Je t' aime... moi non plus

Love/Love Not, 2006 (videostill)

Remembering Rob Vanderbeeken's workshop at TM, where he showed us a video of the Estonian artist Carmen Lansberg (1981),I tried to find some more information about the artist, the video and her work.

Carmen was fashion model, studied at the Estonian Institute of Humanities (film studies), worked as an assistant at Microsoft Estonia, and started in 2006 the Academy of Arts in Tallin.

'Je t' aime... moi non plus' is a short video. You see a girl (probably Carmen herself), entering a room, putting herself in front of the camera. She is not facing you. Looking elsewhere, she starts performing. On the same time, the famous Serge Gainsbourg + Jane Birking's song "Je t' aime... moi non plus" is playing. The girl ends the performance by going out of view (the room) and by the end of the song. 

"In Lansberg's view it deals with questions of love and hate, sex and violence, surely with guilt. There is also a background of eating disorder. There is a transformation from normal to ugly. But could also consider as an intimate expression of love and regret by performing a (faked) fellatio." http://www.contourmechelen.be/passage/preselection_10a.php

Whatever the view the video deals with, is it about love and hate, sex and violence or a eating disorder... the performance can focus on a (woman's) body part and mechanism: throat, larynx, neck & to make yourself throw up, to throw up. Meanwhile, I'm reading 'Gorge(l). Oppression and relief in art' written by Sofie Van Loo (published on the occasion of the exhibition (same name), in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp,'06-'07). A passage (p107) describes this body part and some mechanisms:  "The word throat is related to the Latin gula (gulet or throat) and the Russian verb glotat which means to swallow. When we finds that his limits have been reached or have been "transgressed", one might exclaim, "I don't swallow this". We not only swallow or devour food, beverages, pills, etc. but also less tangible entities, such as (un)pleasant,(pre)psycho-corporal sensations and experiences, affects, emotions, thoughts, stares, fear, pain, love, "truth", illusions, etc., until our throats,engorged, flow over and we either no longer take the trouble of trying to keep things in, or a reaction follows, because we can no longer suppress what is about to happen... The throat can flow over of we experience something as excess, if we had to swallow too much... And when we are sick of something, when we are overcome with a regurgitation feeling, when throat no longer overflows with love, but with frustration, hate and revenge, sometimes it helps to take a deep breath: at times breathing in and out slowly can bring relief. It seems we all have a natural sense of bringing things into perspective by aerating wel." 

 

In the fourth part of the book, the word-choice for 'gorge(l)' in stead of 'throat' is described: first because of the sequence of the consonants G-R-G, which is 1) reminiscent of the border-linking turning points in ancients myths, 2) brings us closer to the paradoxical sensitivies and intensities of the throat and the 'throaty'(in art) than the word throat could. 

Oppression, a sentiment situated near the throat. Relief, is not so much 'linked' with this body part. Perhaps because we not/no longer attribute linking and healing properties to the throad, in our Western culture (early abandon of healing 'bloody' throat sacrifices in religious context). Sofie explains that not the "throaty" aspect has disappearded from the Western culture altogether, but that the focuse is now on the "oppression" part of it, instead of focussing on the healing, opening and breathing potential of the "throaty". 

(p105)"In various cultures the throat represents a symbolic passage between life and disease/death. When we are born, the first thing we do is open our throat widely and suck oxygen. When we die, we breathe our last breath through the same throat. Throat and vagina are symbolic passages that allow us to pass from one stage to the other. But in our culture the distressing dimensions of the troat/troaty have gained the upper hand."