Involuntary Corpses  2001

​PAL, colour, mono
Duration : 3.30”

‘Involuntary Corpses’ takes its title from the theatrical notion of ‘corpsing’, an involuntary disruption of a performance by another actor (usually as hysterical laughter). In this video work Monika Oechsler extends the dynamics of group behaviour beyond the complexities of adolescent girls (the in-between ages of innocence and sexual awareness) which inform the two earlier works ‘Necking and “For the Very First Time’, to explore another minefield - that of adult role play and the games of adult society. As in the cult novel of the 70’s ‘The Dice Man” by Luke Rinehart, each of the 5 participants has been asked to think of 12 options of socially transgressive acts and to throw the dice in order to determine which one to ‘perform’ to the other 4. Unlike the life changing actions in Rinehart’s novel, those enacted here - portraying animalistic behaviour, hysterical eruptions, regressive gestures, rebirthing, exhibitionistic acts, ........., - serve to illuminate the recurring nature of human experience and interaction and are reinforced through an editing process of repetitive intercutting.

​The actions are performed in a neutral and silent setting, devoid of the usual clues of the social occasion that would locate the viewing space. The other participants remain passive, even when targeted by the one who is acting out his, paralleling the discomfort also felt by the viewer of the artwork. As in the compulsive viewing of Reality TV programmes, we are drawn into an inter-subjective relationship and through implication of our own anxieties, become part of the acts we are witnessing. A space of voyeuristic pleasure or discomfort is opened up to allow for reflecting on the possibility that our identity is constructed in the social spaces which we inhabit. A social space which also acknowledges that our relationship with it is fluid and shifting, encompassing eruptions form the imaginary, rather than to be forever traumatised and fixed by it.

(Excerpt rom the catalogue Gymnasion , Bregenzer Kunstverein, Bregenz, Austria, 2001, text by Mo Throp)