“Something else that remains unknown”

by Maša Tomšič

Desire is ingrained in the history of lovers, and of bodies.

To be honest, it was implicit also in the attempts of writing this text. The desire for this text to be; and also, to be about desire.

But then, since everything – text, bodies… especially bodies, and also lovers – has been progressively thrown out there, given to the exteriority, including the often-autocratic public stage and the consequential, unavoidable politicization, it became unclear: Does it still make sense to talk about desire?

Not simply because it was turned – like so much of everything else – into a reduction, in form of either a product, a commodity, or one of those quantifying measures that sustain identities. Rather, the hesitancy with regard to the matter of desire came up due to another issue: the difficulty in finding, or recognizing, the remaining spaces of true intimacy.

Back in 1991, several billboards across New York City were showing a large photo of the empty bed of Felix Gonzalez-Torres (supposedly his actual bed). The kind of image we all know, and very likely have similar snapshots of. With crumpled bedsheets, the imprinted traces of two heads on the pillows, the implication of the past presence of bodies, the signs of the remains of sleep and of similar mysterious nocturnal states and activities. In sum, a glimpse into the private life, the life of two. Those others – other people, other lovers – whom we’ll never know, however much familiar and quotidian the sight is, and however many identical photos we might have ourselves.

Of course, the point there was political. As it perhaps – then – had to be. It was through the said intimate familiarity of the scene, exposed abruptly through its scale and positioning, that the absence of the bodies was made visible and felt, stressing the problem of their disappearance. That is, their death.

Death: another common thread in the fates of bodies and of lovers.

Fast-forward to now.

In Jeppe Sleeping, the bed is again full.

However, before reading this as yet another political move (yes, the political likes to be clingy when it comes to moves in the history of queer gestures), let’s assume that life precedes politics, and not vice versa.

Instead of absence, we now have presence. A presence that is marked and corporeal – in the several senses of both words. Seen from this perspective, Jeppe Sleeping does begin like a statement: all the more so since any line has the capacity to stand as a statement, by being an inscription, exteriorization, affirmation. But here, although produced with the proclamatory act of inscribing, the motion of incision, assertion through applied pressure, the work nevertheless takes a slightly different turn.

Behind it, there is still a gesture that engraves presence through force and intervention into the materiality of surfaces, revealing bare hapticity, made unapologetic through the restless, deconstructing implementation of the line. Yet, it is a gesture that comes from and aims at the domain of the intimate, therefore acquiring a form that is subtle, tactful, and succeeds in presenting as discreet. Also, fundamentally sensorial: the feeling of the countless threads mixed with the hair, mixed with the wrinkles of the fabrics and the skin, the palpable tissues, epidermic creases and loose limbs mingled into a delicately knotty synesthetic amalgam.

By bringing the lover’s body back, Jeppe Sleeping doesn’t merely counter absence with presence, with the intent to suggest a new narrative, as a solution of an opposition to death, or any related politicizing. Instead, it delineates a pulsating life, through the unassuming sensoriality of an unassuming portrait: not only Jeppe’s, but potentially of anyone’s – so familiar yet so evasive – intimacy.

Here comes the curious part: despite being so manifestly tactile – in everything: its medium, its process, and its motif – it ultimately touches on ungraspability.

…Ungraspability of the tangible?

A detour as a parallel: If you ever read Marguerite Duras’ – conveniently titled – Lover, you might recall how it’s more about death than about love. Well, in short, it’s about life. And the latter, she writes, seemingly paradoxically, can only be immortal while it’s still alive and being lived. Immortality is not really a question of time, duration, a beginning and an end, or even a question of immortality itself as one would think, but a question of ‘something else that remains unknown’.

Remaining unknown. This is where the tangible can be ungraspable. And it’s also where to locate the persisting space of intimacy: between the tangled folds of the sheets, under the endless layers of the skin, behind the ever-slippery presence of a body, within the other’s singular interiority, at the center of desire, inaccessible, in Jeppe’s sleep.

— June 2024