Projective Bodies is an experimental VR based performance based on the ritualistic, everyday actions within the domestic interior. The increasing virtuality of our homes as a result of the pandemic has resulted in our private spaces turned public. Taking this as a point of departure, Projective Bodies questions notions of body, space, privacy, movement, rituals, memory and navigation.
projective bodies
2021
The world today functions within the intersection of the physical and the virtual as a result of the pandemic. The virtual affords us to navigate through and establish spatial relations within a 2-dimensional interface we call the screen. Inhabiting virtual space means to enter a condition of suspension; there is no ground in the virtual- it is only but an abstraction. And yet, we’ve become accustomed to visually hang on to spatial coordinates that imply a sense of grounding- a grounding driven by first-person perspective.
What happens if perspective in the virtual is no longer ours? Can one navigate space with the help of a borrowed, out-of-body perspective? What if this visual input multiplies- a multitude of perspectives, none of which is your own? How can one establish a sense of ground, a notion of stability, a return to one’s own body?
Footage comparing four performances at once
The aim of this research is to find a sense of grounding in an ungrounded space. It is also to question ideas of body, navigation, ground and perception while being immersed in saturated visual (mis)information. Diverse subjects are invited to perform a set of instructions requiring them to navigate through a quasi-domestic space populated with furniture and items of daily use. With the help of a Virtual Reality headset, they are immersed in a virtual environment consisting of the exact same objects and arrangement- only here, the perspective doesn’t match their own.
The entire act, choreographed with scientific rigour, is imagined as a negotiation between the limits of one’s body at the intersection of the ‘real’ and the virtual, a provocation of one body’s capacity to adjust with an-other perspective. The mismatch between visual impetus and the body’s movement is measured comparatively and observations are filmed as the body moves through space while carefully re-calibrating, re-orienting and rearranging itself through time, forming a representation of our daily existence in the visual regime.
Workshop Participants
Joanna Gruberska, Evie Poaros, Eri Funahashi Geen, Raha Dehghani Vinicheh
With the support of
Tatjana Mauthofer, Nathaniel Frempong, Sebastian Mast (film & photography), Luis Xavier Nuñez (soundtrack), Amelia Uzategui Bonilla, Prapatsorn Sukaset & Chihan Feng.
Sponsors/ Funders
This project is a part of the Artist Residency offered by ID_Tanzhaus Frankfurt Rhein-Main, an initiative of ID_Frankfurt (Independent Dance and Performance e.V). It is supported by DIEHL+RITTER / TANZPAKT RECONNECT, which is funded by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR initiative.
VR guided meditation experience crafted for Mindfulife. Mindfulife is a company based in Frankfurt that offers guided mediation workshops to corporates and individuals. Their focus is on authentic meditation and mindfulness methods with an interest to make them accessible and approachable. The VR experience is scheduled to be released in 2022.
mindfulife
2022
Expanded aluminum mesh, MDF board Public installation part of the Neue Maßnahmen exhibition funded by the Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft & Kunst
dirty matter
2021
Through its fluid geometry, Dirty Matter embodies the heterogeneous relationships that inform the experience of the Bahnhofsviertel. The form is derived from a trash can found in the quarter. The increase in the amount of garbage on the streets as a result of the pandemic is represented by the iconography of the simple trash can. In relation to the social condition of being ‘dirty’, Dirty Matter can be understood as a reflection on the way we treat each other and our relationship with the space we inhabit within the city.
The interdisciplinary exhibition “New Measures” deals with the perceptibility of the social transformation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the Bahnhofsviertel in Frankfurt.
The exhibited artworks are distributed among several grocery stores in the quarter. The visitors are thus actively immersed in the "Bahnhofsviertel network" as they move from store to store - artwork to artwork. The artworks produce a multifaceted picture of the social change brought about by COVID-19 by addressing different perspectives.
In addition, the open exhibition format offers visitors the opportunity to make new connections with the neighborhood's people, further opening the field of vision for change, the perception of which is as diverse as the neighborhood itself. New Measures is not intended to provide clearly defined answers. Rather, the exhibition serves as a platform for exchange and dialogue; to show different perspectives that allow one to form one's own picture of transformation within the neighborhood.
The exhibited artworks are distributed among several grocery stores in the quarter. The visitors are thus actively immersed in the "Bahnhofsviertel network" as they move from store to store - artwork to artwork. The artworks produce a multifaceted picture of the social change brought about by COVID-19 by addressing different perspectives.
In addition, the open exhibition format offers visitors the opportunity to make new connections with the neighborhood's people, further opening the field of vision for change, the perception of which is as diverse as the neighborhood itself. New Measures is not intended to provide clearly defined answers. Rather, the exhibition serves as a platform for exchange and dialogue; to show different perspectives that allow one to form one's own picture of transformation within the neighborhood.
Ungrounding, groundlessness, non-linear perspectives, choreographic space and illusive space became the core themes embodied in the sculpture- ‘one garden, many eyes.’ This work closely follows the experiments in the VR project- ‘mapping with/in smooth space.’
The suspended objects from the garden in the VR experiments give shape to the core of this object. This core is a polyhedron formed by the intersection of the (absent) ground planes of each of the suspended objects.
one garden, many eyes
2020
A visitor peeping into the sculpture at the exhibition, Staedelschule Rundgang, 2020.
11 cones acting as peep-holes jut out of the core
forming an elusive, dark body that floats in air. Theobject has but one relation with the ground- that itfloats above it. Suspended in the middle are two rotating reflective planes. The mirror surfaces breakthe geometry of the object from within, forming an ever-changing theater of compositions.
Caught in this melancholy of reflections is a glimpse of an eye- the subject’s own, or of someone else,peeping from yet another peep-hole. Arching overto get a good glimpse, the subject is at once a part of the event at the core and the event outside. Thespread-out openings of the peep-holes offer many different experiences of the same happening.
In order to look, one must dance!
forming an elusive, dark body that floats in air. Theobject has but one relation with the ground- that itfloats above it. Suspended in the middle are two rotating reflective planes. The mirror surfaces breakthe geometry of the object from within, forming an ever-changing theater of compositions.
Caught in this melancholy of reflections is a glimpse of an eye- the subject’s own, or of someone else,peeping from yet another peep-hole. Arching overto get a good glimpse, the subject is at once a part of the event at the core and the event outside. Thespread-out openings of the peep-holes offer many different experiences of the same happening.
In order to look, one must dance!
This project focuses on introducing a new aesthetic that stands in opposition to the existing modern aesthetics of the Ordnungsamt building in Frankfurt. The new style is derived from a collection of techniques and processes, both digital and analog, to result in an outbreak in the ‘clean,’ ordered whiteness of the Ordnungsamt.
![]()
![]()
pretty ugly
2019
Beauty
is a political, social and cultural opinion constructed over time. It
has a widely accepted standard and anything below that standard is regarded as ugly,
the opposite of beauty.
I propose the new ugly as a leak into this constructed image of beauty.
The new ugly is unclean, it is shy of straight lines and the colour white.
The new ugly has no rules. It’s a mish-mash. Don’t confuse it with kitbashing. The new ugly is quite different from that.
The new ugly makes references to aesthetic styles of the past without any nostalgia or romance.
Kitsch is a close friend of the new ugly. They both love to challenge the persistent high standards of beautiful design.
I propose the new ugly as a leak into this constructed image of beauty.
The new ugly is unclean, it is shy of straight lines and the colour white.
The new ugly has no rules. It’s a mish-mash. Don’t confuse it with kitbashing. The new ugly is quite different from that.
The new ugly makes references to aesthetic styles of the past without any nostalgia or romance.
Kitsch is a close friend of the new ugly. They both love to challenge the persistent high standards of beautiful design.
The new ugly violently disrupts the cleanliness or the functionality of a building. It infiltrates not just the surface but also the structure itself.
But there is beauty in the new ugly and that’s why it’s different from just ugly (the conventional opposite of beauty.)
That’s why I call it pretty ugly- two words having two meanings -Pretty+ Ugly (two words that are antonyms) and “pretty ugly”- an expression that indicates the intensity with which something is ugly.
