Akira Mori
Unit formed in 1996 by Yoshiaki Mori (Japan, 1967) and Masaaki Mori (Japan, 1967)

AM(gone) (2005)
(This work was made in collaboration with Noriyuki Tsuji)

Distance is a recurrent theme in the works of Akira Mori. In the case of AM(close) and AM(gone), this theme is proposed by the fine irony that operates between amorous affection and the signical concretion of the bodies which, like the "men" and "women" signs at public restrooms, always imposes rules of separation, in a simplified spatial ordering of the “difference”. And if there is no more specific allusion to what is concretely bodily that these signals, and no convention more universal to indicate both the places where physiological needs should be met and to submit spatially to the most conventionalised sexual differentiation, there is surely nothing more usual in the mediatic culture to invoke amorous feelings than the tunes or melodies of some of the most popular romantic pop songs, like the ones that are incorporated in the loop as the soundtracks for these two works. Akira Mori plays perverse games with the ethereal and generally idealised frankness of amorous feelings, of the sighs and wishes for the loved one to be near (here specified as simple verb tenses) and the identity and bodily concretion of the roles and separations that have been imposed. Distances that are probably nothing more than further proof, ultimately, of the permanent dissatisfaction of our desires for coincidence and the political and social determinations assigned to our bodies. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that in both works, the playing ground is located in the "between-bodies", or, in a wider sense, in being close but absent, in the intimate non-being, which belongs to the being outside oneself that is inherent to falling in love (“to be in love with another”) and to the retirement that is required by commitment or to “make” the body (let us not forget that the word “restroom” is very much linked to "retirement", to being alone, distant from others, in "another" place.