Drawing Restraint 9 is a 2005 film project by visual artist Matthew Barney consisting of a feature-length film, large-scale sculptures, photographs, drawings, and books. The Drawing Restraint series consists of 19 numbered components and related materials. Some episodes are videos, others sculptural installations or drawings. Barney created Drawing Restraint 1-6 while still an undergraduate at Yale University and completed Drawing Restraint 16 in 2007 at London's Serpentine Gallery. With a soundtrack composed by Björk, Drawing Restraint 9 is an unconventional love story set in Japan. The narrative structure is built upon themes such as the Shinto religion, the tea ceremony, the history of whaling, and the supplantation of blubber with refined petroleum for oil.
The film primarily takes place aboard the Japanese factory whaling vessel, the Nisshin Maru, in the Sea of Japan, as it makes its annual journey to Antarctica. Two storylines occur simultaneously on the vessel: one on deck and one beneath. The narrative on deck involves the process of casting a 25-ton petroleum jelly sculpture (one of Barney’s signature materials), which rivals the scale of a whale. Below deck, the two main characters participate as guests in a tea ceremony, where they are formally engaged after arriving on the ship as strangers. As the film progresses, the guests go through an emotional and physical transformation slowly transfiguring from land mammals into sea mammals, as they fall in love. The petroleum jelly sculpture simultaneously passes through changing states, from warm to cool, and from the architectural back to the primordial. The dual narratives, the sculptural and the romantic, come to reflect one another until the climactic point at which they become completely mutual.
Drawing Restraint 9 premiered at the 62nd Venice Film Festival and was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2005. IFC Films acquired the U.S. theatrical rights to Drawing Restraint 9 and distributed the film to screen in 18 cities across the U.S. in the fall of 2006.
Narrative and imagery
The film opens with the careful, ceremonial wrapping of two unidentifiable organic objects in several layers of carefully folded decorative paper, an activity known in Japanese as tsutsumi or orikata, sealed with twine and gold field emblems and finished with a sliver of white shell. The centre strips of the field emblems, a recurring symbol in Barney's works, are then pulled off, a frequently repeated motif throughout the film. The scene moves to Nagasaki bay where a celebratory procession of dancers, animals and floats approaches the docks as the crew of the whaling ship finish construction on the shore.
After the opening credits, a field emblem mould is assembled on the deck of the Nisshin Maru and filled with molten petroleum jelly from one of the vehicles in the celebratory procession. One of the 'Occidental Guests', played by Björk, waits on another shore with her gaze directed out to sea. The other Occidental Guest, Matthew Barney, waits on a docking rig in a large fur coat. In a third location a group of young women at the water's edge, pearl divers, apply grease to each other's skin in preparation for the dive. Separately, the Occidental Guests are picked up by small motorised vessels and carried towards the Nisshin Maru. The pearl divers enter the water with their collection barrels, hyperventilate to improve their lung capacity and make the first dive. Mayumi Miyata is shown playing the shō over the scene with a string of pearls entwined in her hair and hanging down her exposed back.
The pearl divers come across a long, floating mass of compacted organic material, a sculpture from Barney's repertoire titled and here representing ambergris, an extremely valuable organic material produced as waste by whales. Whilst they keenly examine it, the Nisshin Maru leaves dock in a festive cloud of coloured ribbons and excited, screaming children. In the ship's galley, the chef cleans his knives and utensils, boils shrimp and cuts blocks of grey, layered jelly into plated portions using a field emblem mould. The central strip of the top layer of each field emblem is incised in order to allow the ship's crew, to whom the jelly is served, to pull it away. The chef goes through the ship's mess, filling each central void with shrimp and pomegranate seeds.
The Female Guest bathes in preparation for the tea ceremony
As the small vessels ferrying the Occidental Guests pull up to the ship, an activity on deck is shown in which a man with two large stamps, in the style of a Japanese calligraphic seal, repetitively and rhythmically inks the instruments and imprints large rectangles of canvas. The Female Guest is led to descending stairs in the deck. She looks out over the prow of the vessel and finds her way down into the labyrinthine bowels of the ship. Occasionally she comes across small rocks on the corridor floor wrapped with red twine, which she appears to intuitively interpret as warning markers to prevent her from losing her way. Her path eventually takes her to a room with a large, metal, cubic bath where two Japanese women in blue serving garb, amah, attend to her. They pour a basket of lemons that have had a central strip excised into the water and remove the Guest's clothing before she steps into the bath. The Male Guest is lifted to the ship's deck in a large, winched basket and led to the same descending stairs. He searches for the correct door and arrives at the ship's barber, who carefully shaves off the entirety of Guest's substantial beard with a straight-razor. The petroleum jelly in the field-mould starts to solidify on deck. The Male Guest, shorn and dressed in denim, is guided by twine-wrapped rocks to a room separated by a large antique screen on which a traditional fishing scene is painted.
In the whaling bay the crew, bantering in Japanese, 'harpoon' a mock whale made from a black bin bag painted with the stylised features of a whale and stuffed with whole shrimp that burst out of the ruptured plastic after a direct hit from a crewman. A building component, reminiscent of a spine and covered with the debris of the shrimp, is victoriously hoisted aloft on a harpoon. In the screened room the Male Guest takes off his shoes and falls asleep. The barber, carrying his shaving kit and swigging from an open can of beer, slips in quietly and shaves a wide strip through the center of the Guest's hair.
The next morning, the harpoon vessel Yushin Maru sets out. It eventually snares the log of ambergris and the Nisshin Maru winches it up into the flensing bay through the back of the ship. Below deck, the Female Guest wanders through the corridors in a thin towel following her bath. She is encouraged to sit before a mirror in another preparation room by an amah, who carefully combs and arranges her hair into an ornate, traditional style using pieces of organic marine material arranged on combs, pins and boards. Another amah attends to the Male Guest, replacing his shorn eyebrows and hair with similar objects. Both Guests are stripped and redressed in ceremonial costume of skins and furs, with a base layer of damp fabric resembling thick kelp. The female Guest's eyebrows are shaved, her face painted with a thick layer of white foundation, and her lips painted over with the small, red pout of a Shinto bride. Both Guests also carry a large conch shell strapped to their backs, flensing knives with horn handles and a small bone instrument resembling a folded fan. Meanwhile, on deck, the field emblem sculpture has hardened in the mould and the crew use flensing tools and a winch to strip the central piece out of the mould.
The Host conducts the tea ceremony for the Occidental Guests
In awkward bone sandals, both Guests make their way to the traditionally-appointed tea room. They wait together in silence in the ante-chamber, a niche in the corridor, whilst the workers examine the ambergris on deck and the Host prepares his organically-fashioned instruments for the tea ceremony. The sliding door to the tea room is pulled ajar and the two Guests look searchingly at each other to decide how to proceed. The Male Guest kneels at the door first, places his shoes outside the room and enters in the agonisingly slow ritual style of placing his fan one pace ahead to where he will shuffle forward, in his restrictive ceremonial garb, acknowledging the tokonoma alcove before he reaches his place in front of the host. The Female Guest enters and repeats the process. The Host enters and the Guests thank him for his invitation - the Male Guest in English and the Female Guest in Icelandic, the actors' native languages. The tea ceremony is enacted and the Host describes the history of the Nisshin Maru vessel as the crew carve the excised part of the field sculpture into solid blocks and render them in the ship's furnace. The plastic 'spine' from the excised part is lowered into the ship's hold.
The Occidental Guests passionately strip flesh from each other during the storm
As the sun goes down outside, the two Guests shift gradually closer to each other in the empty tea room. On deck the ambergris is anointed with sake and the remainder of the spirit is doled out to the crew. They toast the ambergris with their sake and night falls, bringing a heavy storm.
In the furnace room, the needle on a pressure gauge vibrates towards the end of the scale and the rivets on the machinery give. The ship begins to flood with molten grease. In the infirmary, a small Japanese boy with an extrusion of white fur from his mouth vomits grey liquid. The Female Guest falls as the ship pitches and the Male Guest leans over to help her up and remove her ceremonial hood. The two examine each other, finding strange holes on the back of each other's necks which they lovingly caress. They passionately kiss as the room begins to flood and the storm rages outside. With their flensing knives they alternate cutting deep strips from the flesh of the other's legs at a slow, ritualistic pace with minimal apparent sensation of pain, at one stage rolling such a strip into a rough imitation of sushi and eagerly consuming it. On deck, the ambergris log is inserted between the two halves of the field emblem sculpture into the void left by the excised strip. A troupe of small children wearing white robes carry in a box and set of plastic ritual equipment shaped as whaling tools. They also carry two wooden barrels, one containing shrimps and other a viscuous grey substance. Two of the children proceed to cement the shrimp around the base of the ambergris using the grey substance to bind it. The crew later return to winch the ambergris back out of the sculpture, leaving only the cemented shrimp base. At dawn the mould is then removed from the sculpture, which then collapses into a large pile of congealed petroleum jelly with the assistance of the long-handled flensing knives, and the ambergris is lowered back down into the hold to lie alongside the plastic 'spine' where it begins to disintegrate. The remainder of the field emblem sculpture is dismantled by knives and winches and the ambergris has attained the shape of the plastic spine it lies joined with.
Back in the tea room, the Occidental Guests remove the last of each other's legs by slicing at the thigh. They wearily embrace, then dive beneath the water together. Their severed stumps become the waving tails of whales. A clown-like figure with matted hair and coloured face-paint, identified by Barney as the petrolatum spirit, approaches the ambergris with a hose and raises a new flag on deck. The Occidental Guests complete their metamorphosis into whales.
At the coast, as the Nisshin Maru continues its journey at sea, a winch drags a wedge-shaped block up the sloping bay to the docks. A pearl diver surfaces with her mouth dripping with pearls. The docking slope collapses under the weight of the block and pearls spill into the ocean, landing on the ocean bed in the perfect form of two overlapping circles. The film ends on Mayumi Miyata playing the shō.
Reception
Upon release the film received mixed to positive from critics, on Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 60% out of 47 critics with an average rating of 5.7/10, the websites critical consensus reads “Some of the images are striking, if confusing, but the film is unbearably slow and tedious.”[1] On Metacritic the film has an average score of 61% out of 20 critics indicating generally favourable reviews.[2]
Soundtrack
The Drawing Restraint 9 soundtrack was composed by Björk and was released on One Little Indian, July 25, 2005. It features the shō (Japanese mouth organ) playing of Mayumi Miyata, who appears playing her instrument near the start and conclusion of the film. Vocals for the opening scenes– featuring the English translation of the text of a letter from a Japanese citizen to General MacArthur thanking him for lifting the U.S. moratorium on whaling off the nation's coasts adapted by Barney and set to the harp (Zeena Parkins) and celeste (Jónas Sen) by Björk– were provided by Will Oldham.[3]
USS Trout (SS-202) was the fifth Tambor-class submarine commissioned in the United States Navy, serving in the Pacific from 1941 to 1944. She received 11 battle stars for World War II service and Presidential Unit Citation for her second, third, and fifth war patrols. Trout also delivered ammunition to the besieged American forces on Corregidor and brought out 20 tons of gold bars and silver pesos from the Philippine currency reserve to Pearl Harbor. During 1941, she was used as a target by a series of tests determining the vulnerability of submarines to depth charge attacks.
USS Silversides (SS/AGSS-236) is a Gato-class submarine, the first ship of the United States Navy to be named for the silversides.
Matthew Barney is an American contemporary artist and film director who works in the fields of sculpture, film, photography and drawing. His works explore connections among geography, biology, geology and mythology as well as notable themes of sex, intercourse, and conflict. His early pieces were sculptural installations combined with performance and video. Between 1994 and 2002, he created The Cremaster Cycle, a series of five films described by Jonathan Jones in The Guardian as "one of the most imaginative and brilliant achievements in the history of avant-garde cinema." He is also known for his projects Drawing Restraint 9 (2005), River of Fundament (2014) and Redoubt (2018).
A slipway, also known as boat ramp or launch or boat deployer, is a ramp on the shore by which ships or boats can be moved to and from the water. They are used for building and repairing ships and boats, and for launching and retrieving small boats on trailers towed by automobiles and flying boats on their undercarriage.
USS Crevalle (SS/AGSS-291), a Balao-class submarine, was a ship of the United States Navy named for the crevalle, the yellow mackerel, a food fish, found on both coasts of tropical America, and in the Atlantic as far north as Cape Cod.
The Music from Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9 is the second soundtrack album by Björk, released on 25 July 2005 in the UK and on 23 August 2005 in the US. It was composed for Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, the ninth installment of his ongoing Drawing Restraint film series.
Flensing is the removing of the blubber or outer integument of whales, separating it from the animal's meat. Processing the blubber into whale oil was the key step that transformed a whale carcass into a stable, transportable commodity. It was an important part of the history of whaling. The whaling that still continues in the 21st century is both industrial and aboriginal. In aboriginal whaling the blubber is rarely rendered into oil, although it may be eaten as muktuk.
MY Ady Gil was a 78-foot (24 m), wave-piercing trimaran originally created as part of a project to break the world record for circumnavigating the globe in a powerboat. Powered by biodiesel fuel, the vessel was also capable of running on regular diesel fuel. It used other eco-friendly materials such as vegetable oil lubricants, hemp composites, and non-toxic anti-fouling, and had features such as bilge-water filters.
The Nisshin Maru (日新丸) was the primary vessel of the Japanese whaling fleet and was the world's only whaler factory ship. It was the research base ship for the Institute of Cetacean Research for 2002 to 2007. It had a tonnage of 8,145 GT and is the largest member and flagship of the five-ship whaling fleet, headed by leader Shigetoshi Nishiwaki. The ship was based in Japan in Shimonoseki harbor and was owned by Tokyo-based Kyodo Senpaku, which is a subsidiary of the Institute of Cetacean Research.
Matthew Barney: No Restraint is a 2006 documentary directed by Alison Chernick. It follows artist Matthew Barney and his collaborator, singer-songwriter Björk, as they embark on a filmmaking journey in Japan. It reveals Barney's process in creating Drawing Restraint 9, a cinematic "piece" that combines a whaling vessel; 45,000 pounds of petroleum jelly; and traditional Japanese rituals into a fantasy love story.
The MY Steve Irwin was the 59-metre (194 ft) flagship of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and was used in their direct action campaigns against whaling and against illegal fisheries activities. The vessel was built in 1975 and formerly served as a Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency conservation enforcement patrol boat, the FPV Westra, for 28 years.
Mayumi Miyata is a Japanese player of the shō, a traditional Japanese mouth organ.
The Man Who Came to Port is a 1952 Japanese film directed by Ishirō Honda. It is based on the story Dance of the Stormy Waves by Shinzo Kajino. The film was both produced and distributed by Toho, and released theatrically in Japan on November 27, 1952.
Henry Robertson was a Scottish-born Australian seaman, engineer, folk-singer/songwriter, poet and activist, who became a key figure in the development of the Australian folk music tradition. During the 1950s he served in commercial whaling fleets in both sub-antarctic and sub-tropical regions, and wrote a number of songs about his experiences which formed the basis of his 1971 LP release Whale Chasing Men: Songs of Whaling in Ice and Sun, a unique record of life in the whaling industry in the 20th century. He also composed and performed songs on a range of other subjects, including compositions for historical documentaries commissioned by Australian television, a number of which have since been recorded posthumously by musicians interested in perpetuating his musical legacy.
Björk Guðmundsdóttir is an Icelandic singer, songwriter, composer, record producer, and actress. Noted for her distinct voice, three-octave vocal range, and eccentric public persona, she has developed an eclectic musical style over a career spanning four decades, drawing on electronica, pop, dance, trip hop, jazz, and avant-garde music. She is one of the most influential pioneers in electronic and experimental music.
Whale Wars was a weekly American documentary-style reality television series that premiered on November 7, 2008 on the Animal Planet cable channel. The program follows Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, as he and the crew aboard their various vessels attempted to stop the killing of whales by Japanese vessels (whalers) off the coast of Antarctica.
The Shōnan Maru 2 is a Japanese security vessel, operated by the Japanese Fisheries Agency.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society engages in various demonstrations, campaigns, and tactical operations at sea and elsewhere, including conventional protests and direct actions to protect marine wildlife. Sea Shepherd operations have included interdiction against commercial fishing, shark poaching and finning, seal hunting and whaling. Many of their activities have been called piracy or terrorism by their targets and by the ICRW. Sea Shepherd says that they have taken more than 4,000 volunteers on operations over a period of 30 years.
Anti-whaling refers to actions taken by those who seek to end whaling in various forms, whether locally or globally in the pursuit of marine conservation. Such activism is often a response to specific conflicts with pro-whaling countries and organizations that practice commercial whaling and/or research whaling, as well as with indigenous groups engaged in subsistence whaling. Some anti-whaling factions have received criticism and legal action for extreme methods including violent direct action. The term anti-whaling may also be used to describe beliefs and activities related to these actions.
A drift whale is a cetacean mammal that has died at sea and floated into shore. This is in contrast to a beached or stranded whale, which reaches land alive and may die there or regain safety in the ocean. Most cetaceans that die, from natural causes or predators, do not wind up on land; most die far offshore and sink deep to become novel ecological zones known as whale falls. Some species that wash ashore are scientifically dolphins, i.e. members of the family Delphinidae, but for ease of use, this article treats them all as "drift whales". For example, one species notorious for mass strandings is the pilot whale, also known as "blackfish", which is taxonomically a dolphin.
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