Subcooled (2024)

Video installation with sound, part of the group exhibition ...and we live by the river at KIT Kunst im Tunnel, Düsseldorf (GER)

Subcooled is a 3-channel video installation with sound that begins with movement improvisations: a very old woman and I move our hands in front of a camera. I give us short instructions; we open and close our hands or touch each other. Further shots show a glass ball and my fingertips, as well as two glass cubes in which 3D images of the old hand can be seen. I find glass attractive because it is both a natural product and a man-made material. Glass is created in a chemical process by heating and cooling. For the soundtrack, I use a field recording of a refrigerator: a high-frequency rhythmic crunching sound. The video images are inverted, the sound is slightly edited and so the work ties in with the aesthetics of the experimental film genre.

Subcooled is part of a series of works that deal with body and space, image borders and imagination: Suture, White Balance, Nothing and Likeness (in process). I started this series after I worked on an essay on VALIE EXPORTs works.

The essay was published in 2017 under the title Dekonstruktion von Körper-/Zeichen by VALIE EXPORT in: Künstlerinnen schreiben. Selected contributions to art theory from three centuries edited by Renate Kroll and Susanne Gramatzki.