ZERO ZERO VOLUME 2
THEM / HER
Miles Aldridge, Nicola Formichetti, and Kaimin testify to sex as answering poet André Breton's description of "a certain place in the spirit where life and death, the real and the imaginary, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable are no longer perceived to be in contradiction to one another." Although the subconscious was the "place in the spirit" where these forces converge for Breton, sex offers an earthly outlet for these primal tensions. In sex, the friction between these forces intensifies their separate powers and profundity. The glistening vital fluids, hard edges, wet skin and limpid bodies generated by the creative union of Aldridge, Formichetti and Kaimin confirm that sex is where these otherwise opposing forces, rather than contradict, are in complete congress. Sex, expressed in Zero Zero Volume 02, is where the subconscious and reality mate.
For this multi-sensory volume encompassing an original fragrance, soundtrack, video, and images, Aldridge, Formichetti, and Kaimin construct twin tales where Kaimin embodies otherworldly reincarnations of her femme fatale predecessors. In their contrasting series "Black" and "White", the creative trio construct visions where Breton's succinct list of subliminal forces powerfully collude.
The project's potency originates largely from the participants' multi-cultural backgrounds. Conceptual artist Kaimin, an admirer and successor of Nam Jun Paik's experimental persona, casts herself as the protagonist to both stories. To realize her fantasies, photographer Miles Aldridge puts aside his signature candy-hues to explore the nuanced meanings of monochrome, while Nicola Formichetti lends his futuristic, avant-garde sensibility to the intellectually and erotically stimulating project. For an admirer of surrealism's dark sexuality, the individual elements in this multi-sensory artwork target the six senses to provide different avenues into understanding and experiencing sex and the subconscious. In the tradition of Breton, Schiaparelli, de Chirico and Bellmer, Zero Zero Vol 02 simultaneously disorients and arouses the senses.
WHAT LIES BENEATH:
MILES ALDRIDGE, NICOLA FORMICHETTI, KAIMIN NOIR
and Sexual Subconscious
by ANA FINEL HONIGMAN
Miles Aldridge, Nicola Formichetti and Kaimin Noir, testify to sex as answering poet André Breton’s description of "a certain place in the spirit where life and death, the real and the imaginary, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable are no longer perceived to be in contradiction to one another." Although the subconscious was the “place in the spirit” where these forces converge for Breton, sex offers an earthly outlet for these primal tensions. In sex, the friction between these forces intensifies their separate power and profundity. The glistening vital fluids, hard edges, wet skin and limpid bodies generated by the creative union of Aldridge, Formichetti and Noir confirm that sex is where these otherwise opposing forces, rather than contradict, are in complete congress. Sex, expressed in Zero Zero Project 2, is where the subconscious and reality mate.
For Zero Zero Project 2, Aldridge, Formichetti and Noir construct twin tales where Kaimin embodies otherworldly reincarnations of her femme fetale predecessors. In their contrasting series “Black” and “White,” the creative trio construct visions where Breton’s succinct list of subliminal forces powerfully collude.
The project’s potency originates largely from the participants’ multi-cultural backgrounds. Conceptual artist, Kaimin Noir, an admirer and successor of Nam Jun Paik's experimental persona, casts herself as the protagonist to both stories. To realize her fantasies, photographer Miles Aldridge puts aside his signature candy-hues to explore the nuanced meanings of monochrome, while Nicola Formichetti lends his futuristic, avant-gardist sensibility to the intellectually and erotically stimulating project. For an admirer of surrealism’s dark sexuality, the individual elements in this multi-sensory artwork target the six senses to provide different avenues into understanding and experiencing sex and the subconscious. In the tradition of Breton, Schiaparelli, de Chirico and Bellmer, Zero Zero Project 2 simultaneously disorients and arouses the senses.
Alongside the paradoxical powers that Breton mentions, Aldridge, Formichetti and Noir add the rich history of tension between Western and Eastern culture. These three artists incorporate their complex cross-cultural backgrounds to fascinatingly fuse traditional color symbolism, mythology, iconography and forms from Europe and Asia. Ultimately, that the two sections function as a Ying-Yang where submission and dominance are represented as the “White” and “Black” forces. Each sequence contains a core kernel of its opposite, enabling both sides to harmoniously co-exist, as they do within all complexly sexual people.
The thin divide between sex/ death and predator/ prey in “White” is the most intriguing facet. Whereas the studded and lacerated black leather, shiny surfaces and darkroom lighting of the “Black” section reinforce Western images of “eroticism assenting to life even in death,”[1] the narrative to the “White” section of images and sound might shock Western audiences. In a Western visual vocabulary, white is popularly associated with purity and transcendence. It is literally a clean slate. Despite these Western impressions, across cultures, white carries more complex meanings. Beyond innocence, it is the color of sexual fluids, cigarette paper, bandages, bone, florescent office lights, cloudy sake, smoke, cocaine, age and hospital sheets. This dualism is recognized in Asian cultures, where white is the traditional color of mourning and death. This intense host of meanings is powerfully presented in “White.”
The “White” story is loosely inspired by Nagisa Oshima’s 1976 French-Japanese film “In the Realm of the Senses,” which told the timelessly shocking true story from the nineteen-thirties of Sada Abe and Kichizo Ishida. The Japanese and global media became fascinated with this story and Sada, an alleged nymphomaniac, became a symbol of sexual threat or sexual liberation for generations.
In “White,” Kaimin interprets this story as representing the moment before and during climax, when an inevitable explosion of sexual energy is built and released. “White” can be perceived as a quest for sexual gratification that satisfies all the senses. In it, Kaimin starts the sequence submissive and hopeful in a rope swing that is made for multiple partners. Yet, she is not passive. Her extraordinary hair envelops her lovers and her breasts, exposed in garments recalling Rudi Gernreich's monokini, they appear like weapons rather than sites of easy-access or vulnerability. As she ravishes her partners, her desires exceed reality. She strives to experience greater and infinite ecstasy, then her lust boils into toxic rage.
Extrapolating on meaning of white, as a color of mourning in Asian cultures, is the sense of isolation and frustration embedded in Kaimin’s erotic reverie. “White” enacts a desperate and obsessed struggle for pleasure but the character Kaimin plays remains unmoved and innocent from her destruction. White is an inherently calming color and Kaimin’s serene expression in the final frame articulates her distant and unshakable essence. Although she indulges in sex, to its most voluptuous and hedonistic extreme, in the end she has devoured her potential partners and is alone. At her core perhaps, remains a suppressed subconscious sadness.
The carnage results in images transforming the white setting into red. Aldridge’s camera and Formichetti’s direction spotlight the crash of an antiseptic environment with animalistic urges. As Kaimin’s climax comes closer, the scene turns from white to red. The equation of blood with orgasm extends to Zero Zero 2’s vial of seductively blood-red perfume and the exhibition, featuring art made from blood. In the context of “White,” this connection between blood, as a vital fluid necessary for life, and sexual energy is dramatically demonstrated by Kaimin’s thirst for her lovers’ blood. The ties between sex and death extend to “Black.”
Like a Ying Yang, “Black” echoes “White.” In this sequence, Kaimin embodies a succubus who arrives in men’s dreams to ravish them. Kaimin’s black hair and leather garments envelop her victims like octopus tentacles in ancient ukiyo-e woodcuts. She leaves her male lovers subdued. They languish helplessly and smile, as they dream of her. In a deep subconscious level, many women can identify with the succubus’s satisfied victory over her hapless, heartbroken and drained victims.
In total, “White” and “Black”, alongside companion sensory elements of smell and sound, make the sleek, hard, bound, box containing Zero Zero Project 2 into a "certain place” where Breton would find the essential elements of human, subconscious and physical, experience in a passionate embrace.
[1] Bataille, Georges, Eroticism: Death and Sensuality (San Francisco, City Lights Books, 1986): 11.
- ANA FINEL HONIGMAN