6 channel video
34 min
2023
[E]
For the experimental documentary CALIBRATION MUM: I PREFER NOT TO, the artist uses motion capture techniques to transfer the daily chores of a mother - such as breastfeeding, changing nappies, playing or putting to bed - to her digital avatar. This results in scenes that concentrate exclusively on the physical dimension of care-work, isolating and abstracting the movements of her body without exposing the details of her private life.
"In her work, Braun translates the technology of the motion tracking suit, which was originally used to optimize workers' bodies on the assemply line, into the domestic space and not only makes the daily, robotoc, repetitive movement of unpaid care work visible, but also the quesions the idealized archetype of motherhood."
Jury Statement Honorable Mention Golden Cube 2024
[D]
In CALIBRATION MUM: I PREER NOT TO nutzt die Künstlerin Motion-Capture-Techniken, um die tägliche Arbeit als Mutter - wie Stillen, Windeln wechseln, Spielen oder ins Bett bringen - auf ihren digitalen Avatar zu übertragen. So entstehen Szenen, die sich ausschließlich auf den Bewegungsablauf der Handlungen konzentrieren und so die Arbeit einer Mutter isoliert zeigen, ohne sie zu exponieren.
"In ihrer Arbeit überstezt Braun die Technologie des Motion Tracking Suit, die ursprünglich für die Optimierung von Arbeiter*innenkörpern am Fließband eingesetzt wurde, in den privaten Lebensraum und macht nicht nur die täglichen, roboterhaften, sich wiederholenden Bewegungsabläufe unbezahlter Care-Arbeit sichtbar, sondern hinterfragt zudem den idealisierten Archetyp der Mutterschaft."
Jury Statement Lobende Erwähnung Golden Cube 2024
Installation view by Kyle Knodell
artist inside exhibition at Quartier Humboldthain
TEXT by Marlene Denningmann
The body of a pregnant person undergoes an incredible mutation, physically alone. But the transformation does not end there. Social norms are inscribed in the body of the “mother” as a cultural archetype, both through the unpaid labor that goes hand in hand with the new role and through societal expectations of the new identity. Like a second skin, they enclose, supposedly well-meaningly, all parents with bodies read as female.
In a multi-channel installation, Elisa Jule Braun makes it possible to physically experience the ambivalence that comes with settling into this demanding new role. There is a key scene in which her avatar folds and twists, contortionist-like and against all laws of physics. Limbs bend in impossible directions, the upper body rotates on the torso. No move that doesn’t seem to happen against resistance. From a purely technical point of view, we are dealing with a glitch. What we see – or don’t see – is the moment in which the artist slips into a motion-tracking suit to record her everyday life with an infant. From the impulses of a suit that has yet to find its place on the body, the avatar cannot generate an adequate performance. As soon as the suit fits,however, the avatar begins to reproduce: reproducing gestures, reproducing movements, and, last but not least, reproducing itself as more and more clones fill the image.
In the installation, separate categories of repetitive motions are spread across several screens, skillfully choreographed into endless digital spaces that offer little detail: There are no colorful rattles, no shining children’s eyes and no pastel-colored strollers. The focus is on the looping actions, as the hands reach into nothingness.
Rhythmic music reminiscent of everyday noises underlines the abstraction. And here lies the strength of the video work: reduced to the most necessary signs, viewers may fill in the blanks. And it is precisely from the distance to idyllic maternity narratives that the potential is drawn to approach the images with complicit identification, finding relief in the enlightening humor inherent in all exaggerations of absurd realities. And especially in the works of Elisa Jule Braun.
6 channel video
34 min
2023
[E]
For the experimental documentary CALIBRATION MUM: I PREFER NOT TO, the artist uses motion capture techniques to transfer the daily chores of a mother - such as breastfeeding, changing nappies, playing or putting to bed - to her digital avatar. This results in scenes that concentrate exclusively on the physical dimension of care-work, isolating and abstracting the movements of her body without exposing the details of her private life.
"In her work, Braun translates the technology of the motion tracking suit, which was originally used to optimize workers' bodies on the assemply line, into the domestic space and not only makes the daily, robotoc, repetitive movement of unpaid care work visible, but also the quesions the idealized archetype of motherhood."
Jury Statement Honorable Mention Golden Cube 2024
[D]
In CALIBRATION MUM: I PREER NOT TO nutzt die Künstlerin Motion-Capture-Techniken, um die tägliche Arbeit als Mutter - wie Stillen, Windeln wechseln, Spielen oder ins Bett bringen - auf ihren digitalen Avatar zu übertragen. So entstehen Szenen, die sich ausschließlich auf den Bewegungsablauf der Handlungen konzentrieren und so die Arbeit einer Mutter isoliert zeigen, ohne sie zu exponieren.
"In ihrer Arbeit überstezt Braun die Technologie des Motion Tracking Suit, die ursprünglich für die Optimierung von Arbeiter*innenkörpern am Fließband eingesetzt wurde, in den privaten Lebensraum und macht nicht nur die täglichen, roboterhaften, sich wiederholenden Bewegungsabläufe unbezahlter Care-Arbeit sichtbar, sondern hinterfragt zudem den idealisierten Archetyp der Mutterschaft."
Jury Statement Lobende Erwähnung Golden Cube 2024
Installation view by Kyle Knodell
artist inside exhibition at Quartier Humboldthain