Landscapes with a Corpse
Can death be ‘grasped’ from this side of the river? Are we in a position to thrust ourselves into death through the eyes of life? What’s more, can any visual representation, recreation or even allegory of the outer world bring us closer to experiencing, both physically and emotionally, the nature of Thanatos? What do Izima Kaoru’s corpses mean to our hypertrophic gaze, with all this weight of visual references we carry on our backs?
Landscapes with a Corpse: Japanese and Western urban dwellings intermingle with sunflower fields, turbulent rivers, forests and restrooms. These are familiar landscapes. Corpses are familiar too, though referring to a distinct moment. We are here but the moment is elsewhere. There is an illogical spatial and temporal conjuring, alluding to the Barthesian ‘here-and-there’ and ‘now-and-then’, inherent in all photographic representation. As such, the dislocation in question opens up the photographic momentum to the dimension of the ‘elsewhere’. Once the gate of life is shut, the journey is irreversible. There is literally no coming back home. Yet, Kaoru's ongoing series misleads us with its serial character, as if death could be rehearsed, performed, apprehended.
Let us take a closer look at the three elements that comprise Izima Kaoru’s visual argument: death, corpses of beautiful young actresses posing as models and, last but not least, photography. Any attempt to deconstruct the rhetoric core of the image by detaching any of its ingredients, may well pave a way for a partially critical approach, alimented by the avidity of contemporary art theory for the Neoteric, but certainly fails to capture the way the artwork reaches out to our senses. This more or less happens when it comes to the research that has intended to shed light on the oeuvre of Izima Kaoru. Even if meticulously elaborated, existent writing has always tended to take just a part of it, never the whole. It is as if the pictures had to be dismantled in order to gain full power.
When attempting to trace the secret of Kaoru's art, scholars paradoxically build their approach upon a modernist-like conviction revolving around “what the artist has to say”, on a so-to-speak programmatic declaration of ideological claims capable of filling the pages of exhibition catalogues and justifying the allowance of the artwork into the institutional and academic communities. The aim here is to look for a novel envisioning of death, the ultimate taboo, as much for the Japanese as for progressive Western society; this is what Kaoru is after. But how Neoteric can an approach to death be, even if legitimized by sacred claims, when the image has the last word and this last word does not buy into the myth? Where does transgression lie, when any credible – in terms of its illusory potential – transportation to the other side is cancelled by the literariness of life and when the photographic momentum in itself becomes irremediably conditioned by a gaze already predetermined by the way others have seen and responded? What is at stake here is the impossibility of facing death with innocent eyes. Death in the eyes of the living can only be a metaphorical cathartic experience and its representation nothing but a deictically performing allegory from the living spectator and the artist’s privileged remoteness.
Photography and the written word. Without their corresponding explicatory captions, Kaoru’s precisely conceived photo shoots might still retain some of their illusory force as cinematic tableaux of prototypic life-endings. But the sort of staging Kaoru consciously and emphatically attempts, by employing exclusively Japanese actresses as his models, by asking them to stage the death of their dreams and through all these eponymous designers clothes with which these ‘fashion victims’ enthusiastically decide to ‘dress’ their death, condition our perception of his photographs. It would be pointless to speak solely about death within this very specific nest of visual references. The attention of the gaze shifts rapidly from the gesture to an easily predicted stylized drama of mannequin-like oriental beauties. Rather than death alone, the association of death and fashion is more explicit here than ever. Cinematic fiction and woman become accomplices to a narrative engaged with the materialist banality of the contemporary culture in a quite banal mode.
Far from performing an alien identity, the models of Landscape with a Corpse end up performing their own public masquerade for the sake of the camera. They are given the license to ‘die’ in a Louis Vuitton dress. Kaoru does not take any critical distance but rather celebrates the perception of his work on the grounds of this performing me, allowing for no sliding of meaning to take place. In this “simple act of personal journalism”, the subjects decide the final posture and take, and photography unveils itself as a participatory, pseudo-democratic process, in which aestheticising has the last word. Death has to have a reason and a name; death has to be a part of a cause-and-effect process. By means of a mechanical commemoration (the camera), we are led straight to immortality. As opposed to experiencing death, we end up experiencing a cathartic awareness of life, whereas the sincere neo-romantic aspiration of Kaoru is gobbled up by this contemporary consumption of death.
It would be easy to build an interpretation of Landscape with a Corpse based on the Barthes or Sontag line of thought, according to which all photographic stills become reminiscent of the moment that flew away once and for all. Yet it would be interesting to negotiate an alternative relation with Kaoru's ongoing series. Today, that “questioning” expresses our discontent with photography, the issue is to become engaged with analytical propositions not just for theory's sake, but rather to come back to the basics, to ask ourselves and wonder how unpretentious our attitude is, when dealing with these images. Do they speak to our hearts? Do they help us reconsider our attitude to death? Do they contribute to a better understanding of life and of photography?
Twenty years ago these very same pictures might have exercised a distinct impact on us. Twenty years ago they would have of course been produced differently. Today, amidst everything done and seen, the rules of reception and technology are set up against an inflated cultural theory. Death allows us liberty as a free-of-conventions space where anything fits in. No one has been there. Following this, Landscape with a Corpse, with its female corpses in a mort regidis posture, might equally work well for those who wish to map out how exoticism still applies to western audiences in terms of female fetishism and voyeurism, as much as for those who put their emphasis on signifiers such as the fashion system and otherwise. Did it all start with Duchamp’s Readymade or is “the original” to be found in the eccentricities of Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton thirty years ago?
Unmoved, we lie here before the glass. We feel the intrinsic need not just to ask questions, but ask new questions. Still, as Derrida once said, “death is in another place” and these corpses are nothing but empty bodies. Wide-open, their eyes express a profound, vain detachment from the world. Once again, we return to Plato’s cave, while Kaoru’s camera becomes, in the words of Yuko Hasegawa, a “conveyer of mode”, a lyric signified of the trivial contemporary mode.
Text by Natasha Christia
All Rights Reserved.
Published in 1000 Words 4/April, 2009
Can death be ‘grasped’ from this side of the river? Are we in a position to thrust ourselves into death through the eyes of life? What’s more, can any visual representation, recreation or even allegory of the outer world bring us closer to experiencing, both physically and emotionally, the nature of Thanatos? What do Izima Kaoru’s corpses mean to our hypertrophic gaze, with all this weight of visual references we carry on our backs?
Landscapes with a Corpse: Japanese and Western urban dwellings intermingle with sunflower fields, turbulent rivers, forests and restrooms. These are familiar landscapes. Corpses are familiar too, though referring to a distinct moment. We are here but the moment is elsewhere. There is an illogical spatial and temporal conjuring, alluding to the Barthesian ‘here-and-there’ and ‘now-and-then’, inherent in all photographic representation. As such, the dislocation in question opens up the photographic momentum to the dimension of the ‘elsewhere’. Once the gate of life is shut, the journey is irreversible. There is literally no coming back home. Yet, Kaoru's ongoing series misleads us with its serial character, as if death could be rehearsed, performed, apprehended.
Let us take a closer look at the three elements that comprise Izima Kaoru’s visual argument: death, corpses of beautiful young actresses posing as models and, last but not least, photography. Any attempt to deconstruct the rhetoric core of the image by detaching any of its ingredients, may well pave a way for a partially critical approach, alimented by the avidity of contemporary art theory for the Neoteric, but certainly fails to capture the way the artwork reaches out to our senses. This more or less happens when it comes to the research that has intended to shed light on the oeuvre of Izima Kaoru. Even if meticulously elaborated, existent writing has always tended to take just a part of it, never the whole. It is as if the pictures had to be dismantled in order to gain full power.
When attempting to trace the secret of Kaoru's art, scholars paradoxically build their approach upon a modernist-like conviction revolving around “what the artist has to say”, on a so-to-speak programmatic declaration of ideological claims capable of filling the pages of exhibition catalogues and justifying the allowance of the artwork into the institutional and academic communities. The aim here is to look for a novel envisioning of death, the ultimate taboo, as much for the Japanese as for progressive Western society; this is what Kaoru is after. But how Neoteric can an approach to death be, even if legitimized by sacred claims, when the image has the last word and this last word does not buy into the myth? Where does transgression lie, when any credible – in terms of its illusory potential – transportation to the other side is cancelled by the literariness of life and when the photographic momentum in itself becomes irremediably conditioned by a gaze already predetermined by the way others have seen and responded? What is at stake here is the impossibility of facing death with innocent eyes. Death in the eyes of the living can only be a metaphorical cathartic experience and its representation nothing but a deictically performing allegory from the living spectator and the artist’s privileged remoteness.
Photography and the written word. Without their corresponding explicatory captions, Kaoru’s precisely conceived photo shoots might still retain some of their illusory force as cinematic tableaux of prototypic life-endings. But the sort of staging Kaoru consciously and emphatically attempts, by employing exclusively Japanese actresses as his models, by asking them to stage the death of their dreams and through all these eponymous designers clothes with which these ‘fashion victims’ enthusiastically decide to ‘dress’ their death, condition our perception of his photographs. It would be pointless to speak solely about death within this very specific nest of visual references. The attention of the gaze shifts rapidly from the gesture to an easily predicted stylized drama of mannequin-like oriental beauties. Rather than death alone, the association of death and fashion is more explicit here than ever. Cinematic fiction and woman become accomplices to a narrative engaged with the materialist banality of the contemporary culture in a quite banal mode.
Far from performing an alien identity, the models of Landscape with a Corpse end up performing their own public masquerade for the sake of the camera. They are given the license to ‘die’ in a Louis Vuitton dress. Kaoru does not take any critical distance but rather celebrates the perception of his work on the grounds of this performing me, allowing for no sliding of meaning to take place. In this “simple act of personal journalism”, the subjects decide the final posture and take, and photography unveils itself as a participatory, pseudo-democratic process, in which aestheticising has the last word. Death has to have a reason and a name; death has to be a part of a cause-and-effect process. By means of a mechanical commemoration (the camera), we are led straight to immortality. As opposed to experiencing death, we end up experiencing a cathartic awareness of life, whereas the sincere neo-romantic aspiration of Kaoru is gobbled up by this contemporary consumption of death.
It would be easy to build an interpretation of Landscape with a Corpse based on the Barthes or Sontag line of thought, according to which all photographic stills become reminiscent of the moment that flew away once and for all. Yet it would be interesting to negotiate an alternative relation with Kaoru's ongoing series. Today, that “questioning” expresses our discontent with photography, the issue is to become engaged with analytical propositions not just for theory's sake, but rather to come back to the basics, to ask ourselves and wonder how unpretentious our attitude is, when dealing with these images. Do they speak to our hearts? Do they help us reconsider our attitude to death? Do they contribute to a better understanding of life and of photography?
Twenty years ago these very same pictures might have exercised a distinct impact on us. Twenty years ago they would have of course been produced differently. Today, amidst everything done and seen, the rules of reception and technology are set up against an inflated cultural theory. Death allows us liberty as a free-of-conventions space where anything fits in. No one has been there. Following this, Landscape with a Corpse, with its female corpses in a mort regidis posture, might equally work well for those who wish to map out how exoticism still applies to western audiences in terms of female fetishism and voyeurism, as much as for those who put their emphasis on signifiers such as the fashion system and otherwise. Did it all start with Duchamp’s Readymade or is “the original” to be found in the eccentricities of Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton thirty years ago?
Unmoved, we lie here before the glass. We feel the intrinsic need not just to ask questions, but ask new questions. Still, as Derrida once said, “death is in another place” and these corpses are nothing but empty bodies. Wide-open, their eyes express a profound, vain detachment from the world. Once again, we return to Plato’s cave, while Kaoru’s camera becomes, in the words of Yuko Hasegawa, a “conveyer of mode”, a lyric signified of the trivial contemporary mode.
Text by Natasha Christia
All Rights Reserved.
Published in 1000 Words 4/April, 2009
