Synopsis

“My Organs Lying on the Ground” is an 11 minute stopmotion animation, based on a Japanese folk belief called Womb Diving ( “Tainai Kuguri” ) or the “unknown hollow spiritual world”. In Japanese the word for womb, “tainai” , not only refers to the female organ of the uterus, but also refers to the animistic spiritual hollow space inside a Buddhist statue. This is a space of con- nection, between life and afterlife, death and life. There, the boundaries between organism and matter dissolve, and outer and inner worlds are continually inverted. The animation features certain organic materials such as rice, meat and insects. By portraying the idea of inside-out/outside-in cyclical systems, the work seeks to subvert binary structures such as subject and object, inside and outside, and visualises the muddled relationship between our bodies and the land itself.

PROFILE

SOEJIMA Shinobu

I define animation as ”the power to bring back from death to life”, and try to create a vision of a possible spiritual dimension. I won several awards at domestic and international film festivals, including the 68th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen Special Mention by Ecumenical Jury, the 22nd Japan Media Art Festival -Jury’s prize, Fantasia International Film Festival, and officially screened at the Hiroshima Animation Festival 2018.

GUEST