09.09 BODY & SOUL, Germany

09.09 BODY & SOUL
is a special feature of films & videos dealing with artistic performative concepts, curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne.The selection includes 11 videos by 11 different artitsts from 11 different countries and does not give only an idea of different concepts, but also different cultural backgrounds and social contexts.

Selected films by
Hamza Halloubi, Beatrice Allegranti, Lital Dotan & Eyal Perry,Empar Cubells, Sinasi Gunes, Elia Alba, Unnur Andrea Einarsdottir,Roland Wegerer, Alessandro Brucini, Joshua and Zachary Sandler, Virginie Foloppe.–>.Hamza Halloubi (Morocco)

Hamza Halloubi (Morocco)
video title: Untitled (Lait)
2007, 0:51
A close up of the face of a man with a white veil drinking milk, the camera follows the milk dripping down the man’s body before it lands on a reproduction of ‘l’Origine du monde’ laid on the table. In a split of a second the man is a victim of his reserve and his resistance to sex, from his mouth he lets the milk drip onto the image!

Beatrice Allegranti (UK)
video title: Personal Text Public Body
2007, 15 mins
Personal Text Public Body is an ongoing interdisciplinary project which explores autobiographical, relational and political aspects of the self(s). Part of the creative process involves making short films termed as ‘Performative Documentaries’. This selection of short film episodes intertwine inside (studio) and outside (urban) locations mirroring the intimate and social aspects of the performers. A range of themes unfold such as; autobiographical memory, the nature of boundaries, the links between private and public performance, the extent to which all social action is ‘performance’, the way emotions and dreams are embodied, and the bodily expression of the self(s). By presenting this heterogeneity of movement and spoken narratives, the episodes are intended to stimulate thinking and body awareness around how we can ‘re-vision’ our identities in more expansive ways and recognise that to do so, is a political act.

Lital Dotan & Eyal Perry (Israel)
video title: Embracement
2004, 10:00
The woman artist bandages herself, tightening thorns to her body. The scene is photographed by the male artist from two perspectives that represent an objective and a subjective point of view.

Empar Cubells (Spain)
video title: Infern Domèstic
2003, 7.50min
A video that works as catharsis for different performances, documental/fictitious films of different artists, about violence against women. Media reality, feminism, cyberspace and the interaction of the spectator. Infern domèstic opens a debate about reality, utopias or chaos, definitively feministic.

Sinasi Günes (Turkey)
video title: GICIR
2006, 03:03
The artist is turning a basic action of cleaning his guitar into a hearable performance. He is showing the invisible visions in an ironic way.

Unnur Andrea Einarsdottir (Iceland)
video title: Toilet
(2005), 3:50
A woman, dressed in a pink night dress and high heels, is licking a toilet seat covered with whipped cream and candy, with sexual intensity.

Roloand Wegerer (Austria)
video title: No.5
(Breathes)(2009), 2:38
I’m in front of a black background. My head is in the middle of the image. I pull a plastic bag over my head. I close it airseal and start breathing. The sack inflates and draws together over my head. The breathing becomes faster. The attempt is interrupted in because of panic and lack of air.

Elia Alba (Domenican Republic)
video title: If I were a…
2003, DVD; 3:52 minutes
In collaboration with Nicolás Dumit EstévezIn this video, a male performance artist tries on three “bodysuits” that carry the distorted image of my own body in the guise of three different “races”: white, black and mixed. While I was born in the US, both my parents are from the Dominican Republic. My racial history or mix comes from the island’s racial makeup. Manipulating the color of my own body through computer technology and enlarging genitalia and other body parts associated with particular racial categories, I present myself in the guise of three “crudely placed together” races. Throughout the video, the male performer, wearing a mask of my face, “uncomfortably” enacts the gesture of “trying on” these female bodysuits. The body images and the gestures underscore the precariousness concepts of race.

Alessandro Brucini (Italy)
video Title: eZS : sequenza 1
2006, 4:39
Elektra’s pain and anger for Agamemnon’s death, suggested by Sylvia Plath’s verses.“I was looking for the emotions of a poem evoked by a Greek tragedy, putting a human figure in the middle of a bare natural landscape.The sound effects interact with the voice as the colour effects with the framing.”

Virginie Foloppe (France)
video title: J.F.’s toolbox
2004, 5 mn 50
A young woman discover in a toolbox the reason of the suicide of her ant dead by hanging. The family’s memory came back with toys : seven little cubes..

Joshua and Zachary Sandler (USA)
video title:Untitled (edited performance 3)
2007, 7:00
This is the third of a three part video/performance series by Joshua and Zachary Sandler. As children we would bathe together like most young siblings. Baths were always a time where it was ok to be naked, and to indulge in the absurd and imaginary. Intimacy was not as restrictive for us as it might have been for most in our upper middle class suburban world and we find comedy in the line that is drawn between adolescent and adult behavior. Stylistically we took from classic cinema and its sometimes-tortured starlets; contrasting surface level glamour & poise with the opposite, with insecurity and burgeoning pain and suffering..