L'animoteur 12 — bender

starting position for L'animoteur 12

«L'ani­moteur 12» emerges from the series «L'ani­moteur 1 to 11», with pictorial works, perfor­mances and inter­ventions in exhibition spaces and (semi) public spaces. One image scene, which I had realised in the ATACAMA desert, the driest desert on earth, shows a dead animal body (donkey) in a lateral position and a human body in a prone position with the head towards the animal. In this series and its sequels the line/​border between (wo)man and animal will be put up for discussion. The paintings are kinetic pictorial objects.

The kinetic image work is a further inves­ti­gation into how the image and the beholder's point of view could become unstable. On the other hand, I ask myself the question, what is the identity of these two bodies, where do their boundaries, the boundaries between humans and animals, run/​dissipate. Between the head of the animal body and the human head, a vertex line passing through the picture could be seen. The sound of the gear motor and the random inter­ruptions that bring the picture to a standstill, it then hangs on the wall at an angle, are as much content as what the picture depicts. The spinning picture is also a memory, one sees shimmering spokes. After the rotation stops, the two bodies come to a halt at a new angle and thus repeatedly appear in a different constel­lation in space.

The titles of this series refer to Jacques Derrida's 10-hour speech about the autobio­gra­phical animal from 1997, which was transcribed afterwards: «L'animal que donc je suis» or in German «Das Tier, das ich also bin».

'L'âne' is the French word for donkey. In these perfor­mances and instal­lative pictorial works I open up a (somatic) field of experience on donkey-human nature. 'L'ani­mateur' is the French word for an animator who entertains and stimulates people. In the title «L'ani­moteur ...» also sounds the French word 'moteur' (English motor). The line between «vie humaine et vie animale» should not be thought outside of us and the animal should not be thought human-like; the line goes right through us and beyond into the space we are together and we share.

Many thanks for the support: Martin Fischer, for developing the gear motor and Thomas Zirlewagen for attaching the suspension plate

over-text for the works shown in the context of the exhibition

This over-text applies to all three parts that were shown and took place in the exhibition 'Selbst­klum­pungen':

* performance
«BECKETT WALK IV - plastic bender»
Performance in search of traces of improper aggluti­nations.
Many thanks to Ingrid Käse for her support with the face painting.

* display-​​instal­lation with plastiglo­merates
«What does captialism burn? What burns capitalism?»
Display with with improper lumps

The performance and the display-​​instal­lation go together and complement each other: I used the shelf to put down the plastic agglo­merates, which in as part of the performance I was carrying in my pocket.

* kinetic image
«L'ani­moteur 12 - bender»
1 photo on Hahnemühle Baryta, mounted on stadur plate, 37 x 50 cm
suspension and drive for image rotation: gear motor with friction wheel

«Post-cyborg, what counts as biological kind troubles previous categories of organism. The machinic and the textual are internal to theorganic and vice versa in irreversible ways.»*1
«The permanent search for knowledge of the intimate other, and the inevitable comic and tragic mistakes in that quest, commands me respect, whether the other is animal or human or indeed inanimate.»*2

*1 Quote from Donna Haraway, «The Companion Species Manifesto. Dogs, People, and Signi­ficant Otherness», Pricly Paradigm Press, The University of Chigaco Press, 2003, Seventh Printing March 2020, p. 15
*2 ibid., p. 35