Eyes, eyes and something else. DeStudio's Eyes
Laura Kuusk

	Looking at DeStudio's work DeStudio's Eyes (1993), I keep searching for 'Buñuel's eye' there - a shot from the film Un Chien Andalou. This is an instinctive reflex. But I cannot find the eye there. I am actually more interested in things sought, not found. If looking is a physiological reflex, then seeing is a cultural reflex. DeStudio's Eyes is peculiar because it has gathered ways of depicting the instrument of looking. To make a distinction between mediated and non-mediated visuality, we cannot really say that these are eyes. Rather they are the images of eyes, and viewers of different times certainly look at them differently. The Estonia of the 1990s, where DeStudio operated, was full of faith in a new beginning, occasionally wilder, 'greener', with an unshakeable faith in the authenticity of a photographic image; DeStudio, in fact, was one of the first underminers of this faith, by means of photography itself. When DeStudio caused a storm in the Estonian art world of the 1990s, I was mostly staring at piano keys, math problems and watching the Bambi ballet, so that the golden years of DeStudio reached me via other people when it had already become a chapter in art history annals. In 1992, Herkki-Erich Merila and Peeter Maria Laurits, who previously earned their daily bread through advertising photography, founded the association DeStudio. In 1993 they began bombarding the advertising world from there, managing a forceful breakthrough into the art world. As one of the first promoters of postmodernist cultural theory in Estonia, they were ironic about the prevalence of straightforward advertising images, thus revealing the possibility of different meanings. They played around with technical means and images from different eras. DeStudio played a significant role in bringing photography from the margins of the art world to the centre. Their analytical exhibitions attracted the attention of both the audience and critics. Most of the art historians tackling that time talk about DeStudio, as it was one of the few among many in photography whose work was accepted by Estonian art institutions. (1) They are looking, I am looking, suddenly we look at one another and also in many different directions as well. The looking of the looking of the looking. I am now looking at this work of art from my own little hillock. When the unconscious is constantly drunk, how come the cat always falls on its paws? A cat wandering in an urban jungle mainly gets its bearings by images that invite, point, direct, beg and allure. DeStudio, which appeared on the Estonian art scene in 1993, in the early-capitalist 'harsh post-Soviet reality' (2), de-constructs these instincts of an urban man. An urban savage, entrapped by advertisements, stares, and the watchful eyes of security cameras, might halt in his busy progress in the street to wonder whether he was looking at pictorial images, or perhaps they were looking at him instead? Is he creating them, or the other way round? Looking is one of the essential survival criteria in the urban jungle. Pictures, signs, arrows, texts, sculptures that invite you this way and that way, lurking and bewitching, so that you no longer know whether the eyes are leading the feet or the other way round. There are the omniscient eyes of the Buddha, Europoid and Mongoloid eyes, an anatomical ocular drawing, living eyes and those of sculptures, lips and an insect, a screaming mouth, glances directed straight at the viewer or looking elsewhere, black-and-white, sepias, cyans, magentas and yellows... The more I look, the more I feel that the eyes are saying something - they talk about different ways of depicting and looking, about eras, traditions, world PICTURES that outdo, contradict or agree with one another. I seem to be penetrating into a labyrinth of conversations in the language of glances, and from there, inside, via someone's optic nerve. Here we see Babel-like hoarding, which is evident in other DeStudio works and the works of Peeter M Laurits. I begin pursuing a glance, which leads to another one, then a third that looks back at me, and I am looking at a fifth ... This kind of looking is a bit mystically festive and at the same time accompanied by the knowledge of intertwining ways of looking, contextuality and the conditionality of its anatomical-physiological actions. These contradictory senses are perhaps connected with the mysticism of the photo medium itself that follows the photo image from the start, because of the 'authenticity' of the image, physical reality, recording of the light and at the same time knowing that the activity is selective, staged and associated with myths. This kind of knowledge is sweet and bitter like blood, and keeps the juices flowing in the veins behind the eyes. How is 'The Eyes' seen by today's culturally conflicted person in constant danger of explosion? Does he detect a conspiracy theory behind the eyes, a danger alert, games with sacredness, parody of the surveillance society or a new tactic of a terrorist group? Laurits, one of the two DeStudio people, has been called a visual terrorist. To an Estonian of the 1990s who religiously believed in trends, such images might have seemed like a blow between the eyes, because the games with imagology and manners of depiction were largely born here in the works of DeStudio. Merila and Laurits began gluing the work together from different scraps and then found out what the outcome was like. The Eyes dismantle, combine, change/add meanings. Visually it makes the picture move in front of your eyes. What prevail here are DeStudio-style questions rather than answers. Narcissus has a quiet laugh at his own reflection in the mirror, which gazes at him with devout admiration and strives to be similar to him in every way. But which is the picture and which is its reflection? And I still have the feeling that someone is watching my watching. (1) See eg Epner, Eero. DeStudio, BA graduation work at Tartu University, 2002; Kaalep, Tõnu. 'Revolutsiooni importijad' (Importers of Revolution), Vikerkaar, 1993, no 10 (2) This expression comes from Eero Epner. Available at: www.metsas.ee/et/kunst/peeterlaurits/veeuputus/kasikiri Laura Kuusk (1982), BA in semiotics and cultural history at Tartu University, currently doing her MA in photography at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Devoted to photography and film.
	| Estonian Art 1/06 (18) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2006 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |