Drawing Restraint 9 (2005) - full transcript
The film concerns the theme of self-imposed limitation and continues Matthew Barney's interest in religious rite, this time focusing on Shinto.
Please excuse me for entering.
Thank you for inviting me.
Now, I would like to offer you some tea.
How does it please you?
What you are tasting is informed
by the fortuitous
events of the past few days.
The magnificent specimen
of ambergris wenowhaveon board
once passed through the whale,
and its lovely essence has permeated
every aspect of the vessel.
She was built in 1987,
in Innoshima of Hiroshima,
by Hitachi Zosen.
She has an overall length
of 129.5 meters,
a breadth of 19.4 meters,
and weighs 7638 tons.
She is not
as big as her predecessor,
but she is slightly
faster for her loss in mass.
Her name means new.
To perfect the art of whaling,
she has reinvented
herself over and over again.
This is the fourth Nisshin Maru,
but, in Japanese, the number 4
is associated with death.
Thus we call her, simply,
Nisshin Maru.
The Nisshin Maru bears
the faint scar from an encounter
some years ago in the Southern Ocean.
It was a calm day.
I remember the extraordinary
clarity of the water,
and the reflections
across the melting ice.
In Japan, we recognize ourselves
as apart of nature.
And by accepting the impermanence
of our existence,
we try to gain a deeper
understanding of the world.
We call this mono no aware.
Yet, what happened that day left
an indelible impression.
A former sealing ship,
the Arctic Sunrise,
met with our vessel,
leaving the memory of her bow
on our starboard side.
This event took place far from
land on the high seas.
There is a shallow scar on her hull
from that day,
but a deeper scar
etched upon our memory.
And there is a much older story
within the deeper scar.
Thank you for inviting me.
Now, I would like to offer you some tea.
How does it please you?
What you are tasting is informed
by the fortuitous
events of the past few days.
The magnificent specimen
of ambergris wenowhaveon board
once passed through the whale,
and its lovely essence has permeated
every aspect of the vessel.
She was built in 1987,
in Innoshima of Hiroshima,
by Hitachi Zosen.
She has an overall length
of 129.5 meters,
a breadth of 19.4 meters,
and weighs 7638 tons.
She is not
as big as her predecessor,
but she is slightly
faster for her loss in mass.
Her name means new.
To perfect the art of whaling,
she has reinvented
herself over and over again.
This is the fourth Nisshin Maru,
but, in Japanese, the number 4
is associated with death.
Thus we call her, simply,
Nisshin Maru.
The Nisshin Maru bears
the faint scar from an encounter
some years ago in the Southern Ocean.
It was a calm day.
I remember the extraordinary
clarity of the water,
and the reflections
across the melting ice.
In Japan, we recognize ourselves
as apart of nature.
And by accepting the impermanence
of our existence,
we try to gain a deeper
understanding of the world.
We call this mono no aware.
Yet, what happened that day left
an indelible impression.
A former sealing ship,
the Arctic Sunrise,
met with our vessel,
leaving the memory of her bow
on our starboard side.
This event took place far from
land on the high seas.
There is a shallow scar on her hull
from that day,
but a deeper scar
etched upon our memory.
And there is a much older story
within the deeper scar.