KUSAMA'S SELF-OBLITERATION

by Yayoi KUSAMA & Jud YALKUT
1967 / 16mm / color / sound / 1 screen / 24' 00

A film exploration of the work and aesthetic concepts of Yayoi Kusama, painter, sculptor, and environmentalist, conceived in terms of an intense emotional experience with metaphysical overtones, an extension of my ultimate interest in a total fusion of the arts in a spirit of mutual collaboration.

"The obsessive act of covering (destruction of boundaries-identities) gradually equivalent to the ritual of uncovering (Striping away of ego); individual self, destroyed in mask/parody/clustering, is transcended. Mandalic (magic circle meditational form used to concentrate attention to a spiraling in/to a point through which new, expanded awareness is possible. The techniques of superimposition, a mere gimmick in most films, is an apt formal analogue for the dissolution of discreteness, for the meshing-merging of identities in the last orgiastic section of Self-Obliteration – we are confronted with an atomistic collection of figures interacting but one emergent, undulating Meat-Cloud-Being." – Paul Sharits

"A mysteriously innocent film." – P. Adams Sitney



No print in distribution