Reflective Encounters

“The overriding sensation experienced while watching Anxious Body is that of tactile sensation itself: the feeling of touching its seemingly arbitrary collection of objects and shapes, the feel of those objects interacting each other, and the anticipation of their doing so. Such anticipation also generates the anxiety referred to in the film’s title. Where Mizushiri’s earlier Futon (2012) luxuriated in soft, unthreatening forms, here there is an added sense of underlying menace: the jagged cutting jaws of a sellotape dispenser, the cage-like mesh of tennis racquet strings, a snake-like creature with an unfurled forked tongue.

Yet each new peril eventually resolves into a quietly serene game of experimentation and playfulness, articulating a reciprocity between danger and sensuality. A thumb repeatedly presses against the end of a mechanical pencil – is it the artist’s own? The action at first resembles an absent-minded nervous fidget. But its juxtaposition with the sinuous interplay of fleshy forms both defined and undefined hints too at a state of arousal and subconscious excitement, eliding a sense of anticipation for an act of artistic creation yet to come.”

— Jonathan Bygraves