#all the characters have very well defined perspectives and beliefs and motifs and it's just exactly the kind of thing I like | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

eatin-all-the-worlds · 6 years

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CAN WE TALK ABOUT PEARL (Spoiler warning!)

Can we please talk about Pearl and how significant it is that she has the most singing lines in the extended theme song, especially after “A Single Pale Rose”?

So, here’s my thing. ASPR implies so much, but what I’m most interested in is the relationship between Rose/PD and Pearl. Yes, as suggested by the gif above, Pearl’s always hinted at Rose being “more” than Rose. Rose’s sheer abilities compared to other Quartz soldiers were a huge tip-off, thinking back on it. Rebecca Sugar did a fab job putting millions of tiny hints that Rose was always a little more than just a Quartz soldier who decided to screw the rules.

But, ignoring all that, let’s talk about Pearl (like we totally haven’t been since this dang episode came out).

So, besides the implications of how healthy Pearl and Rose’s relationship was, because of Rose’s ability to command Pearl to do things--because, despite her many mistakes, I don’t think Rose ever intentionally abused that ability--it really seems to me like Rose and Pearl are in love when they concoct this plan.

Rose as Pink Diamond is multi-faceted (hah, get it??). Steven sees her as a spoiled brat wanting her own colony in Jungle Moon; he sees her make excuses about colonizing earth in Can’t Go Back; and he sees her eventually create the plan that would lead to her new life as Rose, but would also cost the lives of thousands of gem soldiers in A Single Pale Rose. Obviously, looking back, we can figure out that by Can’t Go Back’s timeline, PD had seen the worth of human beings and used her Rose Quartz persona to attempt to dissuade the Diamonds from colonizing earth.

So, I just wanna refute all these arguments that PD was selfish and was trying to hide everything and escape responsibility. Pink Diamond was a young, spoiled, initially selfish brat who wanted to be as important as the other Diamonds. She went to earth, saw their beauty and their worth, and decided to try to save it. PD attempted to save the earth through subtle means, initially; she figured the Diamonds did not care about her because of the way they treated her (see Jungle Moon), so they wouldn’t care if a colony of hers failed.

Like a lot of teenagers, Pink Diamond was very self-involved and didn’t realize how her actions would affect the people around her. That’s a little bit cowardice or deliberate selfishness; but that’s primarily the folly of youth.

So, when she sees these plans aren’t working, that the Diamonds will insist on PD succeeding in colonizing earth, she figures her death will make the Diamonds lose interest. Again, thinking like the self-involved teen she seems to be, she’s assuming that the only reason the Diamonds care is likely because, as long as PD is alive, they have a stake in the earth colony. A lot of teens think their parents wouldn’t care if they disappear.

Now, for the point of this: Pearl is PD’s pearl. Pearl is PD’s confidant and knows everything that PD has been trying to do to liberate this planet. At one point, Pearl told Connie and Steven that Rose made her feel like she was everything.

Because Pearl wasn’t some renegade pearl who pulled a Kaiba, flipped everyone off, and walked off the job. Pink Diamond, her master, encouraged Pearl to be different than what she was used to; she inspired Pearl to be a renegade, to learn to fight, to think and speak eloquently, to everything. Everything that Pearl is now stems from the freedom Pink Diamond gave to Pearl. Everything Pearl believes in comes from Pink Diamond’s beliefs.

And after Rose’s, er...death?...Pearl has struggled to find herself in a world where no one is around to tell her to be someone. She made this mistake with Connie and Steven, where she defined herself as a loyal knight to Rose Quartz (a title that Rose apparently gave to Pearl). She struggled again when she tricked Garnet to fuse with her, and told Garnet that she’s just a pearl and she needs someone to tell her what to do--which hinted both at a pearl’s function in homeworld and at the fact that, even as a renegade, Pearl needed Rose to tell her to be a renegade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgseUOceeok (Pearl and Garnet make up)

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And it’s a fear that follows Pearl, because she feels incomplete without a master telling her what to do. It’s something that’s always been hinted in Pearl’s character, as far as Rose’s Scabbard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dknVBPvQAc (”I think you’re pretty great”)

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But since that episode (and possibly before), we see the common motif of Pearl covering her mouth whenever it seems like there’s a secret about Rose that Steven has uncovered. Now, obviously, we know that a Diamond’s command to her Pearl is final, and PD’s last command to Pearl has forced her to remain silent for millennia. The clip above, where Pearl is devastated after finding out she didn’t know all of Rose’s secrets, ends on a really interesting note; while Steven is happy and thinks he’s understanding his mother and Pearl more, Pearl’s face is not content at the end. Even with all her smiling while she told old war stories, and with her maybe feeling some catharsis after talking to Steven, there’s this haunted look on Pearl’s face that always bothered me and didn’t make sense until ASPR.

Because that’s the point that Pearl realizes that as much as she loved and devoted herself to Rose’s cause, Rose didn’t love her back and Rose wasn’t perfect.

Don’t get me wrong; I do not doubt that, at the time, Rose loved Pearl. When they were making plans to rebel and when Rose encouraged Pearl to change and grow the way Rose wanted to (because its heavily implied that Rose is fascinated by and wanted to emulate human growth), I do not doubt that Rose loved Pearl very much. But, Rose/PD at this time was young and foolish. She didn’t realize that her love for Pearl wasn’t healthy, because she didn’t realize how dependent on Rose’s approval Pearl was.

And maybe she did, later on. The gems have proven that although they do not change physically, their characters can change drastically.

In the years between the rebellion--and, we see Pearl’s perspective most, but I don’t doubt that Rose was just as devastated--and Rose falling in love with Greg, Rose probably did a lot of growing up too.

And some might argue that she didn’t grow up enough, because she gave birth to Steven without giving him any way to know the dangers he might encounter because of her actions. But...that’s the point? As much as Rose may have grown, she didn’t really grow emotionally by leaps and bounds until she interacted with Greg. The gems were mostly stagnant and stayed to themselves. Even the other men Rose would occasionally hook up with would leave--which is why Pearl never saw them as a threat.

But really, what kills my heart here is that as eloquent as Rose seemed to be, she always failed to communicate when it mattered most.

She never talked to the Diamonds honestly.

She never talked about Bismuth.

She never talked about her past.

She never talked to Pearl.

Like I said, I don’t doubt that PD thought she loved Pearl, but when that love became affection, it seems as though she never thought to talk to Pearl about that. Pearl believed herself to be PD’s most prized possession and closest friend/lover. But Pearl never got the memo that PD’s feelings had changed until Greg came along and made it obvious. How much more must that have hurt Pearl, who was there for PD for everything, to lose PD like that? Because she says it wasn’t Greg in “Both of You”; it was the fact that Rose fell in love with Greg that hurt her. She loved Rose enough to let her go, but she didn’t know she wasn’t in the running anymore.

(I’m getting to the point folks, hang in there)

Pearl singing the majority of the extended theme is so interesting to me, particularly after ASPR, because nothing in there is about her and what she wants--and the only person who could possibly understand her is Steven.

Garnet wants to exist in a world where she can be her grand, gay ol’ self (well, lesbian, but the alliteration!).

Amethyst wants to protect earth because it’s her home, and it’s the only place that considers her perfect.

Pearl...she just wants what Rose wants. She wants what her Diamond wants. What else can she want when she’s weighed down with Pink’s secrets and cannot speak for herself when she really, really wants to?

The real triumph of A Single Pale Rose? It’s finally a weight that Pearl can unload from her shoulders, that will finally allow her to follow Garnet’s advice and stop living for Rose. It a weight that she knew Steven would understand, because at one point, Steven thought he needed to live up to everyone else’s expectations based on what they knew of Rose Quartz; now, Steven has realized that he’s amazing all on his own and the only expectations he needs to live up to are his own (oh man, but that’s a whole other hour long post).

Pearl’s made progress since way before ASPR (remember when she punched Peridot??), but Pearl could never get over her feelings for Rose because Pearl based her entire identity on Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond (”It’s Over, Isn’t It?”)

Remember how snobby she’d get around Greg about how much more she knew regarding Rose than Greg?

Because Rose’s confidence in Pearl was a symbol of love in Pearl’s eyes. But then, Pearl grew up and understood that Rose was complicated and imperfect; Rose may have loved Pearl, but not the way Pearl loved Rose and not in any way that Pearl needed.

And that’s why we see Pearl try so hard to say something to Steven in the episodes leading up to ASPR; that’s why Pearl is so damn clever, cleverer than even her conscious self, that she figured out a way to tell Steven without breaking her Diamond’s command.

Pearl’s figured out that she and Rose were young and made many mistakes; she figured out that Rose made a mistake in keeping Steven in the dark about her real identity; that’s why Pearl had Steven go in her pearl to find the truth.

Steven already figured out what Pearl had been steadily learning, after all, and she knew Steven was mature enough to understand.

Now Pearl’s got to find her own reason to live on earth and A Single Pale Rose was just the culmination of many things--Rose’s real identity, Pearl’s role in the whole debacle, the reason why the gems were all destroyed so viciously, etc.

And what I love most about Pearl is that, even within the confines of forced silence, Pearl found her voice. Pearl decided that the truth needed to come out one way or another, despite her Diamond’s orders.

I don’t know if they’ll create a new, expanded version of the theme song, but if they do, Pearl better up in there singing about how she’s so fucking renegade, she even disobeyed the master that set her free.

Hell yeah, you have.

Now let’s work on that Jasper redemption arc.

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lunamanar · 6 years

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dare I inquire how your opinion of Squall, Rinoa and/or Seifer might have changed due to recent external influence? :D

[PLEASE NOTE: There is ableist mental health language in this post. It was not intentional, and I do plan to edit/clarify it later. I have to go to work now, though, so for now, just be aware of one thing–people diagnose with sociopathy/psychopathy are NOT default dangerous/criminal/nonfunctional people. I don’t want to demonize that word, and while that wasn’t my aim in this, because I spoke in generalizations, that’s what ended up happening. I’m sorry, and I’ll do what I can to fix it as soon as I have time.]

If I’m right about who this is, you probably know darn well, haha. Sure, I’ll throw myself to the wolves bite, though.

For the longest time I had a fairly static impression of Seifer, in particular. And, don’t get me wrong, I still love (and to an extent, prefer) my original interpretation. But it felt solid enough to me that I was fairly sure I’d have trouble viewing him any other way, and that way is…well, it makes any pairing with him extremely difficult, let’s say that. Nothing made sense to me about him being intimate with anyone, main cast or otherwise.

That’s…changed, a lot, over the last year. It’s really hard for me to explain how, though, without first explaining what my perspective has been, ever since I first played the game. So, here is what I will do. I’mma hang myself out to dry by posting the entirety of an explanation I gave to @strane-stelle about a year ago in a private answer to her ask about Seifer. And then I will explain what changed.

So, below is the unaltered text I sent in answer to her ask last year:

Hrm. I flail and spit about Seifer in private discussions with friends because I feel very strongly about his character, but my perception is that I have a minority view on him, and I absolutely don’t want to start fights because I know a lot of people love Seifer and have ideas about him they’re very attached to. A lot of people like him, and there are a ton of different and popular “versions” of him floating around out there. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that he is at once a very strong character while also having relatively little face time in the game, so we’re left to fill in a lot of blanks. There are many ways you can take the behavior he presents, just because there’s a dearth of detail explaining it. I don’t talk about him openly a lot because I think the way I see him tends to fly in the face of how the majority does. I was thinking of doing a similar essay as I did for Squall but the fact is I don’t think my take on Squall is actually that far from the norm, so that wasn’t a very risky post by comparison.

So I hope you don’t mind, I’m going to answer this privately because frankly I am afraid of people getting defensive at me. I’m probably overreacting, but I worry a lot about hurting people’s feelings or making them feel they need to displace my ideas to defend their own. That’s not the sort of environment I want to foster and the way I feel about this, I’m afraid my tone could be problematic in a public post.

I have no issues whatever with people viewing Seifer as a damaged but ultimately redeemable dreamer who fell prey to Ultimecia’s power and was led around by his nose before being dumped on FH’s front doorstep. Or some variation thereof that lets him have connections and relationships.

My interpretation of him, however–and the interpretation I’ve had since the beginning–doesn’t allow for that. The key point is that most people seem to assume Seifer even desires meaningful human connection of any kind; and honestly, just based on how I view his dialogue and his actions, I don’t think he does. I’m not sure he’s capable of it. Love and friendship isn’t really in the cards for him: no Quistis, no Zell, no Rinoa, no Squall, no nothing. Despite claiming a romantic dream, Seifer wouldn’t know romance if it ran him over.

My base assumption is this: I do not think Ultimecia was ever, at any point, actually controlling Seifer. Showing him what he wanted to see, yes, manipulating, sure, but beyond that–it was all him. Right down to torturing Squall, casting off his two loyalists the moment they didn’t serve his purposes, and throwing Rinoa to Adel. He wasn’t insane with sorceress-muck in his head. Everything he said, thought and did was his own.

He has all the earmarks of a textbook high-functioning psychopath. Not a stabbity homicidal maniac, but more simply a total absence of what we’d traditionally understand as empathy. In his world, everything is either about him, or it's in the way. Unless someone can further his personal glory, they’re irrelevant. That’s the context of every social interaction he has. He is the end, and everyone else, without exception, is the means.

He doesn't think about things this way. He doesn’t think, “I don’t care about other people, I’m just going to use them to get what I want.” In fact, he’s not conscious of his own disconnect at all. He’s too focused on his ambitions, the next immediate step toward his dream, too wrapped up his own sense of greatness to waste time with introspection.

His romantic (read: heroic, epic, magnificent) dream solidified for him at a very early age, triggered if not defined by that ridiculous movie Laguna starred in (you’ll note, Seifer holds Hyperion the same way Laguna handles the Shear Trigger he was given on set). Seifer continued to self-insert himself into that role, eating up any and all variants of that story, including the book he regularly stole checked out from the library. But it wasn’t the romance of the story that interested him, per se; it was the fantastic victory of the knight, and the way he was (ha) lionized for the purposes of the legend. Yes, he served his sorceress, but the way the story told it, she didn’t really get the glory.

His dream does evolve as he gets older, but its premise remains basically the same. He gauges the worth of everyone he meets by how they fit into this story of his. Ultimecia was the only person who fit into the part of the sorceress he would champion. It wasn’t so much respect for her that made him willing to follow her as it was the allure of finally living out his own personal epic. Ultimecia, for her part, could see the unquestioning devotion to this ideal in his mind, and so was able to pull his strings with ease, both because he was not difficult to persuade and she saw some of her own grandiosity in him. I think she was later disappointed, but I digress.

Throughout it all, Seifer truly believes himself to be “the good guy,” without possessing enough of a moral compass to have any idea what “good” might be. He’s the good guy because he’s the hero. He’s the hero because he’s the Sorceress Knight. He was part of the disciplinary committee because heroes lay down the law. Nearly everything Seifer does is in pursuit of/acting out this ideal. Anyone who gets in his way is ruthlessly plowed down. (If you want to follow, that’s fine, as long as you don’t get in the way.)

To that end, Seifer doesn’t see tormenting people who are smaller or weaker than him as bullying. Again, it’s not a conscious thought process, “I’m gonna fuck with this person because it’s fun,” so much as he needs to constantly reassert his dominance in every situation. For all his undying belief in his own greatness, he cannot brook any suggestion that he is not the center of attention. That doesn’t mean he’s seeking leadership, specifically, but he’s not going to let anyone else have the spotlight, either.

This in mind, the “rivalry” take on Seifer and Squall’s relationship is, by my estimation, a gross misunderstanding of the actual situation. Even other characters in the game are guilty of misunderstanding it, and I think it's very evident that this is the case. I think it’s supposed to be clear that they’re not getting it, and it annoys Squall quite a bit, though by now he’s kind of used to it.

From where Squall stands, Seifer is not a bully, or a rival; he’s a monolith. He exists for Squall to test himself against, and he’s a consistent enough challenge that their “fights” continuously benefit Squall in his ongoing pursuit of skill-improvement. In addition, Seifer’s general blindness to the feelings of other people helped to encourage Squall’s distance from his own emotions. Where Seifer was concerned, they were irrelevant, and for Squall, that was actually quite a comfortable arrangement.

On Seifer’s end, Squall is probably the closest thing to human connection that exists for him, and only because of the major character role he plays in Seifer’s epic. A combination of the regular attention Squall pays him and the fact he takes Seifer seriously and gives him his full effort when they face off, not to mention the fact Squall can keep up, make him the perfect “counterpart” figure. I don’t think it is any accident that it is Gilgamesh who interrupts their final fight in the game. If you are familiar with the original Epic of Gilgamesh, there are just so many parallels between Gilgamesh and Seifer, and, conversely, Squall and Enkidu, it’s hard to imagine it’s coincidence. This “companion in his travels” motif is the sort of role I think Seifer originally envisioned for Squall, and having internalized that, even though ultimately the story was still about Seifer, it made it very difficult–if not impossible–for him to write Squall off when things started going south.

At the beginning of the game, Squall and Seifer clearly have an understanding, and Seifer is, if not friendly with him, excited by the prospect of Squall accompanying him to glory (only in his shadow, of course). Later, we watch Seifer scramble to rewrite the terms of his story, recasting Squall in various roles across from him, from villainous black knight to leader of a corrupt establishment (at least that one was somewhat correct). To everyone on the outside looking in, Seifer seems like he must be bitter or jealous of Squall (“Mr. Leader” and “I’ll show you who’s the better man”), and misinterpret this as part of an ongoing rivalry, but in my view it’s more simple frustration born from the fact Seifer is losing, and Squall is always there to challenge him at the apex of his grand summit.

(Squall, for his part, is pretty done with Seifer by the end of the game, feeling more disappointment, disgust, and yes, hurt than any sort of need to one-up him. Although I would not for a second call Squall’s connection to Seifer affectionate, the fact remains that up until Ultimecia, Seifer was, for all his unpredictability, reliable and familiar and, perhaps most importantly, there.

Without an ounce of fondness between them, Squall had gotten used to Seifer, and that made this subsequent downward spiral just one more example of someone Squall had come to count on leaving him high and dry.)

As for Rinoa, she’s no different to Seifer than anyone else. His interest in her had more to do with the potential for heroics as a SeeD returning triumphantly to take up the Forest Owls’ noble cause. In the entire game, his only mention of their “relationship” is in Galbadia Garden, if you happen to have Rinoa in your party when you fight him, and even then, it seems more aimed to taunting her as an enemy. Rinoa, SeeD, even Fujin and Raijin–Seifer’s dream takes precedence over all.

[Note: the following was in direct response to a post that had been going around about the orphanage kids having pets, which I had to bow out from because Seifer came up in discussion.] For this reason, the idea of Seifer having a pet makes me physically ill; as a child he would know no better but to do things to the animal just to see what would happen and what kind of reaction he could illicit. It’s not even strictly his fault, but when that came up in the thread I had to bow out. I just can’t. He’d torture it to death, not really having a clue he was doing so. Case in point: I don’t think he even imagined that what he was doing to Squall as torturing him, in D-district. Seifer was playing his role, and when Squall pointed out the role he was playing was torturer, he left, because his answer to any proof he’s anything other than the hero is to stop paying attention. He can��t stand to hear anything about himself that doesn’t directly support his worthiness for the role of the Sorceress’s Knight.

That’s the tragedy, of course: in the end, the only thing remotely “knightly” about Seifer is how noble he is–that is, as Helium. He can’t bond with anything.

That’s my Seifer: The Noble Psychopath. It’s not how most people see him, I know, and it’s probably terribly unsatisfying for a lot of Seifer fans because an incapacity for human connection precludes any chance for real romance with anyone, but at least to me, it makes sense and presents very interesting setup for character growth.

…Now that I’ve pinioned myself.

I think all of this is sound.I still hold pretty strongly that Seifer is borderline if not patently a sociopath…and let me be as clear as I possibly can be: I’m not saying he’s evil, “crazy,” or even malicious…when I use the word “sociopath” or “psychopath” here, I’m not at all precluding him from being a good guy. Yes, I know what the word sociopath means. I also know what it does not mean, and it doesn’t actually mean you become a horrible, cruel person. It means you have an emotional handicap. That handicap can facilitate behavior we’d call “evil,” but there is so much research at this point showing that it does not have to and I don’t think Seifer is doomed to it, in fact I think he has a unique character path towards avoiding it, post-game. And I love that about him. I will still write him that way, in any stories of my own.

However…since this above response, my perspective on what makes sense for Seifer has indeed broadened. I’ve been moved to think that there is another explanation for Seifer’s behavior in-game that doesn’t just involve Ultimecia controlling his mind and making him do things, although it does assume that she manipulates him quite heavily. Making him hallucinate, for one; in the Timber TV station, for instance, when Edea appears and begins speaking to him: who is he waving to? Not his former comrades, certainly. It’s the same motion he exhibits during the parade in Deling City, as if he can already see the adoration of the populace greeting him.

And, okay, but just because she’s making him hallucinate doesn’t mean the sociopath theory isn’t still in play. You can hallucinate and still have zero human empathy.

But…but. The other aspect of his behavior that I had not considered in this light, was his spiral. Yes, I still think it makes sense for Seifer to show greater and greater levels of desperation, denialism and self-delusion because of a sheer inability to concede that he is anything other than the center of the meaningful universe. But, taken in the context of hallucinogenic magic, it’s also the behavior of an addict. And the suggestion given to me for his spiral that I found fascinating, was that the ‘fix’ he was looking for wasn’t just glory…it was whatever euphoria Ultimecia was feeding him.

It was rather clear about halfway through the game, Ultimecia was rather…done with Seifer. She gave him one last task, to find the Lunatic Pandora, with the promise that she would provide him with “dreams” again. Hmm. Can you imagine, what sort of “dreams” those might be? Ultimecia oozes sultry seduction. And I kind of love how the idea of her literally drugging Seifer with magic…which would fit nicely as a cautionary theme with Guardian Forces and para-magic adversely affecting the minds of those who “use” them…changes the narrative. It turns his sociopathy into an addictive personality. Which also neatly explains a lot of his compulsive, thrill-seeking, seemingly careless behavior.

And yeah, it also means, instead of him being incapable of human connection, he more than likely craves it. But he craves it his way and most people just…don’t have what he needs, frankly. Not to mention, he just doesn’t really have a taste for subtlety, and so actually approaching someone to ask for anything is…bleh. Not his style. And that isolates him, which makes him want to get more attention, to show off more, get louder. Do anything to make sure people see him.

There are two people in the game who do see him, and take note. One is Rinoa. The other is Squall. Squall I’ve already explained. Rinoa has a bit less structure behind her connection with him, but the basic framework of a relationship is there (whether you believe it to be romantic or not, on which the game is pretty unclear, in my opinion). She and Seifer have a lot in common: they thing big. They often act before they think. They are human wrenches in eeeeveryone’s plans. They are dreamers, first and foremost, unbridled, and this very needful version of Seifer, those commonalities have great potential for connection, given a second chance. Meanwhile, Seifer and Squall have their History. They understand each other, and in an ideal situation, each serves a very important purpose for the other that cannot be replicated anywhere else. More than rivals, or even counterparts, in this scenario, they are brothers.

Therefore…I see no reason you can’t write a redemption/addiction recovery story for Seifer that involves Squall, Rinoa, or even both as potential friendship or even romantic options. “Both” is the most complicated, and the most interesting, so I like it the best. I won’t tell you it’s my OT3. It’s…not. But I like it. I like it a lot, if you can write it and write it well (and I know at least one person who can, ho ho).

This is actually an…oddly personal response for me, and the perspective one that’s important, I think, because this is the first day I have felt…semi-normal, after a long, hard week of detoxing from prescription pain meds. It sucked, haha. I’m glad to be rid of them, but god damn, sorry, that stuff is hard to ditch even when you’re taking it as prescribed. It makes me imagine just how messed up you could potentially get on either sorceress magic or heavy duty para-magic. Makes even more sense that there’s a class of para-magic that is simply called Forbidden. Not even because of its destructive effects, oh no…but because of its enhancing qualities. Could you imagine “para-magic detox”? Getting royally screwed up on Meteor and Death and Pain and Metldown and dear god Aura. Ultima? Apocolypse? That stuff’ll kill you, haha.

If I assume Hyne’s touch is like the world’s purest magical high, it rewrites 80% of what I see in Seifer’s actions, and opens up a very different set of possibilities between him and the other characters, for me.

That’s one of the reasons I’m here…the more perspectives I’m exposed to, the bigger this game’s universe becomes for me, and that’s so important to me. Coming across a game-changer like this is rare for me, but if I let my theories be the end-all-be-all, I will miss so many equally good ideas and I’ll have less, in the end, of this game to enjoy.

That’s not to say that any of this has to sit well with you. You can think both these theories are full of it, and that’s fine, haha. But…that’s my answer, to your question, “Anonymous,” (and one older one). I hope that at least as an explanation, it suffices, if not a pair of theories you particularly like, yourself.

#Anonymous #strane-stelle #ff8 #seifer almasy #asks #feature #xrebelxheartx #zesimi #ableism #ableist language #will fix later #apologies

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micaramel · 4 years

Link

Artist: Yuki Okumura

Venue: Keio University Art Space, Keio University Art Center Archive, Tokyo

Exhibition Title: The Man Who, An Ephemeral Archive

Date: November 9 – November 22, 2019

Curated By: Hitoshi Kubo and Yohko Watanabe

Note: Two versions of the exhibition leaflet can be downloaded here and here.

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release, and link available after the jump.

Images:

Video:

Yuki Okumura, The Man Who, 2019. HD Video, 116 minutes 15 seconds (Japanese subtitled version)

Installation images courtesy of Keio University Art Center, Tokyo. Photos by Calo works Co. Ltd. Film stills courtesy of the artist and MISAKO & ROSEN, Tokyo. Scanned photographs by Jean-Hubert Martin, 1993.

Press Release:

When stating that somebody is an interesting person, or a boring person, one is actually reducing various behaviors of that person into a flat image and entrenching her or him in this thin plate. However, of course, that person’s behaviors are not always interesting or boring, but just different each time. Above all, the defined character one applies to the person depends purely on one’s perspective and standpoint.

This solo exhibition by Yuki Okumura revolves around his latest film entitled The Man Who (2019), which comprises nine people’s recollections about somebody they call “him.” It is Okumura’s attempt to untangle the rigidly fixed bundle to which diverse aspects of “him” have been put together, multilayering the image through a series of procedures reminiscent of overlaying different photographic plates one after another. Here, “he” indeed emerges as a singular man every time the pronoun is pronounced, but also turns into plural men as the nine interviewees deliver their stories. This duality tears apart the man/men toward two poles, namely their most general states and their most specific states, between which we encounter countless versions of “the man who” — each is simultaneously “him” who looks very much like anybody and a similitude of “him” who looks absolutely like nobody.

This exhibition also includes an act of placement of a collection of three reference items related to the film into the archive of Keio University Art Center, lasting just for the show’s duration.* Along with The Man Who, which is at once an artistic film work and an oral historical referential material, this intervention is to provoke fresh discussions as to what a material really is for an archive and what kind of possibilities archival materials can open up today. Indeed, as shown by the nine individuals narrating their memories with “him” in the film, each of us has a body that is an archive on its own, established in this physical world and accessible only for a fleeting moment.

* Open to any researcher but a preliminary online reservation is necessary. Please make a reservation here.

Special viewing on Saturday, November 9

13:00 Screening: The Man Who (2019 | HD video | 116 minutes 15 seconds) *

15:30 Discussion: “The Process of Doubles” (Yuki Okumura x Yusuke Minami x Yohko Watanabe x Hitoshi Kubo) **　　　

* Not on view during the discussion. Screened continuously on other exhibition days.

** Japanese only.

Yuki Okumura

A man who was born in Aomori, 1978, and now lives in Brussels and Maastricht. Artist. In many of his projects, Okumura inserts his own life and fantasy in a specific area of recent art history, reactivating it in the present timeframe as a site of uncertainty that develops through ever-changing interpersonal relations, driven by his belief in the essential parallelity of worlds and the ultimate interconnectedness between individuals. Recent solo exhibitions include Hisachika Takahashi by Yuki Okumura (2016 Maison Hermè Le Forum, Tokyo. Curated by Reiko Setsuda), Na(me/am) (2018, Convent, Ghent. Organized by Jeroen Staes and Wouter De Vleeschouwer) and 29,771 days – 2,094,943 steps (2019, LA MAISON DE RENDEZ-VOUS, Brussels. Presented by MISAKO & ROSEN).

Hitoshi Kubo

A man who was born in Tokyo, 1977 and now lives in Kanagawa. Archivist, among other activities. Departing from certain archives or specific referential materials and montaging various spatiotemporal perspectives that they encompass, many of his projects shed light on not only events that occurred but also those that could have occurred, fundamentally as a way for him to explore possibilities to redesign conditions of human experiences as variable circuits by means of observation, analysis, and construction of montages employed in films and other artistic works, driven by his trust to the world, which in his eyes essentially stands as a process of self-generation and flickering. Recent writings include Montaging Penumbra: on a Motif of Archive (report for JSPS Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research 26580029 | 2017) and “A Case of a Studio: Shuzo Takiguchi and a Laboratory,” NACT Review, no. 5 (2018 | National Art Center Tokyo). At Keio University Art Center, he has directed a project to reconsider archives, called Pleating Machine (2018–).

Yusuke Minami

A man who was born in Tottori, 1959 and now lives in Yokohama and Nagoya. Curator. Director of Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art since April 2017, after working at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT), and the National Art Center, Tokyo (NACT). His curated exhibitions are mainly related to contemporary art and 20th century art. The former ones include solo exhibitions of Natsuyuki Nakanishi (1997), On Kawara (1998), Takashi Murakami (2001) and Tadanori Yokoo (2002) at MOT as well as Kazumi Nakamura (2014) and Yayoi Kusama (2017) at NACT, along with group exhibitions such as “MOT Annual 1999: Modest Radicalism” (1999) at MOT and “Artist File 2008” (2008), “The Light: MATSUMOTO Yoko / NOGUCHI Rika” (2009) and “Given Forms: TATSUNO Toeko / SHIBATA Toshio” (2012) at NACT. The latter ones include group shows such as “Living in the Material World: “Things” in Art of the 20th Century and Beyond” (2007), “Le Surrealisme: Exposition organisee par le Centre Pompidou a partir de sa Collection” (2011) and “American Pop Art From the John and Kimiko Powers Collection” (2013), as well as large-scale retrospectives of Picasso (2008), Man Ray (2010), Magritte (2010) and Dalí (2016), all at NACT.

Yohko Watanabe

Born in 1961. Professor, Keio University Art Center. Curator. As the Vice Director of Keio Museum Commons, she is engaged with establishing a new vision of a university art museum. All of her organized exhibitions are characterized by a consistent curatorial attitude despite their smallness in scale and marked by her belief that working in tandem with an artist’s work in the real sense means looking at each piece sincerely and meeting the artist and encountering the profound depth of the artistic realm through such commitment. Her curated shows at Keio University Art Space includes the 2012–2015 series entitled “Contemporary Eyes” (iteration I being “Hamish Fulton: Five Walks,” II “from here: stanley brouwn and Daniel Buren,” III “Sunrise and Sunset: Bruce McLean, 1985 – 90,” IV “The Light Dwells: Imi Knoebel” and V “Blinky Palermo”) and a new series since 2017 called “Standing Point” (iteration I being “Yoko Terauchi and II “Ana Mendieta”).

Link: Yuki Okumura at Keio University Art Space, Keio University Art Center Archive

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