Into each other, 2022

The female body has been mediated and controlled throughout cinematic history.

On closer inspection however, what is perceived as realistic is defined by digital constraints and proclivities that do not match the physical. Into Each Other is an auto-theoretical video and multimedia installation reflecting on the ideological infrastructures that post-produce (ala Hito Steyrl) the intertwining of our lives and screens.

dear open mouth sleeping beauty, 2022

Monitor arms are usually hidden behind the screens

upon which audiences watch visual material move through predetermined narratives and recurring tropes in film such as female charachters caught inside a television as an erotic object, displayed as a holographic commercial success, or mimicking motions of robotic behaviour to distort the viewers perception of wether they are watching a human being or a programmed and computer generated body.

Computer generated images of bodies are about to ace the way bodies appear and eventually move through reality. They are moving into an era in which audiences won’t be able to deciffer between digital or physical bodies. Those characters on screen may be bound to the surface of the liquid-crystal-display, but their behaviour and way of being showcased do not stay within the screen's dimension, but reach out to their audience.

As part of the multimedia installation Into each other, the object takes a central stand within the way female charachters in film behave in synchrony with machinic gestures, or even the screen as such itself. Neverthelss the robotic arm always faces the audience. Mounting them on its fragmented body where there is usually a screen facing them. Constructed from sculpted digitii the piece is surrounded by a cage like space, textured and composed from computer generated images and stock bodies.

holographically speaking, 2022

Focussing on digital parameters of CGI charachter Megan:

Megan can move her stock body according to the input she is pushed to follow. Her body responds to predetermined paths she willingly agrees to move along with, caught in feedback loops from where there is no escaping the order she was placed in and created for. Or so it seems. She is programmed to be female and so is the way she moves her body. Her motion library consists of gestures such as the “female kiss”, “being carried” or “looking over the shoulder”.

The female kiss became the focal gesture for this project. Not only as it has been subject to be controlled through cinematic history back then, but because it still acts a a moment of separation between what is supposed to be seen and what relies on sole imagination, today.

Instead of looking upwards, searching for an inexistent male body, Megans kiss was digitally examined and tested to an extend from where her body took shape as a new entity. As a result her body on screen distorts, puffs up and visually redefines the gesture of the kiss as a framing element for films screened #IRL.

Megan’s way of residing within the screen and distorting her body has created the basis for the projects physical presentation. Screens mounted in place.

My dear viewing reader, 2021

Deep dark dungeon, 2022

are you a holographic commercial succes? 

The shape was created through an intuitive process, using discared materials, such as empty water bottles and left over styrofoam. The deep black surface allows for the letters and symbols within the vessel to be visible. The piece’s production process took place within the glass facilities in Leerdam (NL).

Digit VA, 2022

Last summer I visited the Romano-Germanic Museum. I was especially astonished by the Cage Cup {Diatretglas}.

A glass object found buried alongside a body of a roman cemetery in Cologne. A burial good, inscribed with the message Drink, live well, forever. {Trinke, lebe schön, immerdar.}  It became a central point of inspiration for the presented object Digit V-a. Not only as a visual reference, but questioning its manufacturing process and context as well.

How did the diatrearii {the carvers} manufacture the Cage Cup in the first place? How did they construct the drinking vessel, revealing the net structure as a particular character to the object? A seemingly digitally manipulated object, setting a precedent for itself. Digit V-a is a physical manipulation, constructed through an assemblage of digiti {fingers}. They compose a fifth-digit net, posited as consuming mouths, expelling and reaching upwards, attracting and ensnaring prey.

BTTRUE, 2022

Inspired by the three-tier metal casted table from the repository of the Lithuanian National Museum of Arts as its reference, the reimagined side table is composed of three-layered gardens reminiscent of one of Lithuania’s national herbs, the rue.

Visually picking its flowers from its leaves, the authors reassemble the rue into a mixture of three materialities: aluminium shapes, glass interpretations of 3D-sculpted petals, and cushions. The object further explores the rue herb touching upon the meanings it carries. The smelly, a little bitter and still sweet-scented plant species bear medical knowledge and protection: the opposing characteristics of the plant are in line with the suggestive stories behind the furniture in the Museum’s repository.

Frozen Thistle, 2021

On July 22nd, during the residency “Genius Loci”, Lisa found a wild teasel in a stone quarry.

She brought it back to the house, where she placed it inside a white porcelain mug on a table in the backyard of the house we were staying in. A thorn covered stem from which three flowers were blossoming in synchrony.

In a way the residency synchronized us as well. One could say the teasel formed our trio, planning to pull us in, without us even noticing. Because while Kurina and Delphine were aiming to bear the teasel in a digital format, bringing it back to our reality as 3D-printed leaves and flowers, Clara was following the same path, just through another material. That is glass. The floral creature is the first, in what we realized, an ongoing series of projects as a trio.

Snow Piercer Mirror, 2022

A mirror pierced by snowdrops/ perce-neige/ Schneeglöckchen/ 설강화:

The specimen {gála–ánthos} cracks ice to bear spring. Its milky flower blossoms in correspondence with snow-pierced-landscapes. A messenger for the end of hibernation mode, an indicator towards the change of seasons; through which we sense the rise of a new year.

In our mother tongues the name of the plant {snowdrop/ perce-neige/ Schneeglöckchen/ 설강화} alludes to different meanings, characteristics, and associations a spectator may have when spotting a group blooming under a tree. The snow–pierced–mirror is inspired by those different associations, each of us attaches to the species. Visually referencing bells, as their heads hang from the stem, or the way the plant grows, breaking layers of snow, and what ability it is connected to living in and flourishing through harsh temperatures. Strength/ force/ Stärke/ 힘.

Unearthed Sp 001-005, 2021

Through our back-end-screens staring back at our undivided attention, the controlled, the copied and the pasted, are revaluated, summoning us to extract what strikes most.

Images, doomed to take on a life of their own, nourish our constantly refreshed unearthed feeds. Captured, recorded and compressed into a new format, through which a series of five web-earthed-species came into existence {unearthed-SP.001-005}. Closley resembling familiar features of wildflowers, the species affinis {SP.} shares its specimen, its potential .jpg-offsprings across the span of our feeds.

Dispersing itself across the web, searching for new modes of survival and surfacing in a digital-earthed-age.  Indeed, as much as we ourselves as the image-consuming parameter are fed by its multi-body, the web-earthed-species is nurtured and sustained just as much. Reproducing soft-selections of 3D-printed stems and flowers in simbiosis with glass flame works, to be activated and snapped by the eye of the beholder, but never contained. Manipulated digital replicas of the physically undefined web-earthed-species live in and through the field of visibility. The very much living system of our time-based media through which we digitally soft-pick and plant images.

Into Each Other, 2022