Projects. SOMATIP (2002-2004)

In the given project the artist acts as the researcher of the latent senses, the destroyer of language patterns. «SOMATIP» is an attempt of expansion of concepts and finding the form of language, which can define the space of a woman (from aesthetics to philosophy), hidden to this day behind the «LOGOS LAW». The spontaneous print of sense provokes the spectator’s thinking about other forms of human relations and perhaps other social structure.

«SOMATIP» is the creation of a female language, which is alternative to verbal authoritative/ so-called Man’s language, language of power. The stated judgment about the subject and its properties create the form of existence of the subject in language, in a civilization. All real expresses itself through this form. Naming subjects and designating objects, language creates relations of submission and oppression. But all those senses, which slip by borders of the word-name, are not any less significant than conventional signs or symbols of words. These are the latent desires, fears, all that inexplicable/ tactile, that we do not dare to name because the structure of language, of a word - logos refuses these realities in life, in legitimacy.

«SOMATIP» - is a body language. A transitory body (and cares of it), is that insignificant value which the patriarchal civilization has given to a woman at leisure as «a trophy of a great sex war» became the powerful weapon of Temptation. According to LOGOS, a woman is not a natural phenomenon, but a secondary creation (weak). But a man is endowed with a body as well. The law of nature is identical to all living (on Earth). Man’s body speaks. That appears from the project. This language does not completely open just yet.

The authors of the project object to primitive fetishism of a word, but do not deny LOGOS as a significant phenomenon. The question is about the equivalent opportunities of existence of OTHER classic language of art. The authors are interested in other representation of image-creation and sense-formation. The main characteristic of this language is that it does not demand «unique», ostensibly «true» perusal, but stays in authority of plurality, multiple development of ideas and etc. «SOMATIP» as a female language allows us to understand more about ourselves and our latent motives. The project technique is intermedial: installation, performance and photography. The process makes a person being photographed feel some kind of stress or even «catharsis». And the process of clarification, occurs in front of the box built in the studio filled with clay (where the participant of the project should settle, making a gesture associated with a certain meaning). The absurdity of the situation forces the subject, which is not burdened with intellectual exercises, to «jump out» of the patterns of ordinary concepts.

The box with clay probably reads inside of consciousness as a subject- symbol. The experiment reminds a ceremony of burial in the ground and frightens the subject with dissociation of communications with the world, the fact, of self-determination in an extreme situation. The person is put into a condition close to hysteria. And this condition is transferred to visual text. The space is likely to disappear. Instead of it a sign of space, «SOMATIP» appears. Each imprint of a body introduces its truth in the general sense. And each object has the right to exist in opposition to imperial unity of Logocentrism.

A certain optical way of photographing an imprint turns the work into original clay bas-relief which is deliberately similar to the ancient Egyptian steles where, as a rule, the figure of a person represents itself as a semantic sign (a sign of undivided authority). In the given project each figure destroys old signs, creates different variations of other, new Senses. «Other» language, which has not yet been read by anybody, is born.