Moving Bodies
Originally Moving Bodies was a multimedia project developed for the city of Kortrijk in November 2002. Based on the scenario and the images this online exhibition was created.
Reflections
People have always had an ambiguous attitude with regard to the human body. On the one hand we worship the human body and we want to liberate it, on the other hand we humiliate the body.
Modern dance is no
longer about movement, the “choreography”, but about the exploration of the
human body.
The body can find its rest only in relation to restlessness.
Moving Bodies
Moving Bodies in
Kortrijk is a montage of three kinds of photographs of the human body.
The first is a series of dance photographs which give a very classical and
sometimes playful view of the human body. The photographers are Jos
Rentmeesters, official photographer at the Munt in the 1920s, Robert Kayaert,
Béjart’s first photographer and Benn Deceuninck, modern photographer working
with the Butoh dance. The second is a series of classical nudes by anonymous
amateur photographers. In contrast to these two classical series of styled
bodies is the third series of photographs taken from the internet. This is pure
exhibitionism and voyeurism. The human body is shown in a very explicite way.
The face of the people has been camouflaged through manipulation of the images.
As opposed to the glamourous photographs of the 1950s.
The montage
- Images are moving.
- Slow zoom on the first and second series of photographs.
- Almost invisible but still perceptible.
- Very slow montage.
- Internet images in a rapid succession, zoom on one specific picture, followed by a new rapid succession of photographs.
- A new mixture of dance photographs and nudes.
- Throughout the entire montage subtitling with superficial and volatile lines from different chat rooms.
© Xavier Debeerst, 04/09/2002
