Liquid

In collaboration with Dylan Wilde

This is a photo series created with the intent to explore concepts such as obscenity, fetish, and liquidity.

For inspiration, we looked to the writings of Nagisa Oshima and Linda Williams, which were useful in finding provocations to respond to as well as references for definitions on obscenity and fetish. As for the idea of liquidity, we took a page from Deep Throat, which uses liquidity and fluid as a recurring motif to various ends, notably as a metaphor for orgasm. 

One notable section from these texts was when Oshima questions his prosecution as to what exactly constitutes obscenity in his work — is it the whole page, a single word? Some of our images, for example, include imagery that may some find obscene, but might find it hard to articulate what about it is obscene. For example, is the way Wilde grasps the plant obscene, or is Sohrabi’s envelopment in water obscene? What about these things might be obscene? It is likely that with the context of Oshima’s prosecution, and indeed the history of the word “obscenity” itself, none of these things could be considered obscene, at least in the United States, but the stretching of these terms to social and historical contexts brings pause.

As for fetish, we took inspiration from the idea of fetish as a replacement or substitution, the object of which is “endowed with life”. In the images of Dylan, this endowment of the Euphorbia tirucalli may be clear, however in the images of Jahan, the endowment of hair and water may be more abstract (and unknown to even us).