“What mattered for terror was how it was passed from mouth to mouth across a nation, from page to page, from image to body... But there was no System. Just a Nervous System, far more dangerous, illusions of order congealed by fear—an updated version of what the poet Brecht had written in the 1930s, obsessed with ordered disorder, the exception and the rule. ‘Hard to explain, even if it is the custom, Hard to understand, even if it is the rule.”
Michael Taussig, The Nervous System
There are avenues by which structures of power enforce, or supply, amnesia to a traumatized public in search of relief. Whether the escape is asked for or not, trauma’s return is inevitable. While our minds may be medicated, our bodies will always remind of us of our histories. C&O and Ginerva Gambino are pleased to present Body pt. 3 (Ordered Disorder), an exhibition investigating trau- ma and collective consciousness through five distinct artistic positions.
Won Cha’s video work What is at Risk?, is punctuated by a robotic voice repeating the line, „The body does not for- get.“ This echo frames an account of an old woman’s night terrors told by an unknown witness in which she screams at foreign soldiers from the war of her youth. This line goes on to frame images of demolished buildings alongside the digitally rendered advertisement for the new city coming soon to replace the ruins. Cha depicts trauma as a space, moving and transforming to blanket the mind of an individual, or shape the structures we live in.
In Let’s Take Back Our Space: ‘Female’ and ‘Male’ Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures (Arm and Leg Positions, Lying on the Ground) Marianne Wex utilizes a visual language verging on the scientific in order to deli- neate gendered patterns in posture. The body becomes a key, a site of analysis for unpacking the ramifications of patriarchal conditioning on a population.
Stefanie Heinze’s drawings and paintings abstract the process of integration. The attempt to make sense of experi- ence creates structures, creatures, and bodies at once familiar and strange. Her imagery is humorous and perverse, defined and boundary less, order and disorder coexisting in a tense harmony.
Jessica Robbins’ sculptures reimagine the possibilities of functional objects. Questioning prescribed use and me- aning, the sculptures push us to see how social limitations are embedded in the mundane and how shifting our expectations of the objects around us can become a practice of liberation and renewal.
Describing themselves, “Power Makes us Sick (PMS) is a creative research project focusing on autonomous health care practices and networks from a feminist perspective. PMS seeks to understand the ways that our mental, physi- cal, and social health is impacted by imbalances in and abuses of power.” Anchored in the present, PMS works coll- ectively to dissect, understand, dismantle and rebel against contemporary conditions of healthcare and access. For this exhibition PMS has collected a library of zines from collaborators and friends working on overlapping issues.
- Marina Caron
