Anca Benera - H2O
After I talked to Anca Banera about the ‘XXX Pokemon’ shows in Venice, I placed the origami she made from a lined piece of paper at Terasa Motoare on a shelf. Then she told me that she had learned how to make these paper cranes from an old Japanese man. She also gave me a sealed mecha sticker, and I promised I won’t stick it anywhere.
You’re probably guessing that Anca Banera is a shojo manga heroin – manga made for girls, involving lots of girls. When it comes to shojo manga, the female character is the archetypal heroin. She is the star of some aquatic episodes which can take place anywhere: in the sink, in the bath tub, in pipes and around taps, from things filled with water to udders, cute invertebrates and jellyfish; Anca goes for a swim. She swims freely like a little mermaid through blue algae, mostly containing fociocinne; brown algae that contain fucoxantine and red algae which contain ficoeritrin. We can see all the pigment in her, all bathed in pink.
In order to understand drooling, we need to go back to China. We all know that Chinese people spit a lot. Spitting in the street is a tradition. It is the only way of getting rid of that gnome living in your throat.
Asia is the land of great concentrations of people – it is the place where viruses spread with every spit and with every sneeze, which means that wearing a mask is often highly recommended. This is done to protect yourself and others from drops of water and everything that can be found in these H2O particles. It’s a form of personal quarantine where every mouth is closed because the faucet is very tight. The mouth and the jaws end in a white mask that is not only worn by those infected with SARS or those fearing the latest chicken fever. It is worn by the young gangs of Tokyo and all the respectable ravers in this world.
The oriental film and animation industry excels when it comes to stop-frames and slow-mos where you can see the liquids of the body stopping in mid-air, as if there were no gravity. The body is a skin for liquids and viscosities, of limfa wanting to get out. Liquids ready to burst and splash everything around. Maybe that’s why Zatoichi’s legend is full of colorful ejaculations that remain in mid-air for as long as they need to be seen.
Perhaps the most suggestive image of the body that has become mechanic and robotic can be seen in the “Ghost in the Shell” animation (GITS – see the mangaforum). Kusanagi – the female cyborg is, at the beginning, emerged in a kind of hydroplasm, a kind of skin around her. There’s another scene where the water should draw her towards the bottom, but she floats in her protective outfit. On the steamy mask one can see a reflection of a scarlet sky. Anca Banera is at home in this hypnotic environment.
This is the point where she sees aliens who travel like Dragon Ball Z heroes or ancient immortals, riding on bubbles of hydrogen which lie at the basis of clouds. Anca Banera will learn at H’art Gallery that we all have pink eyelids and that we need to drink liquids if we want to understand why there is a strong anti-Kill-Bill movement on the manga forum and why the Takashi Miike is not suitable for children. (Stefan Tiron)
