Hou I-Ting of Taiwan doesn’t allude to a “national we”. It could be said that she stands on the same ground level as Japanese artists. The skeleton motifs are themselves simple.
The attempt to bring an imperfect reality into line with a perfect ideal could be seen as criticizing the very fact that the paradigms presented are nothing short of imitative repetitions.
The paradox of gaining confidence in oneself –of raising one’s self-esteem-through the elimination of one’s irreplaceable individuality was pointed out long ago by Erving Goffman. But Hou’s works don’t criticize the restrictions of the male viewpoint or mode.
To put it in the vocabulary of manga critic Ito Tsuyoshi, what we see depicted in Hou’s works are the kyara (representative fictional characters) of manga and anime. Not characters (irreplaceable), but kyara (replaceable). Hou’s appeal no doubt lies in the fact that while her work takes the form of criticism, at the same time it surprisingly opens up a new horizon in eroticism.
Regardless of what I try to identify it with, I cannot erase the duality of kyara and character. Character can be glimpsed behind kyara. This gives the work an obscene quality. Obscenity is a feeling that arises when something sexual is inadvertently exposed in a space where sexual things ought not to be exposed.
Perhaps this is similar to the obscenity of inadvertently seeing the unpainted face of a woman who usually wears makeup so thick it makes one wince. It could also be regarded as presenting one of the few positive elements that come to light after searching through the many possible sources of joy in postmodernity, which is full of heavily made-up things.
While at first sight the work of Australia’s Monika Tichacek seems totally dissimilar in this respect, structurally speaking it does resemble the work of Hou I-Ting. In the same way that Hou presents the duality of kyara and character, Tichacek presents the duality of the living body and the dead body. I can add with no fear of misunderstanding that this is the work of someone with a predilection for dead bodies.
The replaceability of deodorized living bodies and the irreplaceability of dead bodies with their multifarious stenches and varieties of decay are contrasted with each other. Of course, accurately speaking characters are in fact replaceable and dead bodies are also replaceable. But the point is the obscenity of “the dead body glimpsed behind the living thing” is equated with joyous potential.
I recently attended the deathbed of my mother after nursing her while she had terminal cancer. Anyone who’s been through this kind of experience can detect in all living bodies the signs of a dead body. While whether this enjoyable or not is no more than a question of taste, we can detect in this a strategy in our search for joyous potential in postmodernity.
In postmodernity, society is enveloped by the “system”. Certainly there is no alternative. But the “system” is not a monolith. There is the ground level of the kyara and the ground level of the character. The ground level of living bodies and the ground level of dead bodies. There are various concealed multiplicities. It’s possible to slide back the cover and look on the other side.
This is similar to Morioka Masahiro’s criticism of the “painless civilization”, but different. What are being suggested are ways to enjoy the “painless civilization”. In postmodernity, whichever road one chooses there is no avoiding the “painless civilization”. Searching for the original, unpainted face is futile. This being the case, all that remains is the obscenity of glimpsing the “makeup concealed behind the makeup”.
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Miyadai Shinji
Born 1995 in Sendei. Professor, Tokyo Metropolitan University. Earned his PhD in sociology from The University of Tokyo, majoring in Social System Theory. He has written extensively on theories of political power, state, sexual love, religion, suburbia, education, and subculture, among others. He is also a film critic.
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ART iT
Japan’s first bilingual art quarterly
季刊 Art in Japan and Asia-Pacific
Spring/Summer 2008
NO.19
Magical transformation tour
“Transforming artists” can be found all over the globe. Join us to visit six such artists to watch in the Asia-Pacific, from old hands to new names.
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