How does it feel?
2018, 1-channel video installation, 09:18 min, 4:3 rendered to 16:9
Exhibition of the Recipients of the Hamburg Working Grant for Visual Arts at the Falckenberg Collection, Deichtorhallen/Falckenberg Collection, 2018
Password request: mail[ät]k-burckhardt.de
How does it feel? is a video piece. It is accompanied by the website of a research institute on the psychological term “Body Ownership” called the “Body Map Institute” – www.bodymapinstitute.com. As a whole, this project seeks to question the term “Body Ownership” and the interplay between “me” and “mine”.
“Do you have a body? Are you a body?” – this is the question at the beginning of video, which starts out as a interview with a charismatic, middle-aged, Caucasian psychology professor. He compares “Body Ownership” with a pearl gliding on a string – reaching from one end of the string representing total connectednesss with the body (e.g. states of mediation) to partial disconnection (so-called out-of-body experiences) to body dis-ownership (states of severe trauma).
But during the course of the video, the dynamics shift: The camera creeps closer, curiously scanning the skin, pores, and wrinkles of this speaking body that is talking about bodies beyond words. The visuals question how we identify with body, from what point of view and from which position of power. The voice of the expert carries through, the camera circulates him like a tiger with locked eyes, and the question reverberates: Do you have a body? Are you a body?
Comments are closed.