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TraumRaum - i'm fabricating a room, defined by four floating video screens, referring to illusory spaces created by painters of the Baroque. i investigate the creation of dreams and the obstacles relating to the realization of our mental constructions. how do we channel the energy that dreams initiate in our lives? how do we deal with challenges like time, age, gender, and ambition in the interpretation of our dreams?
the piece: four screens to create a room. on those four screens are videos of four women. they are dancers but that's not immediately recognizable. i'm filming only the face with pulled back hair, and the feet in pointe shoes. these women will be performing but the viewer can't see their bodies, only facial expressions and moving feet. the women are of various ages, a teenager, a woman in her late 20s, me, and a ballet teacher in her 50s. the set up to film the videos of the dancers will be a white background on which i will project a video of a fast rotating room. so, you see the face of a dancer in motion (maybe part of her shoulders and/or arm/hand) in front of this rotating background, on the next screen you see only the moving feet of another dancer, again in front of the rotating background, and so on on the other two screens. the videos will be in a loop. my virtual room is a dream, like the ceiling paintings in the churches in southern germany. the sky, the clouds, the light, people floating, one wants to get sucked into these paintings when looking up at them. dreams stimulate and release energy. dreams are created but also restricted by civilization, by society, people. there are two opposing forces attached to dreams: no limits to ideas but limits to their realization. that's where the concept of restricted energy comes in, like in the merry-go-rounds. i looked back at works by bill viola, whose videos are often dreamlike. i needed to create a connection to myself, my own dreams, my method of art making, my story. how far would i go to pursue my dreams? coming to the u.s., becoming - or not (that's why one of the dancers is me) a ballerina, an artist, re-inventing myself in a new country. i will be taking ballet lessons, something i've been thinking about on and off for many, many years. it just never seemed to be the right time, i thought i was too old, etc. now is the right time.it's important to me that the dancers are classical dancers, the restrictions are more pronounced, it's less about self-expression, like in modern dance, more about discipline. it also refers to the baroque as the era when classical ballet developed into the formal performance we know, in Louis XIV's court.
