Suicidal Mr. Bones
or one who loses loss, gains gain
(Krešimir Oremović, for the exhibition catalog 2016.)
The very name of the main character in the photonovel series by Janko Belaj questions the standard dichotomy between animate and inanimate. In “Belaj’s inversion” Suicidal Mr. Bones appears as the personification of the world of quantum physics, being dead and alive at the same time. So, let's lean here on the paraphrase of the emblematic line from the once popular book and TV series for children:
“He's dead, but he's alive. I mean, he's not so dead that he would not be alive, but would like to be dead in order to actually be alive.”
The story of Mr. Bones begins at the moment of the great human loss, inevitable to us all – death, and ends with the understanding that what is lost – life, was never really possessed anyway, and is therefore so passionately wanted; so, story is impregnated with his realization that his death actually was not important in any way/nothing new has happened and that is exactly what defines his “ghastly modus vivendi”, his tireless search for an effective method of suicide.
Fact that essentially nothing happened, but will happen eventually, leads us to the very point of the story. Exemplar fate of Suicidal Mr. Bones therefore appears as radical one: Feuerbach says that suicide doesn’t take his life – he just eliminates the illusion that he ever had one.
Radical loss, unlike the ordinary one, includes the realization that what we have lost we have never actually had. That is a paradox, because such a loss partly acts like the most terrible loss, and partly as a negation of the loss, and therefore is not a loss at all. One cannot lose what he never had, so the only thing lost is a mirage. The loss of the illusion, however, must be considered a gain.
Here, we can see how the mechanism of double negation really works: the radical loss is the loss of loss and that is its true nature. Herein lies the essence of Mr. Bones’ reaching for the suicide as a tool for achieving a genuine, authentic life.
At the very end, we wish Mr. Bones and his chronicler happy ending of the saga, and of course, we thank Janko Belaj for this unusual, stimulating topic for future reflections.