Compared to duty, life is lighter than a feather...
(Japanese proverb)

The «Divine Wind» project, which was realized in August — October 2008 by Tanatos Banionis creative group, is devoted to kamikaze. The key point in the project development is the phenomenon of the feat committed by Japanese suicide pilots in the name of their homeland. The word «kamikaze» doesn’t need translation anymore — it has become a linguistic norm for all living languages on the planet and a metaphor of transition and transformation of a mortal man into an Eternal Man. That’s why the project contains no stylized ethnographic notions and allusions linked with the Country of the Rising Sun; Japanese imagery and aesthetics were primarily used as a practical toolbox for creating the visual sequence. «Divine Wind» speaks all languages at once — that is why it is a wind.

Tanatos Banionis group has neither personal names, nor a division between creators of ideas and technical executors, nor «near» and «far» steps on the way to the realization of the conceptual plan. There are only the team spirit and the common goal, only serial numbers like those on army tokens. The banner of their exhibition shows just two hieroglyphs.

This is a story of will and choice. A calligraphy master used to ink-scribe the last deathly poems of kamikaze pilots while reading them aloud in the ancient kogue language — muffled as the sound of a digging tool that hasn’t discovered a mine. The «Divine Wind» project is strict and ritualistic, and the calligrapher here acts as a medium. His job is to rhythmically support the process by half-opening the gates of the concealed and obeying the movement to the Absolute.

The girls who take part in this project may rightly be called kamikaze. They were free to turn down at any moment, at any stage, but they made it up to the end. And their expectance of transformation alludes to the choice of courage and dignity, the higher and divine choice.

The essence of this story is simple. There is a choice and there is a way. It is a way of a warrior, a way of honor and glory — a way that anyone can pass or ignore. The option that you choose and follow determinates what you become by the end of the day. This is the question that life poses to everybody at least once in a lifetime.

The «Divine Wind» project presents:

— Five «living frescoes» united by a scroll with hieroglyphs meaning «Divine Wind» and an emblem of a «floating chrysanthemum»;
— Five collective and five individual photographic panels;
— Five light-boxes with «Views of Yasukuni-Dzinja Temple» (Photography, watercolor, hand painting);
— Three HD videos (3D graphics, 2D animation, staged videos — 6, 18 and 25 minutes);
— Calligraphy: «Poems of Lesser Gods» (deathly poems of kamikaze).

You are already gods devoid of earthly desires, so I have nothing to wish you...
(from admiral Onisi Takijiro’s appeal to kamikaze)

Press-agent JMgroup:

Head of PR group — Natalia Govorukhina, n.govoruhina@jmgroup.ru, cell +7 926 508 8224
Project coordinator — Pavel Vardishvili, p.vardishvili@jmgroup.ru, tel. +7 495 951 2288
Moscow Museum of Modern Art, PR department:
Contact person — Marina Stravets, pr@mmoma.ru, tel. +7 495 694 6660, fax +7 495 231 4410