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CONTRIBUTION ON "OROZCO EL EMBALSAMADOR" by SEINO EIICHI (DJ, author) It's been 11 years since I saw photographs taken by Tsurisaki Kiyotaka for the first time. Because he asked me to lend a camera as he had plan to go to Thailand, and so I handed over a single-lens reflex camera to him. In those photographs in the magazine, the occiput and the back of a drowned body was blankly floated in water. He said he had taken those photos just because he was asked so by the publisher of that magazine. After that I didn't ask him in details why he continued to take only photos of corpses, but I have seen all of his works.to. Though I didn't want to deck my room with such grotesque or bizarre photos, I was sure that those works were not merely snapshots of the lump of rotten corpse nor wrist that was torn, but they were some kind of expression. Those strangers in his photographs are already dead, but they seem to be staying in this life not beyond the grave. Tsurisaki Kiyotaka takes photos of of corpse that were torn and ties up those drifting parts between this life and beyond the grave on his film. To see these printed images is alike to read writings how people commit suicide. Although for all persons that are alive, the death is an absolute reality, but it stays as unreal at the same time. The photograph is a product made from the past, but the death is the permanent future. The death comes to all the people, but we don't know when and how to come. His work points us the fact. Treated as sensational and bare, his works had strong supports among certain photo maniacs. Not like in the Thailand that everybody sees photos of corpse in tabloidsis daily, in Japan we don't see them in newspapers and tv at all since much complaints were drawn to the weekly magazine which ran a photograph of corpse hanged on the tree in the plane crash accident of Japan Airlines. Even in the news reports of the Great Hanshin Earthquake disaster which more than 7,500 people died, we didn't see any photo of the dead bodies. At the same time, books about the death and corpses were popular and we saw them displayed flat at the bookstores. The photographs by Tsurisaki Kiyotaka were showing the death of the flesh straight in those days. People do exist that are excited to see photos of the dead and wallow in the inspiration of aestheticism. After visiting Thailand, he visited Colombia, as this film was taken, which the public order is the worst in the world. It was natural that he started filming not taking photos of the embalmer as a dynamic 'live' object since he had experience of 8mm video footage when he was in hightschool. The corpse carried to the studio got dissected, washed, make-up, and set into the casket. As soon as hosing out, the following body is carried there. He continues to taking video of those scenes. When I saw this film for the first time, the first thing I wondered was that for how long such grotesque scene would last. The procession of consecutive behavior called embalming continues permanently like the infinite loop. Staring at those scenes abstractly, my mind began to concentrate not in the corpse but into Orozco the embalmer. The method that can be said as minimalism is unique for documentary. Tsurisaki is trying to express the reality of Colombia by emphasizing the method as he edits these footage. Poverty people pay large sum to Orozco the embalmer. The fingertips of Orozco gives delicate make-up to the dead, dresses the clothes, fastens the button, and combs their hair. Embalming is just one of the operation that makes the death, which is repugnantly mundane and overabundant in Colombia, fictional facts. There we can see the 'solitude' of Latin America which Gabriel Jose Garcia Marquez tried to express in his book 'Cien anos de soledad.' When it comes to the scene that Turisaki Kiyotaka, who was just an outside observer with camera in the past, crossed each other to Orozco over the camera, the audience will know this footage is not just any kind of snuff film with scenes of corpses and not just a documentary on embalming, but it is the deniable motion picture film. In the past five years since this film was completed, world has changed vastly after September 11 attacks. No one will disagree about it. On tv we see news and reports of war and terrorism everyday, and here in Japan the number of people who commit suicide is increasing. The word of 'death', which meaning was more dilute five years ago, and its image are easily shown in the media and also down to the streets. But it's not the same as the death and the solitude seen in like Bogota, Baghdad and Palestine. Tsurisaki Kiyotaka is one of the rare artists who continues to make his work between such places and those of not. (Seino Eiichi) |
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Copyright (C) 2005 Tsurisaki
Kiyotaka All Rights Reserved. |
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