Bodies in Motion

bodies in motion 5 - katharina klewinghaus 2

 

Bodies in Motion - Still Puppen - Katharina Klewinghaus

Shown @

Haus der Kulturen der Welt

24th of June – 17th of July 2010

Concept, Camera & Editing: Katharina Klewinghaus
Vfx: Peter Wolf
Music: Alexandra Hofrichter, Fabrizio Tentoni, Kurt Georg Widorski,Kat Rocket, Francis Bacon
Voice Over: Barbara Vinken & Katharina Klewinghaus

The installation work bodiesInmotion by Katharina Klewinghaus is part of the German-French project “Bodies in Motion” organized by ESMOD Berlin and Institute Français de la Mode (Paris). The project was developed under the guidance of Jean-Paul Lespagnard (Createure), Goran Pejkoski (Designer Director Lanvin) and Alexandre Roccoli (Curator/Choreographer).

The installation showed three videos:

Video #1 (14:35 minutes)

The beginning of the “Bodies in Motion” workshop was conducted by Jean-Paul Lespagnard, who posed two different tasks or questions to the students: How can body movement be incorporated in creating fashion? And, by taking the example of Jean-Paul Goude’s work, how is it possible to manipulate the body through extensions & enlargements?

The video further develops these ideas and presents a thinking process, which evolved through the observation of the students, who were putting Lespagnard’s posed questions into practice. This observation provoked a reflection upon the contemporary body, its functioning and modern ways of manipulation. Essayistic in its form, the video leaves us with an ambivalent question: Have fashion manipulations and direct body modifications opened new opportunities and provided liberations to the modern person, i.e. in terms of gender or class, or have these rather confirmed or contributed to these enforced distinctions? Moreover, have fashion manipulations and body enhancements in the beauty industry resulted in a trend, which relies on something that only comes from outside, and not as a process which evolves through mind controlling, where the mind creates the body?

Video #2 (12:25 minutes)

“The room is reduced to the own body and the position of the body does not define itself through the objects it was passing by, but through how long it was in motion. The position is therefore defined by time… for a blind person other people only start to exist when they are talking… people are continuously in motion. They are temporal, they come and go. They come out of nowhere, they disappear.” (“Touching the rock: An experience of blindness” by John Hull, 1992)

In the second phase of the workshop conducted by Goran Pejkoski, the students were asked to work creatively while being blindfolded. Pejkoski’s intention was to shift their experience from that of the mainly visual to the tactile, in order to let the students discover their other senses, to create a form of spontaneity, to go beyond their learned knowledge and thus to leave the personal space of security

The video in turn tries to capture their experience from a visual point of view, as while the students lose their sense of vision, the camera is deliberated; it is as invisible as everything else and thus it captured a truly voyeuristic perspective.
In the aftermath the video artist Katharina Klewinghaus puts herself in self-experience when pointing the camera back at her blindfolded self.
The images play with our gaze; the spectator has to decide where to look, and visual pleasures such as colors may be given or taken away. In the moment when the image betrays the spectator the most, a student invites us with her voice, sharing the moment when she discovered her inner blind world.

Video #3 (8:10 minutes)

The “Bodies in Motion” workshop ended with a performance conducted by Goran Pejkoski, during which the students presented the fashion pieces they had created whilst being blindfolded. The performance again emphasized the gaze, trying to tease the spectators’ pleasure of looking, by using the art of shadow theatre.

The video elaborates on the idea of betraying the eye, in order to leave room for imagination. By citing different media of visual representation (such as celluloid film, digital video), which represents different forms of advanced technology for a better visual experience, the video uses them against their function by trying to reveal their limits.