Monday October 21 2013
07:00pm–09:30pm
For The Oncoming Corner #7, artist-choreographer, performer and filmmaker Antonia Baehr is invited to share her film Die Damen von Prosopopöie (17 min, 16 mm, 1994). This film, shot shortly after she completed her studies in visual art at the Universität der Künste in Berlin, has rarely been shown since. I had the opportunity to watch it this summer, when Antonia screened it as part of the public program of the exhibition re:act feminism at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. On the occasion of Antonia’s visit to New York I want to share this very special work with you and open up for a dialogue about what this work can bring about today.
Below follows a short description of the film made by the artist.
In-sights of a 'condition' ('Bedingung')
A garden with lady.
A double-lady invents kinetic installations to develop a method of object psychoanalysis.
She browses her terrain for possible answers with supposed system.
Ultimately, the film is based on performances and its narrative is more place-bound than time-bound.
The character searches for her story in things.
She believes people invent themselves through things. Thus the things have to be examined to find out about the people.
But the character’s consistency diminishes faced with the materiality of things. The psychology of a fit of rage evaporates and remains as a causeless outburst.
The issue of the condition of humankind is lead to absurdity: the things could be on the lookout for mistresses, to domineer over them.
This is how the rhetorical concept of prosopopöie (personification) could be turned around…
“The things have invented the ladies, and all the ladies are in for a swim.”