Flesh - the new F word?

This is an open invitation for

everybody to contribute from their thoughts, works, ideas and wishes about this topic.

 

Flesh and Film

Flesh as a raw material, as a subject matter, Our own flesh, someone else's flesh, dead flesh, live flesh... Flesh seems to be almost absent from our daily life, pushed away for so many cultural / psychological reasons, and yet - so inherent in it, constantly around, but hardly noticed.

How is this issue addressed through film? is film, or moving image in general, the ideal medium for the exploration of this theme?

 

The materials library (http://www.materialslibrary.org.uk/) held an event at the welcome collection (http://www.wellcomecollection.org) around the theme of flesh as material.

The event, attended by few hundreds, was stimulating, bringing to mind the absence of flesh in our daily life.

The people participating showed sheer excitement and strong curiosity - touching, eating, smelling, cutting and sawing pieces of flash throughout the evening. The strict health and safety regulations were kept firmly throughout the evening, and provoked our sterile habitual attitude towards flesh. A personal experience of the direct encounter with it generated surprising mixed feelings of excitement, satisfaction and serenity.

A short video of the event could be found at: http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/pastexhibitionsandevents/wtx041288.htm)

 

Feelings and Film

Film seems to be the one medium to get us completely immersed. A good film might get you glued to the cinema chair long after the show is over, stimulating you for weeks after. The best films stick around for years. The effect, in a case like that, lasts in the senses and brain, just as much as in the heart.

Where is our heart when making art?

Or especially - when viewing it?

Do you feel unsuccessful in joining it with your brain and senses?

In Tonio Kroger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonio_Kr%C3%B6ger), Thomas Mann says that an artist cannot allow himself to have a truthful, live heart if she wants to generate significant work. What about challenging this statement? Could good art engage our senses, intellect, and feelings, in an honest manner? Should it do so?

 

 

Bellow is an unfinished list of films, which address the theme of flesh in an intriguing way (made with the kind help of David Crowley and Jonathan Miles):

Cocteau, Le Sang d'un Poete

Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo          (In the library)

Piotr Uklansky, Summer Love 2006

Andy Warhol's Blood for Dracula / Flesh for Frankenstein

Andy Warhol’s Couch

Juraj Herz's The Cremator c. 1968

Greenaway's The Pillow Book        (In the library)

Lars von Trier's The idiots

David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers / Videodrome etc (In the library)

David Cronenberg’s Crash

McElhinney’s film of Bataille’s Story of the Eye

Jo Ann Kaplan’s The New Flesh

Carolee Schneeman’s Fuses

Un chant D’amour                 (In the library)

Nagisha Oshima’s In the realm of the senses

Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour     (In the library)

Godard’s Week End                 (In the library)

Bunuel’s Belle de Jour            (In the library)

 

 

 

Excerpts from a poem by Dylan Thomas

 

Before I knocked and flesh let enter,

With liquid hands tapped on the womb,

I who was as shapeless as the water

That shaped the Jordan near my home

Was brother to Mnetha's daughter

And sister to the fathering worm.

 

...

 

As yet ungotten, I did suffer;

The rack of dreams my lily bones

Did twist into a living cipher,

And flesh was snipped to cross the lines

Of gallow crosses on the liver

And brambles in the wringing brains.

 

My throat knew thirst before the structure

Of skin and vein around the well

Where words and water make a mixture

Unfailing till the blood runs foul;

My heart knew love, my belly hunger;

I smelt the maggot in my stool.

 

And time cast forth my mortal creature

To drift or drown upon the seas

Acquainted with the salt adventure

Of tides that never touch the shores.

I who was rich was made the richer

By sipping at the vine of days.

 

...  Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953)

 

 

Sky Burial