The Heaven and Hell Complex

Part 1

 In the summer of 2009, I became a casual acquaintance with a man named Douglas Day.

He was a Canadian interior designer and from what he told me he did very well for himself.
We met at the Otter Creek's Golf Club in Ontario when I signed up to become a member.
I was touring Canada at the time, as I worked as a curator for the St Ive's Gallery in Cornwell, but decided to stretch my legs and visit my old home country for any fresh young inspiring artists. Though Douglas Day was far from being young, he certainly had the enthusiasm of an eccentric creative mind that bought my intrigue.

As stated before, he worked as an interior designer, but wanted to become an installation artist. He told me that in fact he had been working on a rather tedious piece inside his own house (or at least in one of his rooms, as it turns out Douglas practically had a luxury lodge house all to himself).

I was greatly interested about this art piece of his, and asked me to keep me posted, as he too was hoping his connection with me would get him some sort of recognition in the world of modern art.

A few more months passed and we frequently visited the golf society and had a chat over lunches, but he seemed very agitated during me questioning about how his art piece was coming along. He seemed completely adamant to tell me anything, and would try to change the subject, or just simply telling me " I came across a few hiccups here and there..." or "I hadn't done anything about it lately..."

I thought things were going nowhere with this man, and that waiting around for this piece to be finished was a waste of time, since he seemed to be hardly bothered about even working on it.
I only stuck around him because I was intrigued by his ideas and his themes he wished to show in future art projects.

He told me how he was perplexed by today's society having two completely parallel ways of thinking about, well, just about any topic imaginable, and never seeming to consider any sort of middle ground. Conditioned human conflict, he called it. He told me that even though we like to talk about peace, innocence, justice and morals, there's always that sense in the back of all our minds to keep some sort of primal conflict going with our fellow man.
That people actually want to keep divided so that they can keep on fighting. Because when one has no opposition in life, then life itself will have no real meaning to that person, especially to a human who is driven by competition for superiority over the elements, and even each other.

I thought this ideal of his was rather interesting, though I did wonder further about how his installation could possibly represent this. I began to envision a lot of different possibilities. The works of the Chapman brothers came to mind a lot during are discussions, and I wondered if he shared the same grisly and morbid take on social commentary as those two.
This didn't turn out to be the case.
In fact, he seemed to take his idea of separation and conflict in a much more literal sense.
One I could barely have comprehended.
I still don't think I can fully grasp what happened, even as I try to recall it as I type this out.
It is an interesting tale for sure.
But just as horrifying.