Clothes (Photography, 2021)

The projected physical condition of my body where no structure is contained reminds me of clothes that do not contain a body, which are formless and easily manipulated. Clothing and a body are both containers, the value of whose existence depends on what is contained.[1] The relation between the body and clothes is also influenced by Wong Kar-wai’s film, Chungking Express, where a dumped character talks to some objects as if they are emotional.[2] Human emotions are projected to objects in this film while the human body is objectified to convey emotions in my series of photographs, Clothes. The process of cleaning clothes to function is similar to my daily activities of showering, drying, tidying up, getting organized and becoming ready to deal with the outside world, both of which rely on others. In Clothes, I apply the process of cleaning clothes to function to my body. Even though the clothes or the body have gone through the process and seem ready to function, the body still lacks inner domination as the clothes are waiting for a body to wear them. Therefore, the shape of the body that is not solid still depends on another object. This state of the body is also visualised in Butoh dance where the body is regarded as a soft container of liquid.[3]

[1] Jean-Pierre Warnier, ‘Inside and Outside: Surfaces and Containers’, in Handbook of Material Culture, eds. by Chris Tilley, Webb Keane, Susanne Küchler, Mike Rowlands and Patricia Spyer (Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications Inc., 2013), pp. 186-96 (p.188).

[2] Kar-wai, Wong, dir., Chungking Express (1994; Hong Kong: Ocean Shores Video, 1994), https://youtu.be/jJ1VQzxwSFo?t=169[Accessed 19 March 2021].

[3] Toshiharu Kasai, ‘A Butoh Dance Method for Psychosomatic Exploration’, Memoirs of the Hokkaido Institute of Technology, 27 (1999), 309-316.