Shoji Ueda’s world is under a spell which, as in western fairytales, freezes people and actions in a time out of time. It’s not a paralysis, or even frozen death. It is suspension, mental holding of the breath, a photogram cut out of a dream that is indelibly fixed and keeps surfacing to anchor fragments of memories of some experience of life, either truly lived or imagined by the mysterious mechanisms of the mind.
Shoji Ueda’s world is under a spell which, as in western fairytales, freezes people and actions in a time out of time. It’s not a paralysis, or even frozen death. It is suspension, mental holding of the breath, a photogram cut out of a dream that is indelibly fixed and keeps surfacing to anchor fragments of memories of some experience of life, either truly lived or imagined by the mysterious mechanisms of the mind.