next >
reviews criticism

"Graymatters" - Reviewed by Jorge Luiz Antonio Repeated images in a kind of boxes. Headless women's bodies. Headless equal a preconception, that is, women without brain, intelligence, feelings, culture, in some men's viewpoint. Instead of heads, several envelopes with code messages. Many people, especially males, see women as desire objects: womb, vagina, breast, legs, sensual forms. And where is the human being? Brazilian male would prefer the same image also in the behind, for seeing the buttocks, as American people prefer big bosons. Preconceptions, foregone conclusions. Repetition of bodies seems to be the 28 series of headless bodies. Same bodies, same curves. But a structure comes out to say something more: what does the culture brings us? Patterns? Models? Paradigms? Fragments? The look for meanings. The image editor of my eyes and mind needs to change the series and the reviewer wants to become the creator even in the second time. Anyway a reviewer is a re-organizer. All the times he uses to do it. Sequences, lines, squares, rectangles, headless female bodies, men's obsession. Everything canned, accumulated in a shelf, maybe in a supermarket. The headless bodies are the merchandising and we men are the buyers, for ourselves, and, sometimes, in female's opinions. The title of the series "Preview: Graymatters" is also intriguing and is the first strangeness: matters which are gray. Why not coloured? - the reader-fulfiller makes a question. Let's try to see the objects to replace and/or substitute the head, which means, for male, the meaning for the body and for the mind. The envelopes bring messages and we have to understand them well. All the times we try to understand messages in order to learn, to live, to survive, to do things, to think, and so on. Headless body and a phrase and/or title. The head is supposed to be the key of meaning, or a kind of enigma. Words and images in the electronic and digital environment. Visual syntax, phrases as advertisements. Twenty-eight series-messages, but they are still in progress, perhaps they are growing more and more ... The body is the same, that is, they seem to be the same, and only a kind of envelop "gives" the "reader" a message. And we desperately want a message, a meaning. We have chosen the "Open": a kind of almost transparent white paper as a veil covers the head and part of the breast and the nipple. It is necessary to imagine in order to get the meaning: open and you will see - that is the first message. A head? A breast? A soul? A human being? The woman, the other part of ours. - Jorge Luiz Antonio - São Paulo, Brazil - study (PhD candidate) in the Communication and Semiotics Program at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil, and research about digital poetry. url: http://www.vispo.com/misc/BrazilianDigitalPoetry.htm email: jlantonio@uol.com.br Artists Note: also submitted was the following: "I am submitting the review for the serie "Open", and I am sending a digital image related to it. The first title of the infopoetry (digital poetry) is "Míriam Mulher" (Miriam Woman), but the word could mean "Woman World"." image