iamamiwhoami – 20101104 – This is how it goes

2

One Must Die So the Other Might Live.

Tell me the truth: did you expect ANYTHING like this to happen before November 16th, the date of the concert?

I didn’t think sooo! Evem more, there are 16 uploads on the iamamiwhoami official youtube channel, yet only 15 videos are visible. Are we in for something more? Something mooooore? Think so. LE on that: guess that was youtube messing up with us.

Right, let’s have a look at this new video. Quick, before another one comes out!

The story begins where it has been left in the Y video, only now we have a wider perspective. As we were expecting, none other than Captain Underpants is hanging from the ceiling, the white pot under his feet (boy, does that look like dog food inside or what?), the dog sitting in front of the body.

The dog barks and immediately leaves as the cat appears in the hall. A sign that we’re inside someone’s home, the same home that used to keep MO trapped in all other videos except T. The cat joins the dog and exits the space.

It’s interesting how this home is designed: it is clean, neat, well organized and… well, white. Everything here is white. I honestly thought ‘hospital, doctors’ the first time I watched the video. But I think it’s connected to the white page/sheet of paper in the Y video.

The white pot appears to be moving by itself, a sign that the ‘hanged dead man’s’ semen had done its thing and something (MO) is about to start growing from the fertilizer/earth/mud.

We’re immediately drawn to two detailed images of two hands bearing wedding rings. It’s clear we’re dealing with the hand of a man, certainly CU, as it hangs motionless, and the hand of a woman. The water dripping sound accompanying the image of the female hand and the blurred image tells us that hand is in water, a thing which is confirmed immediately. When I first saw these images, I thought about marriage, of course, but not necessarily about the marriage between any man and any woman, but about the marriage of bodies and minds.

I was talking about the myth of androgyny when u-1 first appeared and I was saying the way in which the man handled the female puppet and how he moved her mouth and uttered the words for her, just like a ventriloquist, made me think that everything was actually happening in his mind and we weren’t necessarily dealing with two bodies, but with two minds or two sides of a disturbed, under the influence mind. Further more, the mandragora plant is said to have the body of a male or a woman, a thing which is not certain. The way in which these two bodies (CU and MO’s) are being presented in this video signals, among others, the intention of not offering them a face. Making it uncertain whom we are watching. Even more, the female body seems to be wearing a man’s underpants. Of course, there are numerous other items to tell us which one is man and which one is female, starting with the hair and their position and so on…

Next, we’re inside this house’s bathroom. Everything white, again, everything motionless and apparently unused, undisturbed from its place. This white house is new territory, I haven’t managed to see what part of the human conscious/subconscious/unconscious this one is. LE to that: the blank page is a new born, a new self. When an artist sketches or a writer writes, they place their thoughts on a blank sheet of paper. When that page is full or something went wrong in the process, they get to another blank page, they start from scratch. Just like in the case of this new artistic product. They had to start from scratch. That’s why all the white.

And there we have it: in the bathtub, in clear water, wearing nothing but a pair of CU like underpants and a bag on her head, there laid our beloved MO.

Is this a murder (crime of passion) scene? Things really are into place, nothing is dirty around, this doesn’t seem like a battle scene, a man didn’t seem to have asphyxiated and drowned his wife, she looks peaceful in her foetus like position.

Is this the scene of a matricide / patricide? The lyrics could suggest that. ‘Terrified, what have we done, we run’.

Is this the scene of a double suicide? Could be. The same lyrics above suggest it. A mother and a father committing unnatural sins to procreate a soulless child. The Mandragora offspring were said to be soulless children.

Murder, followed by suicide? Sure, the myth does say the dead man hanging was suicidal, that can be explained, but what about MO? Why would he kill her?

Is this the final shape of a sexual fantasy, the clean, neat form of a dirty fetish, the accomplishment of a sexual urge via self asphyxiation? The two are married, they live in a perfect house, yet each of them lusts for something? Maybe, no one knows, no one could tell for sure. Connections can be made in all cases, things match the Mandragora myth, actions match the effects of consuming Mandragora plants. Anyway, give this a read, autoerotic asphyxia sort of makes sense. Check the ‘history’ section on that page especially.

The next images show the birth of a new being that seems to grow from the pot. A new Mandra. This new mandra starts to move towards the exit. She exists the house and she’s being followed by both cat and dog. It’s like she came, she saw, she conquered, now she’s leaving. Think in terms of the Mandragora substance has taken over the mind of the poor man consuming it, she has made it her home, she has turned it into blank matter, she has managed to kill him/his mind and now, as she’s wearing off, she exits his body. The Mandragora always finds a way to escape after men harvest her, trap her into hots and try to grow it and use it.

We run, we run, this is how it goes. What did you think? That you, a man, king of nothing, could keep me trapped in here forever? You can’t be the knight, remember?

As the woman goes towards the door, we notice the small hall at the entrance and a couple of items: a thick welcome carpet – please wipe your feet of any outside residue, this house is really clean, ok?, a shoe stand with two pairs of black shoes: his and hers, a telephone – hey, what do you know, you can actually talk to your inner self, lol! and a chair. Might I just say that pot makes a fancy hat?

MO starts singing having the pot on her head. Singing is in her nature and she does it even before having being born/having seeing the world. As she removes the pot, she faces the door, analyzes its surroundings and immediately knows what to do: unlock and run.

What’s interesting is that she’s aware of the fact that she’s done something wrong. If SHE’s the one singing those words, I am now assuming she’s the one thinking those thoughts. Even though we’re dealing with a plural there…

Maybe this is the ultimate sacrifice one has to undergo when being re-born. Think of MO as Jonna Lee and of CU as Claes Bjorklund. They both destroy and re-build their careers, one with the help of and through the other. This entire project is their rebirth into new artists, into ONE amazing product: IAMAMIWHOAMI. Their sacrifice is to let everything they have done up to now aside, their former offspring, in order to create a perfected one. It makes sense to me. Mandragora (Jonna’s new self) is born from the birch of a tree  (Claes – as tehhils has told us, Bjorklund means birch grove) transforming herself into this amazing image, letting her old self (the body in the bathtub, maybe) die; and the new product (Claes’ new artistic creation) is born from a pot, a container of meaning, owning a small part of his old body (the semen), that is his creativity. Perfect reconstruction! Perfect reinvention!

Back to the wedding ring for a moment. You see, the very first reason for which women and men started to wear rings was to symbolize the idea of eternity, cyclical development and continuity. The ring has its roots in mythology under the sign of the Uroboros (or Ouroboros), which is the symbol of a snake eating its own tail. The Uroboros represents self-reflexivity or cyclical development, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things perceived as cycles that begin anew as soon as they end.

uroboros

Carl Jung interpreted the Ouroboros/Uroboruos as having an archetypal significance to the human psyche. Clearly, the wedding rings in this video are hinting towards those things and are strongly connected to number 6 and its meanings, among which the eternal flux of time.

The number six was looked upon as the principle of holy marriage, since it contained within itself the mathematical formula 2 x 3 = 6. Two was considered the first feminine number, and three the first masculine number. Their sexual union was expressed by the process of multiplication, since by multiplying more is brought forth than the original amount, just as in sexual union, children exceed the natures and abilities of their parents.

I like the fact that the door has a mail orifice. This, if I am not going to far, could be a message to the volunteer: see? this is how it goes: we send you something by mail, you receive it and you open it, lol.

Lyrics:

We run, We run

Terrified,

What have we done?

This is how it goes

It’s how it goes

Other things to sustain video analysis:

The reiteration of the idea of a Godless world (as I have mentioned before in the T video, through the cross-less orb). This time, the hanged CU is juxtaposed on what looks like a cross.

1godless

Not exactly a Christ reiteration, but still.

Speaking of character position. Have you noticed how MO’s death shape fits her birth shape in a perfect way? Also, her first twitch takes place in water and her last breath in the same environment? This cycle is complete. Such a clever way to portray it!

deathbed

A nice parallel between 20101104 set and the B set.

gHY8L

It’s sort of normal, taking into account that everything about iamamiwhoami is constructed in a cyclic manner. Courtesy of CrushedVelvet :wink:

The famous fertilizer we’ve been seeing ever since O is actually LECA. Courtesy of puffojsan.

lecafertilizer

And now, for all dedicated iamamiwhoami fans out there. We’re getting closer and closer to the concert. How would you like to actually ‘dress the part’ for it?

Courtesy of BoredtoDeafRecords. Follow the vid’s description for details.

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 – 20101001 – Volunteer

- Why Vanuatu?

- Identity in Iamamiwhoami

- An Archetypal and Mythological Approach to Iamamiwhoami

- Iamamiwhoami – The Book Of Changes – Hexagram Theory

- Iamamiwhoami – Semiotics UnderCover

- Iamamiwhoami – Media Coverage

Comments (2)

[...] é a porimeira vez que o gato mia, todas as outras foram barulhos de outros animais. A casa branca, como foi dito no ForsakenOrder, é quase uma representação do novo e do limpo, já que tudo começa em uma folha [...]

Great work keep it coming

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