Melting of the iron body

Melting of the iron body was an extensive installation and videoperformance in the former factory building Eisenwerk, which Laura McGlinchey and me realised during a residency time of six weeks. The work was collaboratively developed with McGlinchey and deeply inspired by the quote from the movie Metropolis: "The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart". The quote reflects our two different ways of working – while McGlinchey's works are rooted in the physical exploration of materials, my works emerge from intellectual reflection.

We transformed the entire Shedhalle into an installation with three main rooms: "Head", "Heart", "Hands" and a hidden "melting". Melting of the iron body is aesthetically and conceptually inspired by German Expressionist cinema. In the different spaces we filmed video performance that thematise the gendered works that have been done and melting them into queer, aesthetic processes. Melting in this context means a breaking of gender binaries, but also references the historical transition of factories into an epoch in which much industrial work is no longer done by human bodies. The work pushed both of us artists to our physical and mental limits – the heart helped us finishing it.

Featured performers: Anssi Dudle, Julia Muggler, Laura-Maria Drage, Una Anhedonia.