Did you know that human saliva contains a chemical that has pain killing properties? I certainly didn’t until I encountered the work of the Serbian born, Singapore based artist Ana Prvacki. For the Biennale of Sydney, Prvacki created a musical performance work that explores the provision of a pain eliminiating service as well as the tangible by-products of music production. As a result of playing her flute for a period of two hours, Prvacki produced an amount of saliva that was collected and then transformed into a music-derived pain killer through a simple alchemical process. The music-derived pain killer was then used to create a wet wipe product called salivesalve which was then wrapped in shiny foil packaging exactly the same as that of commercially available wet wipes.

I have seen plenty of animals licking their wounds but hadn’t really stopped to consider what sort of an effect the saliva would have on the wounds. According to an article from New Scientist magazine, a chemical found in saliva called opiorphin has pain killing properties that are up to six times more powerful than morphine. “The substance was so successful at blocking pain that, in a test involving a platform of upended pins, the rats needed six times as much morphine as opiorphin to render them oblivious to the pain of standing on the needle points”[1]. Not only does saliva have pain killing properties but, according to a group of scientists from Netherlands, saliva also has healing properties. The scientists published their findings in the Journal of Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in which they revealed that they had found that a chemical in saliva called histatin greatly accelerates the healing of wounds. Who would have know that saliva was so useful.

Because the use of the artist’s actual saliva is illegal, Prvacki worked a with a chemist to create a chemical reproduction of spit. The jars of spit that were collected during the performance will, however, be sold to museums and private collectors as a limited edition artwork. Prvacki’s use of her own spit as a work of art reminds me of the work of Piere Manzoni who, in May 1961, put 30 grams of his own feces in each of 90 cans which were then signed, mounted and sold as works of art (one of which can be viewed at the Art Gallery of New South Wales as part of the Biennale). Each of the cans were labeled as “100% pure artist’s shit” in English, French, Italian and German and were sold for the price of their weight in gold according to the daily market price of gold. In 1961 a tin would have cost around $35.20 however the value of the tins has far exceeded the price of gold to the point where a tin was sold in May 2007 for US$165,500. Figure that one out!!.

I did manage to pick up a few packets of salivesalve which I shall refrain from using in case the market for artist’s saliva takes the same road as artist’s shit. If you want one now I will take offers over $10,000. Any takers?

[1]Natural-born painkiller found in human saliva by Andy Coghlan - 13 November 2006, NewScientist.com news service

Nicholas Forrest is an art market analyst, art critic and journalist based in Sydney, Australia. He is the founder of http://www.artmarketblog.com, writes the art column for the magazine Antiques and Collectibles for Pleasure and Profit and contributes to many other publications.