Melanie Manchot
Gestures of Demarcation, 2001
Gestures of Demarcation, 2001
One of the most potent things an enemy can do to you is ´get under your skin. He wreaks havoc from within. The ensuing pent-up anger causes you to ´positively explode`. The more martial metaphor is appropriate – you find your skin suddenly confirning, your concentrated rage is all set to burst forth, and the delicate tissue that envelopes the body seems like a prison. In such high-adrenaline matter that marks the ´boundary`of every living being. Skin is a cover that distinguishes one individual from another, but also renders each visible in the first place, and with its pigmentations separates mankind into races.
One of the most potent things an enemy can do to you is ´get under your skin. He wreaks havoc from within. The ensuing pent-up anger causes you to ´positively explode`. The more martial metaphor is appropriate – you find your skin suddenly confirning, your concentrated rage is all set to burst forth, and the delicate tissue that envelopes the body seems like a prison. In such high-adrenaline matter that marks the ´boundary`of every living being. Skin is a cover that distinguishes one individual from another, but also renders each visible in the first place, and with its pigmentations separates mankind into races.
Gestures of Demarcation I, 2001
Gestures of Demarcation II, 2001
Gestures of Demarcation IV, 2001
.jpg)
Gestures of Demarcation V, 2001
Gestures of Demarcation VI, 2001
One of the most potent things an enemy can do to you is ´get under your skin`. He wreaks havoc from within. The ensuing pent-up anger causes you to ´positively explode`. The more martial metaphor is appropriate – you find your skin suddenly confirning, your concentrated rage is all set to burst forth, and the delicate tissue that envelopes the body seems like a prison. In such high-adrenaline matter that marks the ´boundary`of every living being. Skin is a cover that distinguishes one individual from another, but also renders each visible in the first place, and with its pigmentations separates mankind into races.
[...]
Skin is a major focus of Melanie Manchot`s artistic interest. It constitutes the visible screen on which the other subject matter unfolds – contacts, in both the direct and figurative sense, and the exploration of inter-personal relationships in intimate and sometimes challenging situations. Social contracts in this sense are not limited to the people she depicts; they include her own relationship with the persons depicted. In the artistic process, Melanie Manchot reverses the vanishing point of the self, adding to it the focus of those who are otherwise just representational matter.
Photography is the medium of her art. Important components of photography likewise act as a kind of skin – the light-sensitive layer of the film and photographic paper, for example. The emulsion the light strikes as soon as the shutter of the camera lens opens, is made up of fifteen further layers, which are affected in varying thickness during the exposure process. Film emulsion is as it were a skin with a memory. In this, it is again comparable with the smooth skin of human beings, which records even minor injuries – unlike the hairy or scaly skin of most animals , which is more robust.
[...]
Gestures of Demarcation (2001) is the title of this group of works, originating in a variety of locations from New York to Eastern Slovakia. The acts she asked for violate the borderline between people that is demarcated on the body by the skin. They are literally encroachments experienced by the artist, initially as a victim but in any case as the target and object of a physical attack, and documented in photographic images. Whose initiative prompted the offence against her integrity is unimportant. In this respect, the title of this body of works is deliberately ambiguous. Through it suggests literally something like erecting frontiers, the pictures it refers to show quite the opposite, i.e. attempts to cross them, as it were to `get under the skin`by means of a violent act.
Klaus Honnef, in: Melanie Manchot. Love is a Stranger. Photographs 1998 - 2001
[...]
Skin is a major focus of Melanie Manchot`s artistic interest. It constitutes the visible screen on which the other subject matter unfolds – contacts, in both the direct and figurative sense, and the exploration of inter-personal relationships in intimate and sometimes challenging situations. Social contracts in this sense are not limited to the people she depicts; they include her own relationship with the persons depicted. In the artistic process, Melanie Manchot reverses the vanishing point of the self, adding to it the focus of those who are otherwise just representational matter.
Photography is the medium of her art. Important components of photography likewise act as a kind of skin – the light-sensitive layer of the film and photographic paper, for example. The emulsion the light strikes as soon as the shutter of the camera lens opens, is made up of fifteen further layers, which are affected in varying thickness during the exposure process. Film emulsion is as it were a skin with a memory. In this, it is again comparable with the smooth skin of human beings, which records even minor injuries – unlike the hairy or scaly skin of most animals , which is more robust.
[...]
Gestures of Demarcation (2001) is the title of this group of works, originating in a variety of locations from New York to Eastern Slovakia. The acts she asked for violate the borderline between people that is demarcated on the body by the skin. They are literally encroachments experienced by the artist, initially as a victim but in any case as the target and object of a physical attack, and documented in photographic images. Whose initiative prompted the offence against her integrity is unimportant. In this respect, the title of this body of works is deliberately ambiguous. Through it suggests literally something like erecting frontiers, the pictures it refers to show quite the opposite, i.e. attempts to cross them, as it were to `get under the skin`by means of a violent act.
Klaus Honnef, in: Melanie Manchot. Love is a Stranger. Photographs 1998 - 2001