Organs

Although we do not like to see our intenral reality being exposed before our eyes and made real when in the external world (that is not the body) we can agree on the fact that cutting ourselves and seeing blood flow is normal. As normal as seeing our human waste after going to the toilet. Or our hair on the ground, or our mucus when blowing our nose. Even if not pleasant to the eye, or not our most pleasurable human moment, all these things are part of our norm. But what is definitely unusual to see outside of our bodies would be our organs. You know… Those organic components that form these complex machines we all carry around. So complex, that like any machine, each part is placed at a very specific location with an equally specific purpose. The brain, heart, lungs, kidneys and liver are what we call the vital organs, and playing a vital role is the healthy functioning of our machine-body. No wonder that seeing one of these components – or any other for that matter – would horrify us. There is nothing more unsettling than a disturbed nature.

In Darkness, light, darkness Jan Svankmajer plays with the body like we would of a dismembered doll, subverting this idea of an organized body. The head usually placed on top of everything, as that elevated box containing the sacred consciousness, and our precious brain, becomes instead an empty box. In this film we see several body parts, trapped in what seems to be a doll house. As they discover themselves, they try to piece back their exploded parts together to form on entire (logical) person.

Because we, humans, have access to magical “consciousness”, we always used it as an excuse to rule on everything that surround us. What is triggering in this piece is that is pushes us to ask ourselves what would that sacred “consciousness” mean if we were deprived of a functional body? Such work forces us to realize that beyond being thinking beings we are also not more than an association of limbs, muscles, organs, bones and skin, and that if one of these things were to go wrong, if the assemblages of these different components was to have a slight modification, the experiment would end up in the creation of a Frankenstein instead of an “evolve” being.

There is something quite monstrous in the idea of rearranging the body as we please. In this experiment, anything could go wrong.

On person who would’ve surely enjoyed Svankmajer’s piece is Antonin Artaud. He was the first one to introduce the concept of  the Body without Organs. A state that is completely unattainable in the reality we live in and understand, but one we can try to imagine.

Our thought process and rational is defined by language. Language is a way to make sense of the things and communicate. And because we became intellectual beings, we think in terms of concepts, words, and ideas. All these things enabled by our minds. What Artaud is trying to do is revert this idea completely and instead of thinking with the, let the body be the thing that guides us. This body of use that is associated with our primal needs and desire, like animals.

That way, the body becomes a thinking entity, more than being just our action enabler. Artaud feels frustrated that the body is made of a set of impermeable rules. He wants to push bodies to their excruciating limit, exploding them tearing them apart to then piece them part together as he would please.

“Is it really so sad and dangerous to be fed up with seeing with your eyes, breathing with your lungs, swallowing with your mouth, talking with your tongue, thinking with your brain, having an anus and larynx, head and legs? Why not talk on your head, sing with your sinuses, see through your skin, breath with your belly [...] Where psychoanalysis says: “Stop, find yourself again,” we should say instead “Let’s go further still, we haven’t found our BwO yet, we haven’t sufficiently dismantled our self”

The concept of Body without Organs was later expanded by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatari, and explains perfectly what Artaud was trying to do with his body.

Artaud was a tortured soul, and his “demons: lead him to have a painful relationship with not only his mind but also his body. The idea of dismembering a body, that could seem terrifying was for him a sort of catharsis.

Unica Zürn, just like Artaud, was suffering from a mental issue. She used to hear voices and have visual hallucinations. However, she would see that as a wonderful gift. It was her creative source, and what gave life another dimension that no one had access to but herself. Her art and writing was a door to what should would experience daily, and the way she would lead her life was in accordance with that staggered reality that was her.

Belmer and Zürn would lead a life of playful forfeiture, and the tied-up series that he took of her was only an example of that. Far from the idea that Zürn was submissive and allowed him to treat her like a doll, these pictures are a collision of their two universes (Zürn expressed is Dark Springs, fantasies of being tied-up).

Looking at that picture, places next to her drawings there is some understanding that is made. She would often draw mysterious shapes, forming oneiric monsters. They are usually composed of scattered faces, body parts and patterns, giving life to another being.

The tied-up pictures in parallel, show us a picture of her body, so tightly bound that the ropes cut through her skin. By doing so, she fragments her initially sexualised body, forming little pieces of flesh and creating a new monster, a new being never seen before. It is her way of embodying the Body without Organs.

In that same idea, French photographer Antoine D’agata documents the life of sex workers and drug addicts (him being a consumer too). He often builds intimate relationships with the people he encounters on his route and is able to build trust we the people he photographs. It enables him to capture the deepest and most intimate moments of a situation.

D’agata is often present in the pictures, where we can see him having a sexual relation with the person that is in front of the lens.

When making love, two people merge their bodies; the same way to pieces of puzzle fit to then form one, sexual organs fit together and bring bodies even closer. By doing so, we humans are desperately trying to get closer and closer to also merge two bodies into one.

Sex has always been a mode of communication and expression but instead of using words, it becomes a sensual communication where our senses replace speech. And because the feelings are multiplied and our experience of our body is enhanced we sometimes feel like we our outside of ourselves.

In D’agata’s pictures, two bodies visually form one, we see feet, hands, a piece of head and leg flying, not being able to define whose limb belong to which person. It gives us the impression that the people making love are literally merging and disappearing into each other, almost as if becoming a monster of lust.

In K we see a woman (Jayne Parker) standing, naked, and pulling and undefined organic shape out of her mouth. We quickly understand that this shape is her intestine of an intestine like organism. An intestine is 8 meters long, and the pulling out of it is a long and strenuous process. She is calm. And keeps on pulling on it until it is all out on the ground.

When out of her, at her feet, we feel the weight of it, as though weighing tones. This lifeless form instantly appears to us as a weight, an emotional burden.

When disturbed and going through moments of distress, we feel that our insides are turned upside down, but also that problems weigh on our shoulders like a heavy load.

Parker, extracts this weight out of her, making herself lighter. Then, she knits it as she pleases with the use of her hands making sense of it outside of her body when it was actually tangled and knotted when it was in.

Gut feeling, gutted, loving someone’s guts, having guts… All these are examples that our intestine plays a very big role is our understanding of our emotional state. New researches have proved that the guts are indeed our second brain. A portion of our nervous system, called the enteric nervous system is embedded in the lining of the gastrointestinal system, beginning in the esophagus and extending down to the anus. In then only makes sense that our digestive system is closely related to our emotions, and that as soon as we feel under pressure or anxious, the first thing to be affected are our guts.

The way Kiki Smith presents it here has something that is in between a scientific approach and also a poetic one.

As a way of saying we all have one and that this 9 meter long system all fits in our bodies. It almost humbling.

The internal body is like a (internal) landscape, and as much as artists have been painting landscape and the external world for centuries that it is now time to give place to our internal world to express and show itself,

Here, Kiki Smith’s intestine looks like roads, canals, a sinuous labyrinth and so much more.

For a very long time human dissection were completely prohibited and the knowledge of what actually happened under the skin was kept a big mystery. It is a strange thing to imagine when born in a time where the body has almost no secrets anymore. As a little kid, I can clearly remember my parents offering me a plastic model that had removable organs  in order to understand how the inside of someone works and ultimately to understand that although we do not see all these components they still exist and follow us around everywhere. Most importantly they are ours.

I cannot imagine the idea of having a body that belongs to me but that is so unknown, almost like stranger, but for a very long time people had no idea of the things that happen between the limits of their bodies.