Body as Sculpture and Sculpture as Body

Xiang Jing,

Is body a medium or the essence? I prefer the former. Body is often onstage but not always present. Body, as the medium through which life is sustained, has many qualities by its nature, such as mortality — long and tardy, from newborn to decay, till the inevitable discard after demise, fragility — unlike the heroic figures in Hollywood films, body hurts, sickens, ages, deforms… irreversibly, and activity — the various organs of a body, either internal or external, all have corresponding abilities and functions, and are always dynamic.

Body is private. Yet a body of public-ness can deal with the norms, transcend, and reshape them by innumerable means. Perhaps at a point in the future, I will come back to the topic of body again, while the focus of discussions could be directed to the bodies outside the norms. Certainly, I have always grudgingly abided the existing gender norms while conceiving, and composing.

Most of the metaphors for body originate in the norms of gender. Therefore, when the topic of body is brought to discussions, they are always confined in such a realm. Even when the norms are missing, we would still say, that it is a body above gender, beyond gender.

So far we are still heavily relying on this medium called body. Experiences are still the indispensible, first-hand materials for us. Though maybe in the future, even a future not too far away, virtual reality could take over the means of our perceptions from body, or in other words, we might be able to simulate even more perfected perceptions between body and reality. The very concept of substance could change as well. The virtual, via the perceptivity of our minds, could be more substantial than substance.

Cognition resorts to medium — when the medium alters, the cognition changes, alas, and even so does language. By then, we do not talk about substance, nor about, body.

BREAST
Breast – is it the breast with metaphors, or is it the