Ghost of a flea: Drawing Restraint 9

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March 21, 2006

Drawing Restraint 9

Due to a personal vendetta, I have a long-standing antipathy toward the Icelandic whaling industry; or rather, to the study of the Icelandic whaling industry. Mathew Barney's film Drawing Restraint 9 is set on the Nisshin Maru, a Japanese whaling ship, which would be fine but for the fact it features music by the director's significant other, Bj�rk. So this could be a problem (via Modern Fabulosity).

Its core idea is the relationship between self-imposed resistance and creativity, a theme it symbolically tracks through the construction and transformation of a vast sculpture of liquid vaseline, called "The Field", which is molded, poured, bisected and reformed on the deck of the ship over the course of the film.

Barriers hold form in place, and when they are removed, the film tracks the descent of form into states of sensual surrender and formal atrophy; this shift in the physical state of the sculpture is symbolically mirrored through the narrative of The Guests, two occidental visitors to the ship played in the film by Matthew Barney and Bj�rk, who we first see taken on board, groomed, bathed and dressed in mammal fur costumes based upon traditional Shinto marriage costumes.

Having yet to see the film, "The Field" sounds to be an analogue for "lamella" which for me makes it a must see. Jacques Lacan describes lamella thusly in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis: "The lamella is something extra-flat, which moves like the amoeba.... And it can run around. Well! This is not very reassuring. But suppose it comes and envelopes your face while you are quietly asleep..." Quite. Or, as Slavoj �i�ek parses Lacan with reference to giant squid theory*, "a substance of life which can never be destroyed." You can see the attraction.

*A must read for the terms SquidMasters, octality and autocephalopodization: "... there is a giant squid conspiracy� and to make light of that conspiracy would mean death. I don�t believe there is anything hysterical about that." Go Pods, go!

Posted by Ghost of a flea at March 21, 2006 12:17 AM

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Comments

Interesting that a film set on a Japanese whaling ship features music by an Icelandic wailer.

Posted by: Taldones at March 25, 2006 04:26 PM