venus transited - q.E.d. (2019)
3 channel video sound installation, different lengths, looped

The project deals with visual and cultural performative structures underlying my personal and professional struggle to position myself in society. I am investigating the field of power, repeated images and putative truths generate– all limiting and shaping the understanding of subjectivity and objectivity, reality and projection, even gender stereotypes.

As a woman who studied natural science, was engaged in classical music, and now works as a visual artist, I have been and still am confronted with classifications that do not comply with my own perception.

„Venus transited“ started with the finding that F.D.Schubart characterizes E minor in “Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst (1806)” as a „naïve, womanly, innocent declaration of love, lament without grumbling; (…) [that] by nature (…) has only one colour“. 1 This led to an associative hypothesis that the tonality E minor and the archetype of Eve are performatively connected.

I researched scientific, visual and personal connotations trying to map my hypothesis to so called facts and cultural assignments. For example in a reenactment of „Eve“ based on paradise paintings I find myself struggling to imitate the idealized gestures and body positions.

A selection of my findings are juxtaposed in an installation setting, deconstructing and reconstructing connections and associations. The results are subjective and objective at the same time, they show the power of repeated images and our attraction to reproduction and expansion - two forces that still shape today’s power structures. But they also show the power of a personal voice, of a struggling voice that is not silenced and is not varnished.


Media: 3 videos (different length, not synchronized), stereo sound. all individually looped leading to new combinations.



Sources
QUOTES:
Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (1901-1976)
Hilde Domin, The Second Paradise (1968)
Ken Wilber (according to www.tattva.de, Tattva Viveka 62, 2015)
cnbc.com (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/14/an-egg-has-overtaken-kylie-jenner-as-most-liked-instagram-post-ever.html)

AUDIO MATERIAL
youtube: „Elysium Planitia, Mars“, Kowch7373,(Text also found on www.uahirise.org)
youtube: „Sound of Kepler 90 Star System :-(Frequencies of Planets), voyager360360
youtube: „Episode 26: Harmony of the Spheres - The Mechanical Universe“, caltech
youtube: „Kepler and the Music of the Spheres“, Giosue, Liceo Carducci bz (re-spoken)
Voice Improvisation on "e" (Celia Längle)

VIDEO MATERIAL
cell division of C.Elegans, Celia Längle (Lab of Monica Gotta, ETH Zürich 2005)
google earth
google mars
pictures from Venus transit 1882 (United States Naval Observatory)

IMAGES FOR REENACEMENT
instagram: Kylie Jenner, Selena Gomez, Kim Kardashian (2018/2019)
paintings: Albert Dürer ( 1507), Jan Gossaert (1520), Cranach Lucas elder (1533,1538), unbekannt (16.Jhd), Wenzel Peter (1829), Titian (1550)

audio "e"

video "eva"

video "mars"

video "venus"

documentation video