Arno Bouchard“䷚” Swallowing (with silver gelatin print)

Photographs: Arno Bouchard

Publisher: self published

48 pages

Year: 2022

Price: € 1000

䷚ = “Swallowing / Devouring” is the title of this upcoming book with hojōjutsu as for background.

This is the first part of a project made in Japan during the years 2017 and 2020 with a collaboration work by Mariya Olegovna.

It is a photographic book with a poem running through it. The second one, “Punish my body until I believe in my soul”, is a performance that happened in Tokyo at the end of January 2020. It was made with Marc Lochner.

The original idea of the book title was to combine two kanji characters representing the duality between creation and the inevitable destruction it implies, but also mutilation without which there can be no liberation. HOJŌJUTSU is synonymous to “annihilation of the individual”. Drawing on those ideas of juxtaposed symbols, the title was finally inspired by the hexagrams from the canonical Book of Changes of the I Ching’s disambiguated cleromancy (the ancient Chinese manual of binary signs is based on opposition and harmony, Yin and Yang, with its inherent antagonism). The title of the book is hexagram n°27. It evokes the act of devouring, swallowing, but also the junction between the lips, at once a place of meeting, of suture, but also of separation, dichotomy, forever being torn apart. Together but separate. "Between the lips of the kiss / The windowpane of solitude" wrote Gilbert-Lecomte.

Portfolio is offset-printed on 300gsm Arena Ivory stock with jaspage edging and finished in a handmade matt velvet box (22x30x3cm) wrapped in a leather skin secured with a hemp shibari rope and a poem lying inside. It contains one original signed and numbered silver gelatin print (24x20cm), one original drawing and an acid-worn steel needle as a binding kit. Signed edition limited of 200 copies.