I will die. Don't worry about me, it's not what I said.
People from different countries, of different ages and sex say "I will die(私は死にます)" one after another in the video installation on the wall.
I saw the installation art in Osaka national museum several years ago.
The artist asked people to say "I will die" and recorded how they were saying it.
The people uniformly had confused facial expressions and it seemed they didn't know how to intonate the words.
I will die, obviously.
Everyone knows death is inevitable for all.
The contemporary artwork forces us to face the fact which is concealed or that we avoid inadvertently thinking about it in daily life. We go through our day without thinking that we are going to die.
Indeed, this motif has been expressed repeatedly in art history such as so called Memento Mori, Danse Macabre in Europe, Rikudo-e, and Kusou-zu in Japan.
Although we know we will die, there is a difference between our notions of death. In other words, death of someone else, and death of one's self is like the difference between seeing thunder and being struck by thunder.
That difference was clarified in the art by the perplexity of people when they talk about death with the subject, I.
Death doesn't exist in our daily life so it sound truly awkward if it comes up there.
The artwork just showed their perplexity and put into the notion of death in a daily life but didn't criticize whether it is good or bad.
It's free what you might feel.
The audience might think about what is important is in life, or that everything is vanity, or now is the time to drink. I no longer remember what I thought at that time.
One more interesting thing.
In the video, only a baby didn't say anything. Only babies don't know we will die. Thus, an innocent baby sometimes appears more enlightened than men who are scheduled to die.
But there's nothing wrong with dying and knowing about death.
People from different countries, of different ages and sex say "I will die(私は死にます)" one after another in the video installation on the wall.
I saw the installation art in Osaka national museum several years ago.
The artist asked people to say "I will die" and recorded how they were saying it.
The people uniformly had confused facial expressions and it seemed they didn't know how to intonate the words.
I will die, obviously.
Everyone knows death is inevitable for all.
The contemporary artwork forces us to face the fact which is concealed or that we avoid inadvertently thinking about it in daily life. We go through our day without thinking that we are going to die.
Indeed, this motif has been expressed repeatedly in art history such as so called Memento Mori, Danse Macabre in Europe, Rikudo-e, and Kusou-zu in Japan.
Although we know we will die, there is a difference between our notions of death. In other words, death of someone else, and death of one's self is like the difference between seeing thunder and being struck by thunder.
That difference was clarified in the art by the perplexity of people when they talk about death with the subject, I.
Death doesn't exist in our daily life so it sound truly awkward if it comes up there.
The artwork just showed their perplexity and put into the notion of death in a daily life but didn't criticize whether it is good or bad.
It's free what you might feel.
The audience might think about what is important is in life, or that everything is vanity, or now is the time to drink. I no longer remember what I thought at that time.
One more interesting thing.
In the video, only a baby didn't say anything. Only babies don't know we will die. Thus, an innocent baby sometimes appears more enlightened than men who are scheduled to die.
But there's nothing wrong with dying and knowing about death.
Thanks to Chibi-lang's correction.
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