#34: Melanie Manchot

Melanie Manchot
Friday, May 11th, 2012, 24:00 | midnight
BABYLON, Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, big cinema hall
(Eintritt frei | admission free)

Celebration (Cyprus Street): 10'50 min
Dance (All Night, Paris): 12'40 min
Perfect Mountain: 9'30 min
Leap after The Great Ecstasy: 20'10 min

Melanie Manchot’s practice employs photography, video and film to explore performative situations, often looking at the individual in relation to cultural and social conditions as well as to public space. Situated at the threshold between the documentary and staged events the work frequently involves the participation of strangers and articulates modes of individual and collective experiences and relations. Videoart at Midnight focuses on four recent film and video-works: Celebration (Cyprus Street) is one continuous tracking shot through an East London street party culminating in a durational group portrait of all the residents. For Dance (All Night, Paris) Manchot worked with amateur dancers from ten different forms of dance, bringing them together in one night time Parisian square. Both Perfect Mountain and Leap after The Great Ecstasy are filmed in the same alpine village, Engelberg, where Manchot is working on an extended body of work. Both works look at the relation between the natural and artifice in our human search for a brief moment of perfection. The artist is attending.

The artist is present.