Screening Mélusine (2016) I Reading The 8 and the Fist

Freitag, 24. Februar 2017 - 19:00 Uhr

Gianni Manhattan

Screening
MÉLUSINE (2016)
NILS ALIX-TABELING

Reading
THE 8 AND THE FIST
BARBARA KAPUSTA


Please join us for the screening of Nils Alix-Tabeling?s film Mélusine (2016, 22 min) on February 24, 2017 and the reading of Barbara Kapusta?s poem The 8 and the Fist at 7pm.

?You are a leftover. You sit here on the hill, lying on a bed of flint and flies, It seems like you attract them.

You?ve been here for too long.

I am going to push you with my foot. I?m going to force you into movement. It will be the start of your journey. Don?t be afraid, I am offering you a new life.

You will roll all the way down, falling. But she will pick you up. Her name is Mélusine, snake fairy.?


Nils Alix-Tabeling?s film, first screened at his graduation show at the Royal College of Art in London, serves as a precursor to the sculpture he realised for our current show In Middens.

Alix-Tabeling?s practice is influenced by the French medieval fairytale of Mélusine, a beautiful woman, cursed to transform into a serpent from the waist down every Saturday. Raymond, the Duke of Aquitaine, eventually discovered her in the forests. Overcome by her unearthly beauty, he begged her to marry him. She agreed, on the sole condition that he never disturbed her on a Saturday, when she bathed. As time passed, Raymond eventually grew suspicious of his young wife?s private doings in the bath and spied on her through a keyhole. His shocked reaction to her true appearance revealed his betrayal to Mélusine, who transformed herself into a winged serpent and departed in a shrieking fury.

The first chapter of Nils Alix-Tabeling?s ongoing research project is a short film displayed on two screens. An actress playing the fairy is seen narrating her story to a head made of silicone. This immersive point of view?the head being simultaneously a camera, a binaural microphone and protagonist?allows the viewer to be part the video installation and to find him/herself projected at the core of the film. The first film loosely follows the initial narration of Mélusine and introduces the character.

The screening will start at 7pm, after which Barbara Kapusta will read her poem The 8 and the Fist.

Barbara Kapusta?s latest text is an extension from earlier works such as Poem of U, The Bracket and The O, The O and the Zero, and The Things´ Poem.

For Kapusta, the 0, o und U are forms, sounds, part of a complex language, typography and yet they have a bodily aspect or affiliation.

This bodily aspect is made prominent in The 8 and The Fist: In a sort of dialogue, the Fist and the 8 are
(re-)telling a story, within which they are protagonists.

The 8 and The Fist is set in a post-apocalyptic backdrop of destroyed resources and dissolved relations. It starts from a point beyond brokenness, everything has already happened: the break down of politics and communities, the re-establishment of borders, the transition from private states of relaxation to those of alertness and worry.

This moment of broken bodies, of brokenness raises the question: What is the moment out of a disaster?

THEY ARE THE
8, THE FIST,
THE MOLD, THE
BODY PART,
THE O, AND ALL
THE OTHERS
THAT REUNITED
AFTERWARDS.

Termin

Flimmer Ratte
Screening, Nils Alix-Tabeling, Lesung, Barbara Kapusta
Freitag, 24.02.2017 19:00
Gianni Manhattan
Wassergasse 14
1030 Wien
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