my feet in agony

listen to my bones crack....

when i was trying on the pointe shoes i eventually bought, the sales woman said that young girls often complain about the discomfort of pointe shoes, that they hurt, that they don't feel like they fit. she tells them that that's what they're supposed to feel like, that dance en pointe is supposed to be painful. in the video i'm taking off and throwing away my stilettos and subsequently squeeze my feet into pointe shoes - both symbols for feminine sexuality, both associated with discomfort and women's traditional roles in society.

barre drawings

this is something that miriam cabessa's body paintings inspired me to do. actually, it started with the prints of the bottom of my ballet slippers all over my studio floor - results from using rosin....barre exercises drawn with my feet on paper, photographed. there will be more.

video test

model for video installation

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?

sketches

these photographs show the set up of the videos. it's my face and my feet in the photos for now, i haven't taped dancers yet.

train of thoughts

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.

colors and rotations

the resemblance of the colors in these photographs to baroque paintings is striking.
taken during sunset.

carousel

carousel making - head drilling - angel hammering















explosions are great but they are too uncontrollable for me to achieve my goal. i'm using mass produced kitsch figurines whose courtly poses have always been guides of good behavior. especially images of saints, angels, little girls and boys in prayer, etc., but also dancing couples and people in various chivalric mannerisms. the idea was to make these figurines burst and photograph the explosions. however, this is pretty much impossible since the shards and fragments are supposed to be still recognizable. i have to take a different, more mechanical approach. that's why i'm building merry-go-rounds - they have the potential to release explosive-like energy which is being controlled by attachments and defined space.






















this is a far cry from my original idea of re-creating a baroque ceiling painting in a photographic composition - but i feel that this is becoming my piece. it will have the idea of creating an imaginative space in common with the ceiling paintings. that's all. my room will have pictures of broken angels on rotating carousels, videos of people gesticulating without making sense and without connecting to the viewer, and a floor that exists as the roof of the room below, with a mirror on the ceiling to reflect it. this installation definitely hints on the concept of a fairground, and a virtual world (religion?).




















the blurriness of some of the carousel images

refers to its rotating movement, but also to

the quality of photography. building carousels

and using video to make art has focused my

interest in photography on its quality, on its

aspects.

i want to explore this some more....

mirrors

i've been photographing into mirrors to achieve an angle created in ceiling pieces, looking up at something. i'm actually looking down into the mirror, it's on the floor. i've been video taping these photo shoots, too. they will be part of the installation.

A ROOM ABOVE A ROOM

the installation will consist of videos, the floor piece, a mirror on the ceiling of the space, large format photographs.

creating space above

collage of groups of people in conversation - photographing them from above, from a loft - creates exact opposite of ceiling piece, namely a floor piece. viewer looks onto people's heads, as if in space above space. this way i'm creating an imaginative space on top of an already imaginative space - virtual reality - important: gestures/behavior, i.e. seeing a baby, gossiping, etc.


etiquette, self-constraint, courtliness, civility, reason, all properly chronicled and utilized in enlightened Europe -- vs. chaos, precariousness, faith: in my mind, ceiling paintings describe both conditions.

i've been searching --------- some new thoughts, ideas, approaches

gestures becoming more important to me - tv, movies, globalism, gestures becoming more universal, universally understood - development of common visual language

gestures in art - art history - Baroque, Rococo: over-the-top drama - copies of porcelain figurines as symbols of this drama - make them explode and record it. Cornelia Parker's rock sculptures - explosions abstracted, frozen

the principal of explosions: from the inside out, expanding, undefined space, expansion from the center, in opposite of ceiling paintings where everything is directed toward central event - artificial spherical space is created by painter, controlled - explosion: space is created by explosion but uncontrolled (ultimate explosion: nuclear explosion: indefinite expansion), precarious

HAVE TO BUILD MODEL OF GALLERY SPACE

need to experiment w/ firecrackers BUT would like to make explosions more abstract, less obvious - tested balloon explosions, rather lame because balloon and material just collapsed

get away from ethereal, celestial, sensational of sky, heaven, explosion, purgatory, make it mechanical: create space above a ceiling paintings, looking down onto the heads of people

photograph people in conversation, small groups, from above, like in the duomo in Milan - looking down at them - light as if a huge door opened and let sight in, like in photo above



today, sunday, i photographed the angel from the dollar store - i smashed it with a hammer - hand gesture remains, like it a lot - create sculptures with porcelain figures and screws and photograph them, see diagram below

polaroid of angel base with fragments

lines = screws

post 1

1st year art project documentation

rusted metal as body parts

my plan of creating an installation is extending, the installation is becoming an idea of creating a room, with a large scale photo collage on the ceiling, mirror tiles on the floor, and video projections on the walls. i am interested in working with opposites, the piece will involve the viewer in a passive as well as an active way. as the viewer stands under the collage on the ceiling, she will see the collage when she looks up, but she will also be part of the piece when she looks down, only to see herself as part of the montage, or more precisely, of my chaotic version of purgatory. the videos are slow moving, very dark movies of some of my individual photo shoots.

about the ceiling piece - it's the main attraction, so to say. it's based on the idea of Baroque ceiling paintings, most often painted in churches from that period. i've been photographing individual people posing dramatically but posted randomly, chaotically, in the collage. there should be 20-30 people shown in the piece. drama is important, gestures are dramatizations of emotions. this touches on my research topic about the representation of pain in visual art through symbols and gestures, and the invention of a visual language. the collage will include the images of the people grouped around a center event, which is an image of an explosion. the people will be randomly arranged, but i'm photographing them from a very low standpoint, which gives them the angle that one would see when looking at a ceiling painting. baroque painters tried to create space where there was none. by printing the ceiling piece very dark, i am creating not non-existing space but my concept of purgatory. this place is supposed to be somewhere between heaven and hell, i am interested in spaces between spaces. i think this is caused by my experience of being a citizen of two countries, not knowing the feeling of belonging to a particular place.

these are some of the models i've photographed to be in the ceiling piece.

i'm experimenting with another method to photograph images from a low angle by photographing into a mirror. since the angle is much steeper than simply photographing from a low point of view, these images will add to the illusion of a three-dimensional space.

explosions. not easy to photograph

working with what i got so far -

one of the videos at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5260078913558731946&hl=en