Eros and thanatos in art and in the ordinary life

by Editorial Team | Jun 22, 2011 in Passion | Leave A Comment

In a video from the series “Drawing Restraint”, Matthew Barney and Björk take a bath, cover themselves with perfumed balms, dress with linen and silk as if they had to face a holy ritual. One far from the other, they meet afterwards in a narrow and dark pool. The liquid they get into will soon become red: little by little, after slow sensual hugs, they kill each other by cutting with a special knife pieces of the other’s flesh.

The Japanese whaler which transports the two lovers brings them into the eternity.

Horror? Just Passion.

Who does not remember the Marco Ferreri’s movie in which a girl was cutted in pieces and put into the freezer, with the purpose of preserving and loving her forever? Who, among us, never said to his/her beloved “I would eat you”, hiding the desire to englobe his/her body in a permanent way, far beyond the quick conjunction offered by a sexual encounter?

But you can be less radical and thankfully this is what usually happens.

Here we agree then with the artwork “You are the Weather” by Roni Horn, where she shows thousands times the face of her girlfriend while emerging from a swimming pool: now the image is lighter, then it sharper, then again we see only the profile or she watching directly her companion. Each time the light, the humidity, the fog, the weather make her face different. The face that made us fall in love is the only thing that we never take for granted. It is what we desire to see again and again under only possible perspective, looking for little differences in a never ending curiosity.

If we do not look for our own life into the other, that means that he/she starts being no more relevant to our own identity. The game is over. The hour is gone and we will start looking for someone else.

Ad no challenge is more exciting than putting yourself completely in the middle of a gamble. Those who have experienced this play want to try it again. Passion is absolutly gambling, as a poker in which we risk our own existence. The one in which, reminding a Spanish refrain, one says “Ni con tigo, ni sin ti tiene mi vida remedio: con tigo porqué me matas, sin ti porqué me muero”.

Every rational being would run away from such a dependence, but if you fall into it, you cannot do without it anymore.