The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a project by writer John Koenig. It is a “compendium of invented words…” intended to “give a name to emotions we all might experience but don’t have a word for… to capture the aches, demons… urges that roam the wilderness of the psychological interior” (Koenig, 2009). In considering what content to create for my Signal works, I thought some of the ideas I came across in Koenig’s project could be an interesting conceptual basis. One definition, ‘Socha’, meaning, “the hidden vulnerability of others”, ultimately became the framework for my piece. In a societal climate where self-worth and value is often based on representations of contrived perfection, I wanted to celebrate the collective strength and beauty that comes from accepting and exhibiting our real, blemished imperfection. The filming, editing, and exhibiting of the works resulted in a viscerally connective experience, exploring the intimate relationship between the human condition and body. In conducting this form of performative self-exposure, my wonderful subjects offered up intimate parts of themselves to create a visual celebration of bodily reality.

My obsession with the human body has been something I have been aware of my whole life. I would often catch myself getting lost in the detailed textures of my skin, hair, eyes, etc. I have always seen the human body as an extension of the Earth and universe itself. This is particularly prevalent when exploring the depths of the human psyche and mind. Our physical bodies, as well, however, also represent something that I feel inextricably links us beyond the damages of social conditioning. I saw these links in the beautiful rippling of stretch marks, mimicking brainwaves, oceans, mountains. In the deep textural underpinnings of scarred skin, a physical symbol of the destruction and healing that occurs throughout life. In the freckling of skin that mimics the many galaxies in our solar system and beyond. While these are complex, intimate ideas of mine that I knew I couldn’t convey in four 8-second projections, I wanted to at least try to capture the feelings that underpin them.

Conducting this within the very public space of Signal, I wanted to confront the audience with a collection of explicit bodily experiences that resulted in universally relatable, texturally stunning work. I was very mindful of the site’s location in conceptualising my work, as the CBD is often a place in which people are conscious of others’ perceptions of them. In displaying a collection of scars, stretch marks, and dirty fingernails, I wished to represent the small visual cracks that occur within the portrayals of our desired perfect selves, through which collective vulnerability leaks. This is, as Koenig describes, “the kind of basic human vulnerability that we’d all find familiar, but is still somehow surprising when we notice it in others” (2015). It is this general visceral experience that I wanted to draw out from my subjects, audience, and myself.

In researching other artistic depictions of the human body, I came across feminist academic Rebecca Schneider who explores bodily performance and its relation to identity and history. I found links between her ideas regarding the body and Miwon Kwon’s ideas about locational history and identity (Kwon, 2002). In addressing representations of the human body, she describes it as “a mass of orifices and appendages, details and tactile surfaces, the explicit body in representation is foremost a site of social markings, physical parts and gestural signatures of gender, race, class, age, sexuality – all of which bear ghosts of historical meaning” (Schneider, 1997, p.2). I completely agree with Schneider’s notion that the human body’s historical markings are a means of identity – just as a location’s historical and physical qualities are part of its “identity-giving… properties” (Kwon, 2002, p.158). In abstracting these bodily markings by filming their close-up details and creating a visual experience with them, I was hoping to extract these intimate identities so that the public could take a moment from their day to experience and relate.

Schneider remarks that, “the battlefield of identity is inextricably wrapped up in the… ways identities have been marked, imaged, [and] reproduced in the realm of cultural imagery” (Schneider, 1997, p.10). My opinion is that if there was more cultural imagery representing the reality of the human body, our relationships with our bodily identities and ourselves could potentially be happier and healthier. In order to negotiate the complex battlefield of identity without harming ourselves, we must step away from the contrived self-image projected by social and mainstream media, and create a new dialogue that celebrates the universality of human connectedness and beauty.

 

References

Koenig, J. (2015) ‘Socha’ in Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, [ONLINE] http://www.isstevestillalive.com/read/2015/3/17/socha-the-hidden-vulnerability-of-others

Kwon, M. (1997) ‘One Place After Another: Notes on Site Specificity’ in October, vol. 80, pp.156-167, [ONLINE] http://www.ira.usf.edu/CAM/exhibitions/2008_8_Torolab/Readings/One_Place_After_AnoterMKwon.pdf

 Schneider, R. (1997) ‘The Explicit Body in Performance’, Routledge, New York, pp.2-20, [ONLINE] https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Nsorf98pWGkC&printsec=frontcover