PHOTOS: ISTVAN VIRAG (C) PUNKT Ø / MOMENTUM 9
Rolf Nowotny (DK)
Ravaged House (2017)
The horror of the contemporary body – the individual body as well as the body of societies – is the theme a Rolf Nowotny’s sculptures and installations. He investigates and dramatizes how this body physically as well as psychologically and socially becomes strange, or other. An enigmatic story from a Manga novel, the curious history of Danish folk culture as well as the uncanny aesthetics of gore cinema inspire the installation. It stages a scenery that merges the built environment and organic processes, the human and non-human, in a bizarre biological mess. In this mess, all bodies seem strange and rather than stigmatizing the strangeness – in particular, the strangeness of the main character in the video – the installation dives into what can best be described as a common strangeness, where possibly a new kind of empathy between humans and their bodies can emerge.
