"Naked"

On Tuesday our class took a trip up to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.  Now before I get into the art piece I choose to review for this week's blog entry I would like to mention how wonderful riding the bus was.  The joys of public transportation are so numerous.  I read HG Wells's 'Time Machine', napped, talked with friends and all the while the bus plugged on toward the cities.  The trip went so quickly and I didn't have to worry about where to park, directions, gas, traffic, any of it.  All I had to do was sit back and enjoy the ride.  Why we are so concerned about spending our dollars on buses, trains, and trams I will never understand.  I only hope that this type of transportation will become more readily available in my lifetime.

Now on to the art!!

This image shows the feather covered animal hide looking material that surrounded Eiko and Koma's "Naked" exhibition art.  The sculpture was set against a corner of the gallery with the two exposed sides covered with this stiff, textured cloth.  Through the holes one could see into a dark room, yellow light illuminating two nude figures laying in the center on a bed of dark feathers.  On one side you could enter the room and sit along the edge of the tattered wall on a couple benches.  

From there you could watch the art slowly play out in front of you.  The floor on which the nest rested appeared to be covered in dirt.  From the ceiling, dim yellow stage lights illuminated the couple while bits of mangled black material shifted in the breeze just below the bulbs, upsetting the steady angle of the beams.  The silence in the room was broken only by the drip of water.  Scattered in the darkness, drops thudded against the packed dirt floor.  The space around the artists was so black it was hard to tell where the room ended.  With nothing else to draw your attention, your focus was ensnared by the people slowly shifting in front of you.

My goal was to sit in that room and see if I could work out the meaning of this piece.  I wrote notes and rolled over the various implications in my mind.  After I give you my thoughts I am going to read the brochure I picked up from the museum and see what the artists have to say about their piece.

I think the thing that captured me the most was the way the couple shifted in the nest.  Their movements were slow, lethargic, and restricted.  Much like how something moves when it is first born, or when it is moments from death. The actors shifted using their backs to move themselves instead of their arms, as if too weak to utilize them properly.  They were naked and the make-up made them look so pale.  Every hint of color was covered. 

I spent a long time wondering if they were meant to look really old or really young.  I finally decided that the sculpture is not addressing birth, but death.  The darkness makes them seem so alone, trapped in the feeble struggle of their final moments.  The feathers, not like the warm nest of an infant, but as if shed from the decaying body of a giant raptor, embraced the sick.  Perhaps the feathers were molted from the actors themselves.  And now, naked, dying and isolated, they wait for their final strength to leave them.  The woman stared at me while she arched her back and attempted to move toward me, but the exhaustion of such an effort only made her fall back to where she started.  Every movement was slow, so slow.  

I am not sure of the purpose of the burned wall coverings that looked like tanned hides.  Perhaps it was the disintegration of life.  Surrounding this scene was the smothering realization that all things will die and decay.  And while we can watch this happen, whether on the benches or through the holes in the wall, the couple are isolated in this moment.  When we die, we will be weak and alone, for this is one place no one can follow.

So these are my thoughts - now let's see what Eiko and Koma have to say:

Well it turns out the brochure is not super specific.  The beginning quote is "Linger, stay here with your eyes, and kinetically observe how our bodies move toward death." So death was on the right track, but I don't think the artists wished for me to get so specific.  They are more interested in the interacted played out between them and the viewer. " . . . Being seen and seeing is tender, ambiguous, and odd - it asks the viewer to observe details." Their art focuses more on the presence, physically and mentally, of the body.  So while the sculpture may have addressed the frailty of the body and its journey toward death, it was meant to bring awareness to everything the body is.  "We think the body offers radical questioning," stated the artists, " . . . not asking questions necessarily, but questioning as a state of being."