The purring black cat is back from many other videos, along with the twisting man in underwear who sports a packing tape beard, and, once again, Jonna in wild false eyelashes. But unlike other videos in this series that were shot on location in forests and the ocean, here we are in a world entirely UN-natural. A forest of aluminum foil trees is lit by a phalanx of suspended fluorescent fixtures. Sheaves of paper cover the set too, as well as Jonna Lee herself, as she slowly returns to the black color she was at the start of the series.
Surely the series is telling a story. The clues seem to be well hidden but Wikipedia sheds some light on the first six videos: "The first six videos are titled with a series of numbers. When indexed into the alphabet, these spell out words such as 'educational,' 'I am,' 'its me,' 'mandragora,' 'officinarum,' and 'welcome home.' Mandragora officinarum refers to the mandrake root, which when fresh or dry may cause hallucination." The giant plant that bursts out of the roof of the house at the end of the sixth video ("Welcome home") is a mandrake. Regarding folklore about the mandrake root through the centuries, Pliny the Elder used Greek sources to write: "There are two varieties ( mandragora vernalis ) which is generally thought to be male … and the black ( mandragora autumnalis ) which is considered to be female." This could be why Jonna Lee's body is painted black during the course of the series. And the red dangling fruit that appear in videos 3, 5, 6, and in the video for "o" and which I misidentified as strawberries in an earlier posting are actually the fruit of the mandrake plant.
The number six also plays a large part in the series. Aside from the fact that only the first six videos are titled with a numerical/ alphabetical code, objects appear in groupings of six throughout (six dogs, crosses, leaves and tomatoes, girls on a station wagon, and place settings).
Much has been made of the drawings of animals which close each of the first six videos (goat, owl, whale, bee, llama, and monkey). The black cat that appears in several videos makes the noises of these animals instead of meowing when it opens its mouth. James Montgomery, a music journalist for MTV received an unmarked package by messenger after writing about iamamiwhoami. The package contained a lock of long blond hair, a piece of tree bark, and all six animal drawings in a row followed by the question, "says what?"
The phrase "To Whom It May Concern" makes several appearances. And finally, a website, iambounty.com, is registered to Jonna Lee. The only thing on the site is an illustration of the hand position for the letter "B" in sign language.This whole mysterious and enigmatic project really plays into my love of symbolic meaning. The series is full of the kind of transfixing symbolic dream imagery and dream logic that I wrote about in my review of David Lynch's "Inland Empire" posted here. Off the top of my head, it seems that the series is following the spirit of a mandrake root (the "bounty" of the earth and plant life), half-plant and half-human as it makes its way from plant to mammal. Jonna Lee embodies this hybrid as she rolls around in mud, and licks tree bark and sap. But other forces come into play: the man in the underwear who is now a king, and Lee herself appears in "t" as royalty with a home-made tin foil crown, orb, scepter and Elizabethan collar (King and Queen of the Plant Kingdom?). In "y," a knight manages to infiltrate the forest and the death and resurrection of the King follows. Fascinating stuff.
iamamiwhoami has a Facebook page.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/iamamiwhoami/270417754335
Or visit the iamamiwhoami Youtube channel to see all videos in order.
http://www.youtube.com/user/iamamiwhoami#p/a
Or see my posts about past videos:
The numbered videos
"b"
"o" "u-1" u-2" and "n"
"t"
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