Unstable Entertainers

2001, 1-channel video, 2-channel installation, 7′, SD Pal / dancers: Silvia Buonvicini, Jo Dunkel / artistic collaboration, production: Stella Händler / sound: Knut Jensen / camera: Thomas Isler

In this work the dance portrays a kind of Reduit or place of retreat. The entertainers withdraw to this playing field in order to celebrate an already rather exhausted form of glamour. Their dance is in a state of disintegration. Like flashes of negative thoughts, penetrating images of details seep seemingly uncontrollably into this crumbling harmony. Seen at close range the gestures of the entertainers lose their unequivocalness. In this way the images land in a gray zone between tender affection and violent gripping, between weightless suspension and plunging, coarseness and passion, exhibitionism and intimacy. While the fragments of the views of the dance suggest a longing for perfection and unambiguity, the close-ups of touching and gestures reveal an associative space in which the complexity and ambivalence of proximity and intimacy become perceptible.