Why do the birds keep singing?
	Alari Allik

	One of Haruki Murakami's novels starts with lines of poetry: Why do the birds keep singing? Why does the sun still rise? Don't they know then - the world has already ended.
	The same mood overtook me when I looked at photographs by Peeter Laurits-Ain Mäeots. The people in them have been struck down by sudden death, something horrible has happened to the entire human race - to soldiers and air hostesses; bankers and underdogs. Why then is the grass still green, why is water still flowing? The rich South-Estonian landscapes in the pictures thrive, rumble, absorb, sway, creak and squelch. It seems at first sight that the landscape here has stirred thanks to the contrast with immobile dead bodies, but having looked at the pictures for a while, I notice that the dead body is not actually immobile at all. It is quite busy - disintegrating (this verb should be taken here in an active sense) with remarkable intensity, moving along with the movements of the soil and water. It is not walking or lying, rather it sinks and sways. You almost hear the sound of quiet fizzing and hissing. This hissing is the language of death. The cadaver is addressing me, it talks to me through its innumerable pores, but I am not able to understand it. Normal articulation is missing - interruptions for sounds, words, sentences... the connection with language that my ears are used to hear, that is missing too. Speaking in the normal language that restricts the surrounding world to secure wholes, it is difficult to be fair to the other language in which the exhibition speaks. This other language is fluent, bubbling and sizzling, and won't bend to the will of any denominator. This language scatters, spreading across the borders of word and body. It slithers like a snake to hide in the tall grass each time someone tries to mention it. The pictorial language of the Laurits-Mäeots exhibition poses to us once again the question of chanmaster Linji: 'Where are you dragging this stinking leather sack,' questioning simultaneously both me and my body - and even more the language that separates them. The Linji school is convinced that such questions cannot be answered on the basis of ordinary understanding. Understanding is often conveyed - both in the direct and indirect sense of the expression - by a scream or a slap in the face, by an action that breaks the petrified differences. Another Linji question: 'What was your face like before your ancestors were born?' This, too, reaches beyond the borders of our image of self. This face cannot be described linguistically, but its existence can nevertheless be perceived. Man could reason thus: 'Did I exist in the first place and if so, then how; is the non-existence preceding birth any different from the non-existence that follows death? Or is it non-existence as such? Or perhaps it is after all existence? If existence... then whose... or of what... but... maybe...' In the meantime, Linji could have had ample time to whack the discussing person on the head. The face Linji is referring to is located in the dark corner where we never go, the existence of which we try to forget. A faceless face - without clearcut distinctions. But more real than all the rest. He breathes to the back of our head - the masked serial killer - and bides his time. His language is the wheeze of deep breathing, heavy breathing that can be conveyed only by onomatopoeia. The language spoken by someone whom culture does not harass - nature itself. In this language that crosses the border of birth and death and thus enters the world where the subject and object are not separated from each other, the familiar faces of bankers and models become totally different signs. Face has been deprived of its original and for us primary meaning as a bearer of identity. Features are no longer signs of differentiation. There are no personalities to provide these faces with a soul. The face therefore has no expression - nothing is 'written' in a face. Suit and tie are no longer symbols of the subject's status and aesthetic preferences, just black and white pieces of cloth that cover some bodies. The erotic stream of the leg of an air hostess is interrupted by another kind of flow, a blend of blood and metal. Amplifying the former, it creates a powerful life-death resonance that no uniform is able to suppress. Uniform is telling also with the military - the landscape pattern on their clothes has blended into the pattern of landscape that it imitated. The bodies of soldiers resemble scattered flower-beds. The white dog in the middle of the square looks me in the eye and notifies me of a point of view floating above life and death - outside the picture. This point of view belongs to me, the viewer, who cannot for one moment abandon his fixed standpoint.
	Is it possible to ask in this kind of form-free world who, after all, has killed who and why? In his Theory of Religion, Georges Bataille tried to imagine a subjectfree world - how would we see the world through the eyes of an animal? He says that the beast is distinguished from its victim only in the human glance. In nature the difference between animals is only expressed in terms of purely quantitative strength. The lion is not, in the words of Bataille, king of all animals - he is just a stronger wave that swallows the other waves. Every animal is a flow in itself, which seeks substances in the surroundings that are components of his own self. The question of who eats whom is irrelevant in the given context. Similar flows can be detected also in human society, although these are often much more turbulent. Some chase money, some seek quiet family life, others crave for fashionable items. Through these, people enter bigger circuits. From the point of view of nature, however, the transmissions within society are often meaningless. Nature has its own score to settle with man. In the pictures of Laurits-Mäeots, money-people, family-people, fashion- people have all become earth-people, food for worms. The wave of earth that gives and takes life has taken possession of them. Earth regards man as a simple biological living creature - a body of substances to be consumed. Social standing, economic situation and scholarly degree are not of the slightest interest to it. More important is the speed of tissue disintegration. The earth-restaurant does not only serve earth-people. The diverse menu also includes lawn and turf people, sand, water and air-people. The role of waiters is filled by tree stumps who reveal their living underground part - the roots - and clamber around, double-quick, in search of fresh meat. The biggest difference between a dead body and a living one is that the first no longer succumbs to man's will. But it is nevertheless a body that conceals life inside it. However, this life is different, it diffuses. What we call a border between life and death, is nothing else but passing the baton to others, long in shackles, who now start altering the body according to their face. Flocks of various organisms are let loose - bacteria, beetles, worms... In the words of Céline: 'Man is but a delayed disintegration.' Only at death does man liberate the possibilities that have been imprisoned in his body. He dissipates, flows in all directions. And other things flow into him too, because there is nobody to obstruct him any more. Interior surface of a body meets its exterior. Typically human division into inner and outer world is disrupted. Eyes become mirrors of the body. This unity creates a surface that is nothing but surface. It conceals no mysterious truth still to be revealed. In the pictures, the increasingly important colours and textures 'override' the depicted objectssubjects in their transitions and skidding, and transform all that is graspable into one uniform surface ruffle. A crowd of dead soldiers becomes one with grass. Naked bodies flowing downstream watch in their dynamics the bends of the river and stones that obstruct the movement, thus turning into water themselves. The surface of skin is the surface of water. It is unclear what is flowing, skin or water. All that together creates ozeanische Gefühl, of which Romain Rolland allegedly told Freud in connection with religion. An inexplicable unity, vanishing borders and the subsequent overwhelming sense of happiness. Together with the dissolving bodies in the picture, the mind of the viewer of the picture will momentarily dissolve as well. A bog, rapid river, sandy beach, pond, damp leaves - traces of the flood? Let us return to the title of the article. Why, then, do birds sing and why does the sun rise after the end of the world? This brings us to the picture that depicts the end of the world. At first sight this seems like an ordinary nature photograph - overgrown pond, forest, sky. Then I notice the absence of people. The environment is there, but what is missing is someone who, amongst all that, would look at it as environment. The one that the environment is supposed to surround, is missing. Everything simply is. In the light of other pictures it seems that here nature's monthly discharge has reached its end. Man's rigid black-and-white world has been replaced by soft tissues. Troublesome organisms have been got rid of. Pricking our ears we can hear the plants stretching their roots and insects furrowing new paths into the decaying substance. With our own eye we see nothing in this picture. As far as this picture is concerned, I do not exist at all. No people, no environment. There is no landscape in nature, as Bataille says. But the birds keep singing and the sun rises. In this picture, nature determines itself, it is not determined by a single organism - man. The end of the world is primarily the end of my world, the end of us and them. Simply the end of one world that existed in the self-determination of a particular form of life. The world, however, never ends. And this world talks to us incessantly, through its continuities and intensities. It surges, flourishes and roars. Look at that old pond and wood. Stop all thoughts, stop the entire engine of meanings, and listen... "Dining with Worms" is a photo exhibition by Peeter Laurits and Ain Mäeots. In 2004 won the most prestigous Estonian art prize, the Kristjan Raud award. Since 3 September the exhibition is displayed at the Giedre Bartlet Gallery, Berlin, Linienstr, 161. Peeter Laurits (1962), artist. Since mid-1980s one of the most distinguished photo artists in Estonia. His recent works deal with the end ofthe sympolic world. See also www.metsas.ee Ain Mäeots (1971), theatre director and actor, since 1999 head of the Vanemuine drama company. Has directed plays by Giradoux, Stoppard, McDonagh, Zola etc. Alari Allik (1973) has an MA in Japanese philology at University of Helsinki. His research topic is Japanese Buddhist literature and philosophy. Lecturer at the Estonian Institute of Humanities.
	| Estonian Art 1/04 (14) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2004 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |