Tying like a samurai: How To





Images found here, here,


This video is quite interesting (unfortunately, cannot find a way to embed it, and is technologically retarded... Bear with me.) Old, and shows some basic hojo-jutsu knots for tying up criminals, one less and one more dangerous. It is also designed in terms of the person's physique, not only their level of danger. For example, one knot is for a tall, thin, and harmless criminal, while one is for a more obese one.

Also, this webpage provided me with a dictionary for Japanese bondage:




Words

後手 – gote : hands in back
緊縛 – kinbaku : Tight binding or sexual bondage
縛り – shibari : to tie
高手小手 – takatekote : literally: “high hand, small hand” where “small hand” is the part of the wrist and a bit of the lower arm
釣 - tsuri : suspension though is also used to mean fishing or to ensnair
後ろ – ushiro : behind ushiro is just a different reading of the go in gote

 Reading more about it, the connections between kinbaku and shibari and more Western, at least from what I know them, sexually performative activities and arts become apparent. They don't even need to be sexual, such as aerial silk. Or pole dancing. I did not even think about this until I mentioned to my teaching assistant that I was researching aerial silk, bondage and harnesses, and she showed me a video of a pole-dancing championship. I have never really looked at pole-dancing, and only ever considered it something for strip clubs; something pretty low-life and not involving a very high level of skill. But those videos... Some of them are quite incredible. And, technicality and creativity aside (and the height of the pole, as well, is insane), the beauty of the static, heavy and never-moving pole as opposed to the light, ephemeral and fluid aerial silk. The artist guides the aerial silks, and the pole guides the pole-dancer, and finally, they are both prone to gravity. (I actually found a teaser-class for silks, in which they give you a few hours, sort of to preview it, see if you like it, for free. Will probably go.) 
I don't know what about this that draws me in, but it is, in essence, something very like a harness, and the body being guided by structures. Also, the various boundaries we associate with these activities are interesting to me. For example, pole-dancing is not, and will probably not be for some time, an Olympic sport. It is often considered to be sexual (there is a reason for that, yes, that they are found in strip clubs), whereas aerial silk is something more acrobatic, for the theatre. And then, kinbaku and bondage, is another thing entirely, but is it? It is definitely static, and there is also the element of subjugation and oppression (although I shouldn't use that word too lightly, I am fully aware that it is a much more complex discussion than the one I'm presenting). I am opening the floor to myself!
This is not the end. My brain has just started spinning.

La Piel Que Habito




Images found here and here. The remaining images are screen shots from the film La Piel Que Habito (The Skin I Live In). The last two images are from the exhibition of Body Worlds, which I have not seen myself, but only heard a lot about.

Considering harnesses, and containments for the body, ways of containing ourselves, I needed to look at skin. After talking with my teacher and teaching assistant, they suggested I look at Body Worlds, and I did not know I could be so... shocked, by something like that. It is incredibly strange to think about these real bodies, but with all of their skin removed, put into incredible postures (I am especially attracted to the athletic and acrobatic ones), in particular because I am reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami right now, and there is a character which is skinned alive there. It feels like a very bizarre coincidence.

So, The Skin I Live In is an incredible movie about a very talented surgeon who constructs artificial skin for humans, or, one human in particular. Slowly, the entire story is revealed to us, and I won't write that much about it, as I think it should be seen. It is like an unfolding piece of origami, that presents itself as an incredible image and object, and as we take it apart, becomes an even more complex pattern, that we do not understand how was made or designed. This film is a lot like that, and I really love the literature and art that he uses to supplement the visuals, especially Alice Munro (who writes a lot about women who run away, or are very unhappy, I think, without having read her) and Louise Bourgeois.

Gal, the woman you can see in the screenshots, is kept isolated. Her skin is extremely tough, as it is made through transmutation, genetic manipulation, basically. She does not burn, and it is very hard to cut. This, set next to 1. Body Worlds, in which the skin is removed and we can see the structures beneath, and 2. Reiko Sudo and NUNO Corporation (which I have not written about yet, as it is a little bit of a divergence from this research, UNTIL NOW), and their fabrics in which they use various metals to thicken them. Clothing and skin, outer and inner structures, containers for the human body, and the edges where we end and where we begin - all of this is contained in the movie, and also, in this research.

Oh, Araki!
















Images found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.



So, Nobuyoshi Araki, finally. Although, this may be more of an introduction to him, or perhaps, a few paragraphs where I babble on an on about my difficulties writing about him and attempting to understand his work, or rather, the different ways to consider his subject matter, which is very often bondage. I have chosen not to include, for now, some of the more explicit images, although I think they also deserve their space. In an art history class last semester I showed some of his work, and the teacher was quite shocked, from what I can recall. I particular, I think she found his work repulsive when I told the class that he often was naked himself when photographing these tied-up women.

So, why? There are many different why's.
Why am I showing him?
Why is that problematic?
Why do I have inhibitions showing, supporting and even just discussing his works?
Why are they in the way that they are? I suppose this meant, what are they?

What are our true private parts? Our genitals or our faces?

This review, or commentary, is interesting, as the author writes about the retrospective exhibition in question as a holistic experience; that only looking to his pornographic and erotic photographs, and then judging him by those, would be inaccurate, and we ourselves would lose a lot from that. For example, a reference to the two series about death, one about his wife, and one about his cat. They are both very sad, and also hard to look at. But not because there are private parts I am too shy to look at, but because I can see his hand holding the hand of his dead or dying wife, or his cat getting thinner and thinner, until it lies in a little coffin, barely skin and bones left. And that is equally difficult, but much more private, and more voyeuristic of me to look at. At least, that is how it seems to me.

Food, flowers. Both carrying heavy sexual connotations, and in his photography, even more so.

And then, the "appropriate" feminist response; he is a chauvinist pig, using his camera as a penis to exploit these more or less innocent women, who, no matter if they are there by free will or not, are tied up, and so they are helpless. But they look directly into the camera, most of the time. And, they do not appear to be ashamed, or like victims. Do I then need to free myself of this idea? I already told you I would babble on for some paragraphs.

I will come back to you, Araki Nobuyoshi. We are far from done with each other, mister.