Background
A membrane, permeable, breathing, a constant negotiation between different sides. The transition from one stage to another. It is precisely these in-between stages, transitional places and states, that interest me. For me it is about a constant reflection of my own position in it. It is an oscillation between distance and proximity – between oneself and ones surrounding as well as between oneself and oneself. Trying to test oneself in the respective situation, trying to find and question boundaries. How can one move and act in an ever-changing world shaped by an immense multilayered meshwork?
I am fascinated by the human need to leave traces, to hold on to something, to preserve it. The fear of forgetting. It seems as if survival is ensured by different kinds of recording. In „Bridge Performance Exposure“ the body and its movement is inscribed in the fabric as a photograph through the sun. The place chosen for the performance embodies for me the described transitional places.
„Bridge Performance Exposure“ is thus the investigation of a movement and the inscription of it as an image. The exposure in the work is created by using my own body. In a performance, I was hanging from a bridge producing a cyanotype of my body by using sunlight. The result of the performance is the analogue image on cloth in 190 x 150 cm format on the one hand and digital photographs (shown in 80 x 60 cm format) on the other.
It is an exploration; to what extent can the individual scope of action be experienced and expanded? The body can move within some framework, but to a certain extent, it is at the mercy of certain given parameters and conditions. How can a specific quality of movement be achieved that interlinks this interplay of passive and active in a future-oriented way?
The artistic approach of working with and letting in natural conditions (as sun, wind and water in this case), which I cannot control, corresponds with the idea of discovering how actions can be guided and to what degree surrendering control enriches the movement.
In this work I dedicate myself to the paradox of control and uncontrollability. Control that affects us from the outside as well as control that emanates from us. Can I both exercise and surrender control? How is activity and passivity dealt with? How can we find a way to correspond to each other in order to establish a quality of movement which opens up new possibilities? I am fascinated by the contrast of a society that is inspired by the seemingly unlimited feasibility and at the same time remains at the mercy of it.
The work could be read as an outburst, as a leap into another world. The human desire for other forms of existence, for change and the letting go of rigid systems. Change always means movement. A perpetual transformation from one possibility to the next. Movement, which in the present opens up to the possibilities, responds to uncontrollable influences and unites different strands of movement in a continuous one.
The ephemerality of the medium of performance, as well as the presented content-related debate, is contrasted with the stillness of the medium of photography. The moment in which a photograph is taken is never repeated. Photography is a crossing of boundaries, which snatches the object from the everyday world and transposes them into another world and into another kind of time.
The photographic image is instantaneous and final, like death. It has the power of silence. The dying moment finds its recognition.
Biography
Laura Sperl works at the interface of photography, performance and drawing. The process as well as the sunlight play a special role in her works. In contact exposures, such as photograms or cyanotypes, she uses very basic photochemical processes to inscribe bodies, drawings or surroundings into the material. These supports are surfaces of different kinds, from fabrics to her own skin. Thus, she always addresses the necessity of the continuous reflection of one- self in a structure that changes from moment to moment and is constantly reassembled. The role of the physical, of touch and movement, is examined in this context. The idea of a membrane is taken up again and again, boundaries are sounded out and processes of various kinds in the „in-between“ are suggested.
Laura Sperl works and lives in Vienna. She studied at Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin Artschool and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her first solo exhibition was shown in Galería MUTUO in Barcelona. In Vienna her works were presented among others in „Public domain – Porgy & Bess“, as well as within the framework of: „MUSAO Ottakring“, „Foto Wien“ or „Parallel Vienna“.
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