Kinderkultur
Kinderkultur is a video collage, moving between animated sections and studio-based scenarios with cardboard boxes and cutouts. The work centres on the figure of the child, not just as a new person under the tutelage of adults, but also the submerged one, who is without power. There is a separateness there to the child, in the sense that despite all their dependency, they also hold a strangeness which can be understood as a form of radical autonomy. Kinderkultur channels this tension: of being unable to exist on one’s own, of being helpless, whilst still enjoying freedom. A great deal of effort, even violence, goes into dealing with the paradoxical strangeness of the child. The video combines the method and logic of the collage with a seamless tracking shot and a zooming in and out where sharpness is gained and lost – a woozy, dissolving quality. The analogue materials and work with paper clippings, remnants from studio archive, litter, is in this sense confronted with an instability and slipperiness of perception. Precarity is a core interest and organising principle of Kinderkultur.
Video, 6,19 min loop, 2022. Music by Sarah Davachi. Commission for Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, Bildmuseet Umeå and Kalmar Konstmuseum.
