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VISUAL_Acephala

Acephala, serie

On display at B.base – a body based space 6-7-8 March 2024

Chemigram on Ilford photographic paper 2024

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HEADLESSLY, I carry it, forgetting often wilfully, that this body is not mine – as in, I shall respect that it was given to me to inhabit – and that it also is – as in, nobody but me shall take responsibility for it. I shall return this body better than I found it.

HEADLESSLY, I find unreasonable realities to embody. Ones in which sense is relative, reason fails to stand. In imagination there is chaos to thrive into, only middles, of nowheres, no beginnings, no ends. No heads, no tails, no arms to reach with, no legs. No measure to judge distance, no arrival, no achievement.

HEADLESSLY, dizzy of freedom, I do not look. Not forward, not backward. Needless to see: the contents being compass. I reorient, repent, recurrent is the dream where this body drips away, fast. Then I remain, without reason, headlessly. Hopefully, blissfuly oblivious.

I.B. 2024

This work is inspired by the notion of Headlessness, as understood by Auriemma,L.

The portrait is concentrated on itself, it is confined within its own limits, it draws attention to its own face. The headless body, however, is in space, it is itself a place of that space which is the world: its limits participate in a continuous osmotic exchange with the world.

The headless body is not self-referential like the portrait but is linked to the world, has a relationship with everything that surrounds it, lives its condition of acephaly in the world and relates to it. The portrait does not participate in the things of the world, it no longer participates in cosmic energy. As Nancy appropriately writes, “the portrait has a relationship only with itself”[9], the body, on the other hand, relates and has relationships with the world and with other bodies. The body is to the world what the portrait is to its own absence.

Other influential quotes:

“I think in today’s complex, cruel, incomprehensible but also graceful beautiful and hopeful world, to be static, to ‘keep the level’ to be for security, for tradition, for identity will definitely lead to a loss. I am for movement, for intensity, for exaggeration, I am for Headlessness, for the decision, for insistence, for the offensive, for the dream”.

Hirschhorn, T. In Dread, the Dizziness of Freedom
2013

“It is time to abandon the world of the civilized and its light. It is to late to want to be reasonable and learned, which has led to a life without attractions”.

Bataille, G. In L’Acephale
1936

“What will happen when Art will lose it’s mind, no longer being generated by the head?
The art of portrait will become the art of portraying shadows, of heads that no longer belong to the bodies.
At most the head will be a face we do not (need to) recognize. Not represented but expressed through the body”.

Clair, J. in Hybris
2015

“Will it be the head or the trunk which will be the spectre?”

Hugo, V.
1894