Collaboration …
Sweeney and Knox through their independents research of genetic intervention of the body and the concept of the postmodern hero respectively will collaboratively explore in a contemporary socio-urban context the fundamental philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche is famous for his rejection of what he calls "slave morality" (which he felt reflected the inverse of the "will to power" and a perversion of useful altruism); his attacks on Christianity (a character in one of his works declared that "God is dead"); his origination of the Übermensch concept (translated as "Overman" or "Superman") in only one of his books; his embrace of a sort of a-rationalism; and something he called "the Will to Power" (Wille zur Macht).

Nietzsche was strongly influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer and his concept of "the Will to live". H L Mencken's book on Nietzsche described his work as an early effort to reconcile the philosophical implications of Charles Darwin's "survival of the fittest" evolutionary theory with contemporary moral and ethical systems. Nietzsche (or was it Mencken?) greatly disliked Darwin and his idea of "the survival of the fittest". In many respects, his thinking anticipated the "heredity" side of the ongoing debate about which has more influence on human behaviour: learning Vs heredity in the modern discipline of psychology ("irrationalism" in human behaviour typically stems from genetic / instinctively-derived impulses).

Nietzsche's thoughts also anticipated the "biological world view" and genetic interpretation of social behaviour in the modern discipline of socio-biology (c.f. one can find updated "Nietzsche" in A New Morality From Science: Beyondism by Dr. Raymond Cattell, which draws from concepts elucidated in Socio-biology: The New Synthesis by Harvard professor Dr. Edward Wilson as well as other emergent disciplines such as "medical anthropology." Nietzsche's concept of breeding upwards towards the "higher man" is indirectly addressed in biological interpretations of human history, such as Dr. Elmer Pendell's Why Civilizations Self-Destruct or Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West).

His photographic studies capture the regalia and national pride and formulate a socio-cultural commentary of the societal ideologies of a ‘hero’ in contemporary life. The decrepitude of the veterans, who stand proud, are living history and human canon of a ‘hero’. The cognitions of Nietzsche's ‘Superman’ is contrasted to the sharp reality of the age of these veterans; when the uniforms and medals are removed each are OAPs.
(www.tonyknox.org.uk)

The sentience of each human life is denoted in the structure of the portrait secured together with nothing but cotton; analogous to how soldiers are sutured and the vulnerability of flesh. The tin solider as a portrait is a critique of the imbalance of human worth to the dictates of power. Flesh is measured in no more than a scrap metal. The digital photographs reproduced and scattered on the floor align the governmental policies and statutes that determine socio-political and scientific policy and legislation that influence the lives of all humans. Thus, reduced to bureaucracy of paper.
(www.gaynorevelynsweeney.co.uk)