The Japanese Horror Movie Experience

The Indian Art Summit was every bit as creepy and disturbing as those yuurei films

So imagine my feelings when I did a quick 360 at the India Art Summit (IAS) and realised I was in a Japanese horror movie.

For those of you not versed in the genre, I offer you here its key aesthetic qualities, gleaned from many a night spent whimpering in front of the TV.  So far as I can figure, the otherworldly chill inspired by these films is due to the following four features—elements, the art-savvy Delhiite might notice, were also present at the Summit this past week:

The keyword being ‘resemble’. A frequent protagonist of Japanese horror is the yuurei, a berobed ghost with an emaciated, ashen frame.  She is frightful not for any disfigurations, but for her stark similarity to a regular girl lacking all life. 

And, though the IAS was attended by a lively, warm-blooded audience, it too had its fair share of figures frightening for their variations on humanness.  Loknath Sinha, for instance, offered up a brightly painted figure with a big smile—and a multi-layered sandwich as a head. Erect on muscled, furry legs was Krishna Murari’s Lifesize, a man whose torso led up to a fully operational fan.  And, though anatomically correct, Hemi Bawa’s squad of mannequins proved unsettling as they beamed light through holes in their teal, blue and silver skin.

Famed member of the Japanese horror family, Ringu (remade in the US as The Ring) first brought to our attention the fear a massive quantity of hair can inspire.  That tangled horror, however, is another defining feature of yuurei, and can be found elsewhere in Japanese cinema (try Audition, 1999). Lucky for us, there was no shortage at this year’s IAS. 

Tacked to a wall was Adip Dutta’s braided, coiled silver monstrosity—a mass of hair half my height, double my waist, and hugely disconcerting.  Sheela Gowda mounted a bun of dreadlocks that spilled with giant, grotesque twists onto the gallery floor.  Top honours for creepy, however, go to Hossein Valamanesh’s Mourning 2007—a suspended shoehorn ending in a mass of black hair seemingly ripped from Ring monster Sadako’s head.

Poorly-coiffed, vengeful waifs need little accompaniment—and, indeed, Japanese horror soundtracks generally feature only simple percussion and plucked strings.  The IAS sonic offerings this year were similarly sparse,  reminding us that both aural and visual art can be weird.
Pieces included Vassilakis Takis’s Sans Titre, a suspended needle that occasionally bounced off a string, producing a percussive tone not lacking tension but certainly lacking tune.  Shilpa Gupta’s Singing Cloud—an amorphous, manatee-like collection of microphones—beamed back snippets of soundscapes to the confused listener.  For those seeking the sweet familiarity of a hummable tune, the Nokia ringtone was thankfully ubiquitous.

Ugh, did my future self just call again, screaming at my own, violent death (Chakushin ari, 2003)? And why, dear God, is there a bra hanging from the ceiling? (I ask you, Shanthi Swaroopini!) As I left the Summit, I realised I was asking myself the very same question I do after a particularly unsettling Takashi Miike movie: what the hell just happened?

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Chandi Deitmer