The societal field is treacherous and volatile. The mirror-palace where egos reside, despite moulding interactions and demanding the safeguarding of a peaceful social equilibrium, is a battlefield of conflicts, frustrations and imaginary injuries. While much has been written about the structuring role the imaginary in our day-to-day interactions – our empty speech, it takes an artist like Eri Saito to bring these difficulties and struggles to life in an evocative and impactful manner.

Eri Saito’s experimental poem associates evocative imagery and the subjective signifier together to delineate, with fine precision, the two conflicts that are structurally part of the societal field. Yet, to uncover these two conflicts, the spectator is asked to not merely soak in the atmosphere of the imagery, but to associate the imagery with the inaudible enunciations – the subtitles that the spectator must give a voice through reading – and to discover the metaphoric quality of certain visual elements. The shots of the stone in the seawater should, in this respect, functions as a metaphor for the silent speaker – though unchanged, I was afraid you would not recognize me, as well as for the silent partner, who despite being as petrified in his subjectivity as me might not have recognized me.

Yet, what is petrified in the speaker and the ‘listening’ partner – i.e. the spectator – cannot be their subjectivity – subjects change, just like the movement of the sea. What is not subject to change is the speaking being’s desire for recognition. It is this desire that propels him forward in the societal field and forces him to utilize the signifier. The speaker within this visual poem, however, underlines with his signifiers that an inhibitory fear for not being recognized can short-circuit and frustrate this elementary desire.

This fear is inhibitory because it causes the subject to avoid interactions within the societal field. It forces the subject to install a stone wall of indifference that keeps the other subject at bay but give rise to a subjective cave-like emptiness. Yet, this defence mechanism introduces a fundamental misunderstanding; the ego born from this unvocalized fear is interpreted by the other as a sign of the subject’s apathic rudeness.  

Social Circles also touches upon the deceptive nature of friendliness. The deception within ego-to-ego interactions is caused by the unwritten demand to keep the social equilibrium superficially intact with one’s acts and signifiers. The fundamental understanding that structures our interactions is, in other words, born from the fact that, within the imaginary, the subject is unwanted. While the unwanted status of the subject smoothens the flow of our everyday encounters, it also the source of many frustrations.  

The beauty of Eri Saito’s visual poem lies in the fact that the metaphorical image change as the signifiers concatenate, as the monologue of our speaker unfolds. Somewhat later in her narrative, the image stone as well as the stone facade come to evoke the confrontational impact of those signifiers aiming at the subject, signifiers which perforate the field of the ego and imaginary pleasantries. The element that causes this metaphorical shift is the silence – the radical absence of a response – that follows the question of the speaker.

Social Circles is a highly experimental and conceptual experience that might not be for everyone. As the only way Saito’s narrative can be appreciated is by accepting her invitation to associate the imagery and the signifiers together, spectators who struggle to do so might feel disoriented and think the natural imagery is non-sensical – devoid of any meaning.