Body as Anti-Anthropomorphic Landscape: Traumatic Structure in Bog Body

“Bog bodies,” ancient human remains found in northern European peat bogs, were often sacrificial kings offered to fertility god during famines. Killing king represents a “Traumatic Structure” identified in the Natural Born Intelligence model—where positive and negative antinomies coexist, that is, heterogeneous things are confused and entangled, but at the same time, the basis of things themselves is lost. This negate structure, or materialized absence, is also found in traditional Japanese painting through the “Kakiwari” expression, which negate near and distant perspectives. Nakamura and Gunji found landscape installed bog body as Kakiwari-ized viewpoint, explored this structure in their work, and created materialization of absence through art.