolate shooter” is Belgian chocolatier Dominique Persoone.
His company, The Chocolate Line, makes a device that is basically a tiny catapult,
with two small, spring-loaded spoons that fling cocoa powder into the nostrils.

An unusual new craze has been hitting dance floors across the world over the past couple of years – and no, we’re not talking about twerking. In an attempt to get high without breaking any laws or putting dangerous substances into their bodies, revelers have turned to snorting chocolate. The trend appears to have originated in Berlin, where raw cacao has been served in place of alcohol or more conventional illicit drugs. More recently, a number of rave venues across Europe and the US have begun offering the substance in the form of powder, pills or as a drink.

You could argue, of course, that the craze actually started way before the German capital established itself as the hipster capital of the world, as cacao is well known to have been widely used by pre-Columbian civilizations like the Aztecs and the Mayans. Considered to have divine properties, the seeds of the cacao tree were often used during rituals and ceremonies in order to elevate participants to a state of ecstasy – which, in many ways, is exactly what it is now once again being used for.

Exactly how effective cacao is at getting people high has not yet been established, although there are a number of reasons why it might work. For starters, it contains endorphins as well as a chemical called tyrosine, which is a precursor to dopamine. Since both endorphins and dopamine are natural neurotransmitters known to induce feelings of pleasure, it’s unsurprising that people have been reporting that snocolate helps to elevate their mood. Cacao is also rich in antioxidants such as epicatechin, which increases blood flow to the brain and the muscles, giving people both a physical and an emotional kick that could help them dance for longer. Since epicatechin has also been shown to protect neurons and improve cognitive function, this is clearly a preferable option to other dance-fueling substances like cocaine and MDMA, even though cacao is unlikely to match the high generated by these drugs.

However, this shouldn’t be taken to mean that snorting cacao is necessarily safe. Understandably, there is no scientific evidence regarding the safety profile of nasal cacao, as it’s never really been high on any researcher’s list. Yet as a general rule, it’s a good idea to think of the nose as a one-way system, and that while things may regularly come out of it, sending material the other way and up towards the brain is probably not a wise move.

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