iamamiwhoami ‘o’ video

14

Category : Entertainment, Food for Thought, Music and Movies

REFERENCES:

- decoding iamamiwhoami – the beginnings
- A Closer Look To iamamiwhoami’s b Video
- iamamiwhoami’s o video
- u-1
- u-2
- n from Nature/Natural
- T – back in the kingdom we were Kings and Queens
- And this is Y all that’s left is Hope

- Iamamiwhoami – Sources of Inspiration
- Identity in iamamiwhoami
- An Archetypal and Mythological Approach to iamamiwhoami
- iamamiwhoami official youtube channel

Alright, just like in the case of the b video, let’s take a closer look at iamamiwhoami’s new piece of work: o.

Watch the video then follow me:

Lyrics:

I thought I felt a spark
Thought I saw a flame
When something changed in you
Who took the blame?

My plan was foolproof
As I became
A fortress of your heart

Love
(Love, love)
The kind that kills and scars
And make you kneel and crawl
To hell and back
(Love, love)
The words that slit your throat
And make you think of love
As the new black
As what you lack
Love

The sound of letting go
A side of you
That we all set aside
When the world was new

Under the full moon
Only endless rain
An absence of your heart

Love
(Love, love)
The kind that kills and scars
And make you kneel and crawl
To hell and back
(Love, love)
The words that slit your throat
And make you think of love
As the new black
As what you lack
Love

First and foremost, bravo for another astonishing creation, you guys! I suppose we’re in for at least other four.

Back to our business. We’re dealing this time with what I would call a tree nursery (a greenhouse, a hothouse – but tree nursery fits the entire concept better, you’ll see). Hints:

- we’re in a room filled with pots in which small trees are growing. The pots are arranged in a symmetrical way, on rows, with spaces between, allowing branches to grow freely
lighttreeview
- the ceiling is made of plexiglas, allowing a certain amount of light to come through
bag2
- the Mandragora itself seems to be growing
- she’s first covered in some sort of netting. Netting is often used to cover small and young trees/plants in order to protect them from certain insects that could lay eggs on their leafs, thus damaging them
bag1
- the collar she’s wearing is also used as a means of protection, this time from creatures that could climb – squirrels for example – in trees/plants to eat their fruits
collar1
- her feet are painted in white paint up to her knees as a means of protection from insects crawling up and from fungus developing
whitepaint
- she is ’sustained’ by two sticks, a trick gardeners often use in order to make trees grow in a vertical position, preventing them from having bent trunks
iamstick
- she is being offered fertilizer, natural I would say, if you take a close look, it seems like goat droppings
goatwastefeet

The duality darkness vs. light is also part of plants growing in hothouses, they first need a darker environment (seed and youth stages), after which they need light to develop. MO seems to be collecting the light she’s being offered in that broken candle above her.
candle1

Outside appears to be autumn, the withered leaves gathered on the glass room being the sign of it. According to wikipedia, the propagation of MO is done as follows: Seed – best sown in a cold frame in the autumn. The seed can also be sown in spring in a cold frame. When they are large enough to handle, prick the seedlings out into individual pots and grow them on in the greenhouse for at least their first winter. Plant them out into their permanent positions in late spring or early summer, after the last expected frosts. Guess next video MO is going out to play.

Re-occurring motifs and techniques:

The second video is also constructed in a circular way. Just like in the first one, we’re being introduced into another dimension by the same cat, only this time she’s making an owl sound. We’ve already established what the cat is all about.

incipittreecat

The difference with this video is that in the end, we’re being brought back to the tree, but this time, the image is completed with a couple of items we’ve already been introduced to: the six strawberries (btw, I really think those look more like mandragora berries than strawberries), the collar, the candle holder and the blond hair. Watch where the collar is placed in this tree.
endtreecandlefruitscollar

Speaking of trees, have you ever noticed how many Y’s are in a tree? Well… here are only a couple of examples. This is also another recurring motif.
treeeye2Ybranch
treeeye2YYbranch

The cat. Six of them as a matter of fact.
catonroof

Speaking of 6, here are the six faces that appear in the end. They look like faces to me. Masks. I’m thinking trees turned into beings, just like MO.
LEs:

- try this link for a better reference for the masks ;)

- or even better: I strongly believe the 7:26 Mandragora face in Y is connected to the 5:22 masks in O, the first being captured right before the pot is being ‘fed’ the semen, and the O masks after. It’s 6 mandras in this case, or 6 cycles of life.

face1
face2
face3
face4
face5
face6

The last two of them look strikingly similar. Either the creators got lazy or it’s just part of a deja-vu effect.

Other things I have notices, but couldn’t really make most of:

The way the light is entering the tree nursery. It seems to enter through spaces between wooden walls and trough some holes, which actually appear to be human made and human controlled. As in:

redlightcracksinwalls
redlights2

At first I thought it is the natural process of holes growing in wood, but we’re actually dealing with plugs pushed by fingers (theeeere’s a pinky!) and tied with chains. This tells me the plugs can be pulled back if an exterior will wants.

cep1
cep2fingerpushing
cep3chain

Other opinions to support video analysis:

ItsObviouslyTReznor

the first 6 vids were about the initial growth of the mandrake. the mandrake grows where the semen of a hanged man lands – that is illustrated by her lapping it up in the 2nd video. by the 6th video she’s finally uprooted by the black dogs (killed by her scream) and brought in to be prepared… “welcome home”

the next 6 videos might be focusing on the preparation of the mandrake plant which requires it to be buried for 30 days – which is approximately how long the interval between videos has become – and to be watered with cow’s milk (drip fed from the suspended glass) and then dug up in the middle of the night (both O and B have been made public at night… unlike the first 6 vids) and then wrapped in a “dead man’s sheet” (the “plastic” she was? covered in for b).

Iamamiwhoami – Sources of Inspiration

2

Category : Entertainment, art

This article is constantly being updated

1. Mandragora Officinarum myth

2. Alraune myth – As read in Hanns Heinz Ewers – Alraune (Joe Bandel translation)

3. David Brown’s Tchaikovsky the Man and His Music’. Read more here as well. Regarding the knight and the sheets of paper.

4. David McRobbie’s ‘Mandragora’. Read here.  Referring to the Mandragora dolls. A small excerpt:

“Mandragora” by David Mc Robbie is the story of parallel lives and how
they connect through four cursed mandrake dolls. These dolls in
particular have been around since 1886.

According to “Mandragora”, a ship called the Dunarling was not only
carrying 85 passengers wanting to shift from Scotland to South
Australia, but also the four dolls. Each named and cursed. ‘Swith’ was
cursed with fire (bleeze), ‘Agley’ with mischance, ‘Snell’ with
foulness and ‘Sneddum’ was cursed with the final destruction.
Otherwise referred to as ‘All fa’ doon!’

4. About Mandragora demons.

5. Dr. Who and The Masque of Mandragora. You might want to check the poster for this, those masks remind me of the  masks in o.

6.

mandragsyn

7. Vanuatu art. See here.

8. The Evolution of the Dragon – G. Elliot Smith – Project Guttemberg, Chapter III, The Birth of Aphrodite, subchapter The Mandrake

9. Norse mythology – Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, especially elements connected to the Tree of Life/the World – Yggdrasil as well as to goddess Freyja. More here.

10. As stated in this interview, Jona Lee’s favorite novel is Bounty by Val McDermid and her favorite poem collection is Aniara by Harry Martinson.

Aniara - “The main message of Aniara, “my child” as Martinson called it, is the need to take care of Mother Earth. Aniara is intended as a warning to mankind, urging us to accept responsibility and guilt for our collective sins.

Read more here, tis a great review.

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