In unit 3 I tried to express the idea of a connection between the top and the bottom. This is a religious and personal imagery for me.

My family runs a church. Although some of my family are Christian, some are Buddhist and some are materialist. Our church also functions as a community organisation, so regardless of my religious beliefs, I need to help with a lot of things, especially festive events. Christmas for me means a full day in the kitchen preparing ingredients, and climbing ladders to decorate the church. Climbing up the not-so-solid ladder is a physical memory.

Ladders, steps, are often seen as a way to climb upwards, to get closer to heaven.

The anthropologist Scheper Hughes has been doing fieldwork in the Alto do cruzeiro region of Brazil since 1964.

In Alto, in some year, up to 40 per cent of infants born die of malnutrition. In the local Catholic faith, mothers believe that children who die young are in a special state of being ‘children of the soul’, and that they can only reach heaven by climbing up the stairs in the darkness. Thus, the idea of the interchange between infants and angels weakens the sadness of death. Death is a relief for the infants and is even seen as a ‘happy event’, as the dead baby is transformed into a clean, beautiful little angel who will carry a garland on his head and go on to eternal happiness in the festive celebration. https://clas.berkeley.edu/brazil-no-more-angel-babies-alto

“Sickness brings the Kingdom of Heaven close to the earthly world. Without sickness, the kingdom of heaven and the earthly world would not recognise each other.” (Emil Cioran)

My ladder may be a figurative representation of illness.

In Precious Moments there are images of angels with patched wings. The artist Sam Butcher used children as his subject matter because he felt they are the purest expression of innocence. 

The imagery of the child is closely associated with trauma.

Thin, fragile, vanishing …… “Saints are born at the intersection of heaven and earth, redeeming themselves by self-mutilation.”(Emil Cioran)

The ”Little Girl Voice” is an informal name for a vocal trait in adult women that is caused by psychological trauma before the onset of puberty. Women that are affected speak in a higher sounding, child-like pattern, usually in a manner similar to the age at which they suffered the traumatic event. https://loveline.fandom.com/wiki/Little_Girl_Voice

Some of the Sadcore music use this element. https://on.soundcloud.com/R89cAaD8kzmW75zDA

I think this aesthetic is currently popular on social media is because it has become an alternative to self-harm. And in this case Self-harm becomes an act of self-gazing and self-appreciation. Also the vehicle is usually a hospital, associated with the act of seeking help, and has a clean angelic aesthetic. https://luoqiuhengtorus.gwm.app/medical-core-images/

I want it to be asexual and narcissistic. Although I don’t believe anything can really escape the sexualised gaze.

In a sense, the child-like figures in this kind of work is also an escape from the “social media bashing of the “sexualised child””. And the question of “who should be the target of the bashing”.

In unit 1 I mentioned the relationship between the disappearance of childhood and the new media. Is the adultisation of children inevitable? At the same time, is the childification of adults a sexualisation of children? I think these can be two separate questions.

the video

According to Levi Strauss, Father Christmas conveys a distinction in identity:
A child on one side and an adult on the other, which involves the two customs of transitional rites and initiation rites.
Among the Katsina tribe of southern American Indians, for example, adults wear costumes and masks at specific moments to portray deities or ancestors. They regularly return to their villages where they dance to punish or reward small children, at which point the child cannot recognise his or her parents or relatives.
Levi-Strauss points out that the mythological aspect of the Katsina initiation ritual is overlooked: in local tribal mythology, the Katsina are the dead spirits of early Aboriginal children who were drowned in the river during the migration of their ancestors, so that the Katsina are both proof of death and a testimony to the existence of life after death.
The Katsina return to the area each year and take children with them on their way out. The Aborigines, fearing the loss of their offspring, promised Katsina that they would play Katsina every year in masks and dances in the hope that Katsina would stay in the underworld. Similar characters exist in the mythology of other tribes, such as the Finger Gnawing Demon and the Whip Daddy.

It is in the initiation rituals of Katsina that small children take on the role of Katsina, not with masks and the living, but with the spirits and the dead, walking with the spirits that the dead have become.
Going back to Christmas, in medieval Christmas children would sing songs calling on the spirits of the dead, go from house to house singing and giving their blessings in exchange for fruit and cake, playing the role of the dead. Today, adults act as Father Christmas at Christmas, bringing care to children through gift exchange. On Christmas Eve, adults serve communion to the uninitiated, with guests playing the role of the dead, just as children play the role of angels (the dead). Finally, the dead leave the living laden with gifts, leaving them to live in peace until the following autumn. Through this means, the Christmas gift becomes a real sacrifice in the search for a better existence, provided
The premise is not to die.

In summary, Levi-Strauss argues that the existence of Father Christmas and his associated rituals in real life highlights the ‘opposition between adults and children’, and that behind this opposition lies a deeper opposition between the ‘living and the dead’.
Ritualistically, this is a process of testimony, the main steps of which are: the return of the dead, with their threats and acts of persecution, and their agreement with the living, in exchange for services and gifts, and the triumph of life. And in a society full of the living, only the enlightened are are entitled to be transformed into the dead. They are as opposed to each other as a mirror is to a mirror The child stands in opposition to the mirror, repeating itself endlessly.
“If the children’s toys come from another world, we can keep keep our children.” This is perhaps a pretext for a secret campaign to encourage us to give toys to our children. We are encouraged to give toys to the other world so that they can be passed on to children.

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列维-斯特劳斯认为，圣诞老人传达了身份上的区别：
一边是小孩子，另一边是成人，这涉及到了过渡礼仪和启蒙仪式这两种习俗。
例如在美国南部印第安人的卡齐纳部落中，成人会在特定的时刻穿戴服饰和面具来扮演神灵或祖先。他们定期返回自己的村落在那里跳舞，惩罚或奖励小孩子们，此时孩子认不出自己的父母或亲友。
列维-斯特劳斯指出卡齐纳启蒙仪式中的神话面向被忽略了：在当地部落的神话中，卡齐纳是早期原住民小孩的亡魂，这些孩子在祖先迁徙时被溺死在河里了，因此卡齐纳既证明了死亡，又是死后生命存在的见证。
卡齐纳每年都会返回这里并在离开的时候带走儿童。原住民为了担心失去后代，于是向卡齐纳承诺，每年都以面具和舞蹈的方式来扮演卡齐纳，希望卡齐纳留在冥界。在其他部落的神话中，也存在着类似的人物，如啃指妖、鞭子老爹等。

在卡齐纳的启蒙仪式中，小孩子便是扮演了卡齐纳的角色，它们不是与面具和生者一起，而是与神灵和死者同行，和死者变成的众神灵一起。
回到圣诞节来看，在中世纪的圣诞节中，孩子们会唱着呼唤亡灵的歌，挨家挨产唱歌并送上他们的祝福，换取水果和蛋糕，他们扮演的是死者。今天，成人会在圣诞节中扮演成圣诞老人，通过礼物交换带给小孩关爱。平安夜里，成人为未启蒙者提供圣餐，客人在此时扮演死者，就如同儿童扮演天使（死者）的角色。最后，死者满载礼物离开生者，让他们平静生活，直到来年秋天。通过这种手段，圣诞礼物成为寻求美好生存的真实牺牲品，前提是不要死亡。

综上，列维-斯特劳斯认为现实生活中圣诞老人和其相关仪式的存在，凸显的是“成人和儿童的对立〞，而在这个对立背后，存在的是深层的“生者与死者”之间的对立。
宗教仪式上来说，这是一个辦证的进程，主要的步骤则是：死者复返，带着威胁和迫害的行为，与生者达成共识，用服务和礼物交换，最后生命得到胜利。而在这个充满生者的社会里，只有启蒙者才有资格转化为死者。他们的对立，就如同镜子与镜子相对而立，无止境地重复。
“若孩子们的玩具来自另一个世界，我们便可以留住我们的小孩。”这或许是个秘密活动的托辞，鼓励我们将玩具赠子彼界，好让它们转赠给小孩。

proposal ,  ideas

Sickness makes saints. “Sickness brings the kingdom of heaven close to the earthly world. Without sickness, the kingdom of heaven and the earthly world would not recognise each other. The need for solace goes farther than any disease, which gives birth to the state of sainthood at the meeting point of the Kingdom of Heaven and the earthly world.”（Emil Cioran）

christmas

materials

This is a multi-material chain that connects the ceiling to the floor. It includes a wing, a painting, a plush doll, a round mirror, a section of clear resin spiral, connected by chains, fish hooks, fishing line, gauze and woolen thread. A gift box is placed on the floor.

ideas

Connected up and down, through and through, life and death, disease states