At
times I’m able to subdue the ancient darkness that
always overtakes me on the path and
search for a form of servitude a
definite threat I
hear the footsteps of fear the
anxiety of the wind then
with my motionless weeping still
damp on
the bare ocean surface of my love I
build a calm and
enter into the ashes of the forests the
burning land with
exhaustion my mirror
The body ages. The body is preparing to die. No theory of time offers a reprieve here. Death and time were always in alliance. Time took away more or less slowly: death more or less suddenly.
John Berger, and our faces, my heart, brief as photos.
A recurring image in three of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ghost stories –Kairo, Sakebi, and Daguerrotype– is a human figure viewed through a curtain made from a translucent acrylic. One could read this image as one of a ‘life force’ that exists behind an artificial surface, or as a deposit of modern technology that contains organic or spectral ‘life.’
Felix Guattari: I would like to posit two questions. One is specific, while the other is very general. As for the former, when you reach this dimension of horizontality – when you are creeping on the ground – is this somehow connected with a “becoming-animal?” Is there anything like a shift away from an anthropocentric perspective? This is my first question. …
Tanaka: That’s a very difficult question. With regard to the horizontality you mentioned in your first question, when I decided to dance by myself, I started to do this by lying down. I questioned myself whether I could dance by lying down horizontally. I was also skeptical about the public’s point of view, because people believe that by simply standing and moving freely the body generates a dance, and this seems to me very problematic. And I was wondering about whether they would call this dancing or not. When I actually creep or lie down within an environment, what do they call me? It takes a lot of time to pursue questions about how I might resolve all these pressures from my surroundings and then bring my body to the next action. Lying down on the street has changed my sense of audition and the appearance of humans.
I have been horizontal from the very beginning, and later decided to creep on the ground; this was a very deliberate decision. In other words, I felt as though I was raising myself from the horizontal. Additionally, since my childhood, I have had this habit of seeing the world from a terrestrial viewpoint. That is, I have this desire to set my eyes nearest to the ground. This was first a feeling and then a source of wisdom.
countervisuality 